And fun it was. They met at Le DeSales on a rainy night. Inside the downtown bistro, the climate was decidedly milder.

“She seemed really cool right off the bat,” said Ray. “She was very pretty. On the first glance I was like, ‘Okay, this is great. This is gonna be fun.’ ”

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“I could tell it was going to be breezy,” Betts said of her immediate impression of Ray. “He seemed really open and friendly but in a way that felt like he had no ulterior motives. He felt very first-day-of-school smiley to me.”

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When asked if she was attracted to Ray, she replied, “He looked nice. He was wearing a little quarter-zip with a button-up underneath and I was like, ‘Aw.’ He pressed the look-normal button.”

Betts said she hates awkwardness, and both did their best to avoid it, though Ray admitted that it cropped up during their food selection. They decided to share everything ... that they planned to eat, that is. Ray had been keeping something from Betts: his allergies to nuts and shellfish.

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“She was very enthusiastic about looking through the menu,” he explained. “I didn’t want to counter that enthusiasm by immediately being like, ‘Can’t do this, can’t do this.’ But eventually I was like, ‘Full disclosure ...’ Once I said that, she was super cool about it.”

Betts withheld information of her own: her pescatarianism. “I was like, ‘I’m not going to bring it up. It’s going to be a whole thing, and everyone asks me why and I don’t have a good answer.’ ” So she bit the bullet (and the flesh). They settled on a charcuterie board featuring cheeses and duck prosciutto, beef tartare, the chicken special and french fries. For drinks, they swilled champagne then transitioned to a dry white wine.

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They discussed their recent moves to the District, their upbringings on opposite coasts (she hails from California, he’s from Maine) and their mutual love and extensive knowledge of stand-up comedy. They’re both fans of James Acaster, a comic who’s not a household name. That was hardly the only place off the beaten path where their interests intersected. Betts is an investment analyst; Ray, a legal coordinator, is generally interested in finance. Their shared study of history led to a discussion of the rise of banking in a pre-modern society — “especially the Latin and Italian influences on that,” explained Ray. How archaic!

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“That was very cool,” he said. “We would talk about these broad common interests, but as we would develop the conversation more, we would end up talking about really specific, niche things that we were somehow both really interested in.”

Betts said their time at Le DeSales, about 2 1 / 2 hours, consisted of “a smiley back-and-forth.” She siphoned residual pep from his. He struck her as “a guy who’s happy to be there, wherever he is,” she said. “He’s the least jaded person I’ve ever met.”

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They shared an Uber home, and during the ride they discussed music, including their mutual love for Joni Mitchell and Bob Dylan and Ray’s love for rapper Lupe Fiasco. Reflecting in his interview, Ray said that the date may have been “the start of” a romantic spark with Betts. “It was definitely more than, ‘This person’s cool, we should be just friends,’ ” he said.

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Betts, though, was more circumspect. “It felt more like hanging out with a friend of a friend than it did a romantic night on the town. It’s one of those situations where you can have such a good time with someone and you have a lot in common and every time you say something, you bounce off of it,” she said. “He’s a thoughtful, intelligent person, but it’s kind of like, what makes a date a date? Whatever that indescribable element is, the X factor, it didn’t feel like it was there for me.”

Betts recalled discussing with Ray the Date Lab stereotype of: “The guy is like, ‘It’s a 5,’ and the girl is like, ‘It’s a 3.’ ” She added: “I hate to be a stereotype, but I worry we’re not on the same page.” Well, you know what they say: Some stereotypes exist for a reason.

Rate the date

Ray: 4.25 [out of 5]. “I felt like it went pretty well. Hopefully she thinks it went well.”

Betts: 3.8. “But as an interpersonal encounter, I would rate it a 5.”

Update