I told him I wasn't hungry. I want that on the record before anything else. I said, "I'm not really hungry, I had a late breakfast," and he nodded in this very solemn, understanding way and said, "Totally, no pressure, we'll just walk around a little."
That was forty-five minutes ago. I have since eaten: one Korean BBQ taco, a third of a lamb flatbread, two bites of something described on the sign only as "the situation," and a small cardboard boat of fries that he handed me while looking directly away, as if deniability was still on the table.
His name is Pierce. He is twenty-nine years old and genuinely believes that offering someone food sideways, without eye contact, does not count as offering them food.
It is forty-four degrees in Denver today. May has decided to simply not participate in spring this year, and the whole city feels damp in a way that gets into your bones about seven minutes after you step outside. We walked down to what was supposed to be Civic Center Park but is currently more of a Civic Center Concept, construction barriers reshaping everything, the usual geography rerouted and improvised. The food trucks had migrated over to Bannock Street in front of the City and County Building, which Pierce discovered approximately thirty seconds after I'd agreed to "just walk around a little," and his entire face did a thing.
I recognized that thing. That thing is called Pierce Has a Plan He Did Not Disclose.
"Oh, wild, they moved it over here," he said, in a tone suggesting this was a complete surprise to him and not something he had looked up at eleven o'clock last night while I was trying to sleep.
The crowd was doing that specific Denver thing where everyone is underdressed and slightly annoyed about the weather but absolutely committed to being outside anyway, hoods up, coffees clutched, cheerfully miserable. Pierce fit right in. He was wearing a jacket that was not warm enough, which I had told him, and he was making the face of a man who has decided to simply not be cold rather than admit I was right.
He stood in front of the truck lineup for a long time. Not deciding. Cataloguing. There is a difference.
"What do you want?" I asked.
"Nothing yet," he said. "I'm just looking."
Pierce "just looking" at food trucks is like a golden retriever "just looking" at an open gate. The outcome is predetermined. The only variable is how long he spends pretending he hasn't already decided.
He ended up with: one Korean BBQ taco, the lamb flatbread, something called the situation that neither of us could fully identify but which tasted like a decision we stood behind, and the fries. He ate approximately two-thirds of all of it, which is his personal equilibrium — he orders for the experience and then distributes the rest of it to me while maintaining that he is not, technically, feeding me.
"We should get that last truck," he said, gesturing.
"Pierce."
"Just to look."
I looked at the City and County Building, gray and stately behind us, the street rerouted and the park under revision and the whole downtown landscape in this weird state of cheerful upheaval, lunch crowds navigating around barriers like it was just a normal Tuesday, which I guess for Denver it sort of is. The city: always under construction, always carrying on anyway.
I thought about the Nuggets. I don't know why. I think it's because there's something in the Denver air right now that feels like a team after a playoff exit — a little bruised, a little stubborn, absolutely not ready to call it a year. Pierce has that energy sometimes. Has it often, actually.
"Fine," I said.
He grinned. He has a very annoying grin. I have mentioned this.
We went to the last truck. I got a hot chocolate because it was forty-four degrees and I have a functioning relationship with reality. He got a second taco and handed me the last third of it without comment, staring off into the middle distance.
I ate it.
I'm not going to say he was right about the walk. But I'll say the taco was good, and my hands were warm from the cup, and the rain held off, and somewhere in a rerouted city under revision we spent forty-five minutes outside on purpose and it was fine.
It was fine.
He knew it would be fine.
I hate that he knew.