Kevin was a man who believed in systems. His bookshelf was alphabetised. His sock drawer was a marvel of chromatic organisation. His approach to romance, therefore, was necessarily methodical. He had spent the last six months studying the subject with the same rigorous attention he'd applied to his college thesis on "The Socioeconomic Implications of Beekeeping in Pre-Industrial Scotland." He had spreadsheets. He had flowcharts. He had a binder labeled, simply, "OPERATION: GET LAID," which he kept hidden behind a poster of a kitten hanging from a branch that read "Hang in There!"

Tonight was the culmination of months of research. Tonight, he would deploy "The Protocol."

The target: Becky, the new copywriter at his marketing firm. She had hair the colour of dark honey, a laugh that sounded like wind chimes made of espresso, and an unfortunate habit of making eye contact with Kevin when he brought her coffee exactly the way she liked it (oat milk, two pumps sugar-free vanilla, extra hot). According to his calculations, this eye contact, combined with her 73% smile frequency during their interactions, indicated a 68% probability of romantic interest, with a margin of error of +/- 4%.

He had prepared. He had purchased a bottle of wine with a label that looked expensive but was actually £11.99. He had learned to cook one dish: chicken marsala, and had practiced it until he could produce it in his sleep, which he occasionally did, muttering about shallots. He had even bought new sheets, 600-thread-count, which the internet assured him was the minimum threshold for not being "a disgusting animal."

At 7:00 PM precisely, Becky knocked on his door.

Kevin took three deep breaths, as prescribed in Chapter 4: "Pre-Game Centring Techniques." He opened the door.

She wore a simple green dress and a smile that made his carefully prepared opening line ("Welcome to my abode, fair lady") evaporate from his brain like morning dew on a hot skillet.

"Hi, Kevin," she said. "This is so nice of you."

"Nice," Kevin repeated. "Yes. That is the word. Nice. I am a nice man who has prepared a nice meal. Please enter my nice apartment."

She did. Her eyes swept over the space—the neat bookshelf, the single orchid he'd bought and then immediately looked up "how to keep orchid alive" on his phone, the cat poster that he suddenly realised was still up. She smiled at the poster.

"Kitten philosophy," she said. "Deep."

"I find it grounding," Kevin said, dying inside.

The evening proceeded with the awkward grace of a giraffe on roller skates. The chicken marsala was edible, which Kevin considered a victory. The conversation was stilted but not catastrophic. Becky was kind, asking questions about his beekeeping thesis with an expression that suggested genuine interest, though it might also have been the expression of someone watching a slow-motion train wreck.

By the time they moved to the couch with the second glass of wine, Kevin's internal systems were flashing warning lights. The data did not match the model. She was here. She was drinking his wine. She had laughed at his story about the time a bee got into his apartment and he'd had to construct an elaborate cardboard ramp to guide it out the window. These were all positive indicators. But the feeling, the actual, human, messy feeling of being with another person—was not something his spreadsheets had prepared him for.

He decided to initiate Phase Two: Physical Escalation, Subsection A: Incidental Contact.

The protocol called for a "casual brush of the hand" during a moment of shared laughter. Kevin waited for such a moment. When it came, she was describing her cat's vendetta against a particular houseplant—he executed the manoeuvre with the precision of a bomb disposal expert. His pinky grazed her forearm.

She did not recoil. She did not file a restraining order. She continued talking about the plant.

Success, Kevin thought, mentally checking a box. Proceed to Phase Two, Subsection B: Prolonged Contact.

He let his pinky rest against her arm. For five seconds. Ten. Fifteen. He counted. At twenty seconds, as prescribed, he moved to full palm contact, gently resting his hand on her forearm.

Becky paused mid-sentence. She looked down at his hand. She looked up at his face. Her expression was unreadable, a blank screen onto which Kevin projected approximately seventeen different interpretations simultaneously.

"Kevin," she said slowly. "Are you… touching my arm?"

This was not in the script. The script assumed that by this point, she would be reciprocating, leaning in, perhaps murmuring something about the sudden warmth in the room. Kevin's mind raced through his contingency plans. There was a contingency for fire. A contingency for unexpected phone calls. A contingency for food poisoning. There was no contingency for "verbal acknowledgment of the touch protocol."

"Yes," he said, because honesty seemed the only remaining option. "I am. It's… it's part of the protocol."

Her eyebrows rose. "The protocol?"

Kevin felt the carefully constructed edifice of OPERATION: GET LAID crumble around him. In for a penny, in for a pound. "I have a binder," he said.

"A binder."

"Behind the kitten poster. It contains my research. On seduction. I've been preparing for this evening for six months. The chicken marsala required fourteen practice runs. I have a spreadsheet tracking your smile frequency."

The silence that followed was so profound Kevin could hear his own pulse, which was attempting to break the sound barrier.

Then Becky did something he hadn't predicted. She laughed. Not a polite, dismissive laugh, but a genuine, full-bodied laugh that bent her double and left her wiping her eyes.

"A spreadsheet," she gasped. "For my smiles."

"Seventy-three percent of our interactions," Kevin confirmed, his voice small. "Plus or minus four."

She sat up, still giggling. "Kevin. Oh, Kevin. That's the most ridiculous, adorable, deeply concerning thing I've ever heard." She looked at him, and her eyes were bright with something that might have been affection. "Did it occur to you to just… ask me out? Like a normal person?"

"The data suggested that direct approaches have a 42% success rate in initial stages, whereas the gradual escalation protocol increases long-term compatibility metrics by—"

She kissed him.

It was not a gentle kiss. It was a kiss that landed slightly off-centre, catching the corner of his mouth, because she was still laughing and he was still talking about metrics. It was messy and imperfect and absolutely nothing like the choreographed scenarios in his binder.

When she pulled back, Kevin's brain had officially left the building.

"Shut up about the data," she said.

"Okay," Kevin agreed, because speech was beyond him.

She kissed him again, and this time it landed properly. Kevin's hands, unguided by any protocol, found their way to her waist. She tasted like wine and chicken marsala and the terrifying, wonderful unknown.

They made their way to the bedroom, bumping into doorframes and giggling. The 600-thread-count sheets were indeed very nice, though Kevin was in no condition to appreciate them analytically. Becky's green dress ended up on the floor, followed by Kevin's shirt, which he'd ironed specifically for this occasion, and his pants, which he had not.

The sex itself was, by Kevin's later assessment, "a statistically significant deviation from projected outcomes." It was not smooth. It was not choreographed. At one point, Kevin's elbow connected with the headboard with a crack that made them both pause and assess for structural damage. At another point, Becky's hair got tangled in his watch, requiring a brief interruption for disentanglement. Kevin attempted to execute a manoeuvre he'd read about in a men's magazine and immediately apologised, certain he'd done it wrong.

"It's fine," Becky gasped, laughing. "It's fine. Just—just be here. With me. Not in your head."

It was the hardest thing he'd ever done. Being present, without analysis, without data collection, without mentally filing each sensation under "Pleasure, Types of." But he tried. He looked at her—really looked—at the flush on her cheeks, the slight furrow of concentration between her brows, the way her breath caught when he touched a certain spot on her hip.

"Oh," he said, because he'd found that spot by accident and it seemed significant.

"Yes," she agreed. "That. More of that."

He did more of that. And slowly, miraculously, the awkwardness dissolved into something else. Something that felt less like executing a protocol and more like dancing, two people moving together, sometimes stepping on each other's toes, but finding the rhythm anyway.

Afterward, they lay tangled in the 600-thread-count sheets, breathing in sync. Becky traced lazy patterns on his chest. Kevin stared at the ceiling, his mind a blissful blank.

"So," she said eventually. "The binder. Can I see it?"

Kevin turned his head to look at her. "You want to see the binder?"

"I absolutely need to see the binder. A spreadsheet of my smiles? Kevin. This is archival material."

He groaned. "It's behind the kitten poster."

She was out of bed before he could protest, pulling on his discarded shirt and padding barefoot into the living room. He heard her exclamation of delight, followed by the rustle of pages.

"Oh my God," she called. "There's a flowchart. A flowchart, Kevin. 'If she laughs at joke, proceed to Node B. If she checks phone, initiate contingency Alpha.' What is contingency Alpha?"

"Fake a heart attack," Kevin called back, his face buried in the pillow. "It creates sympathy and an opportunity for CPR."

Her laughter floated back to him, bright and disbelieving and utterly wonderful. She returned to the bedroom, clutching the binder to her chest like a sacred text. "This is the most beautiful thing I've ever seen. I'm keeping it."

"What? No. That's proprietary information."

"It's leverage," she said, grinning. "For the rest of our lives. Every time you annoy me, I'm going to read aloud from 'Chapter 7: Advanced Cuddling Formations.'"

Kevin looked at her—this strange, wonderful woman who had laughed at his absurdity instead of running from it, who was now clutching his shame-binder like a trophy, who had kissed him mid-sentence and tangled her hair in his watch and called him adorable for being a complete idiot.

"Okay," he said.

"Okay what?"

"Okay, you can keep it. But only if you promise to occasionally let me practice the advanced cuddling formations. For research purposes."

She climbed back into bed, still holding the binder. "For research," she agreed, and kissed him again.

Outside, the city hummed its indifferent hum. Inside, Kevin's carefully constructed systems lay in ruins, and for the first time in his life, he couldn't have been happier about it. He had abandoned the protocol and discovered something the spreadsheets could never capture: the beautiful, messy, unpredictable chaos of actually connecting with another human being.

Also, the 600-thread-count sheets were definitely worth it.