“Firmly.”

“See you at six.”

I laugh. “Yeah, see you at six,” I call after him. “If you catch anything, I’ll cook it. I think I remember how.”

He waves a dismissive hand. “They’re all tiny, in there. Fun to catch, but not worth trying to eat.”

Weird how we both seem to have trouble ending conversations.

He smiles at me over his shoulder as the conversation just kind of abruptly, awkwardly ends, because he’s doing his thing and I’m doing mine and we’re going to see each later. So do you say goodbye, see you later, or do you just stop talking and do what you do until it’s time to see each other again? Neither of us seems to know how to navigate that.

I can’t help wondering what that means, and then further wondering if maybe I know what it means, but I just don’t want to admit it.

Time to go spend the rest of the day worrying about what I’m going to wear on this date-not-date.

Is it a date?

Do I want it to be a date?

I head inside and paw through my hanging clothes, dresses, skirts, blouses. And while I’m trying on outfits, I’m also trying on, experimentally, how it would feel to let myself admit that tonight with Nathan is a date and that I do in fact want it to be.

I can’t quite get there.

I haven’t been on a date, as in a getting-to-know-you-because-I-think-I-like-you type of way, since I met Adrian freshman year of college. Which feels like a long, long time ago. Because, damn, it was. I was nineteen when I met him. That’s almost twenty years ago.

Makes me feel old.

I like Nathan. That’s an established fact. But I hate how that feels, sounds—like I’m a sixth-grader with my first crush. Do you like me, check yes or no. But what other language is there for this feeling? I appreciate who he is. I enjoy spending time around him. Conversation with him is easy, natural, and lively. I feel safe around him. At no point has he ever done or said anything that makes me feel physically uncomfortable, pushed past my limits of propriety and comfort. He doesn’t look at me like I’m a piece of meat.

Which, I mean, until lately, at least, there wasn’t any meat on me for him to be looking at me in that way anyhow. I was emaciated. By the time I got that letter from Adrian, I was working a hundred hours a week, sleeping four or five hours a night max, and eating maybe a thousand calories a day, most of the time far less, and what I did eat was largely nutritionally useless, bits of fruit, some cheese, a microwavable frozen burrito from Costco, half a bagel dipped in cream cheese as I drove to work.