A year ago I decided to meet up with a nice person to hang out for the day.  It was a tad scary considering I thought he was awfully nice and I wanted to impress him.  We arranged to get hotdogs, because I’m me and what else would I arrange with anyone ever, and we met up and walked to town.  Oddly, this is something I don’t remember all the little details of.  Instead of being a little drunk and therefore more calm, I was perfectly sober, it was daytime and I was so nervous.  I hadn’t been able to eat properly for a while since before Christmas, and what with the nerves, I wasn’t really sure how I was supposed to eat.  I hate eating in front of other people as it is.  

But we got there and ordered some hotdogs.  He kept leaving the table and going to the bathroom, and I didn’t know what was going on.  I was trying to hide the gagging that happened every time I took a bite out of my food.  I sipped on the lemonade and gave up on eating, leaving everything on the table in front of me.  Eventually, he came back from a bathroom visit and explained that he’d kept being sick.  I told him how bad I felt and we went for a walk. 

We walked up on the hill behind the bowling alley we’d been eating in, but, before we could get there, he was sick in the car park a few times.  I told him I didn’t mind and that I was actually genuinely interested when he threw up a half a hotdog, and I maintain that it was quite something to look at.  

The walk was nice, we were shy with one another and he said things about nature and a few things about religion and I was mildly intimidated and aware of how little I knew about these things, but at the top of the hill, he told me to look at some trees.  He pointed off into the distance and I looked at a row of trees.  I asked what they were, because I thought I recognised them, and when he told me, I was smitten with that moment.  Because they were the same trees I looked at every day, and loved, and drew, and took pictures of.  And up there on the hill, I could see them, with him.  

We continued to walk and he continued to spit on the ground, holding his stomach.  I asked if he was okay but he just wanted to go home, so we walked through town together but ended up at the underpass in no time, where he’d go one way and I’d go another.  There was a moment when I didn’t know what to do, we’d already kissed a few nights before but it didn’t seem okay to kiss here, never mind the puke that was inevitably still in his mouth.  I wanted to hug or say goodbye in some important way but it just didn’t make any sense here.  So, instead, I barely stopped walking, I lifted a hand from my pocket to gesture a wave and I said I hoped he felt better soon.

I went home and tried to ignore the notion that maybe he was forcibly sick as some kind of a get-out plan.  Maybe he hated the whole thing so much that he puked to go home.  

I will assume that I was wrong, because we just kept hanging out again and again and it always felt perfect, puke or no puke, drunk or not drunk.  And as if by accident, I share everything with him now.  I tried to hold things back or hide things I knew he wouldn’t like but it hasn’t worked, we know each other.  

I want to articulate how I feel, but I remember that there’s no need, that he knows already, because we both know.