It's on me
He took me out for ice cream for my birthday, trying on phrases in the same way he’s trying on manhood for the first time this year. “It’s on me,” he says in the card. He’ll pay, with money he earned. “What can I get?” I ask him in the DQ line. I don’t know how much he has stashed in his pockets. “Oh, anything for 40baht or less,” he sort of drawls, trying to be casual. I suspect that if I do order something for 40 baht that he will not have much left for him. His daddy slips him another 20 from behind, where he and the other kids wait to get ice cream too, but try not to intrude on our ice cream “date”, even though we’re all at the mall together. His quick smile and quiet, “Thanks” confirms my suspicions. So I order the blizzard in a waffle cone, and he orders the same, in a different flavor, and we wander over to a corner of the food court and sit down. I am picturing his first date in my head. I think he’ll be remarkably similar to the way he is right now, trying to act ca