Love... From Both Sides (A laugh-out-loud romantic comedy) by Nick Spalding Page A

stomach and shuffling slowly into the room. The look on his face is one of such abject misery I feel a pang of sympathy.
    I’m sure the expression on my face isn’t that much different…
    On the surface it’s because of the rampant food poisoning we’re obviously suffering from, but on another level I’m sure we also realise that there’s no hope of a relationship blossoming between us now.
    Not after he’s heard me fart like a sumo wrestler with irritable bowel syndrome.
    Explosive diarrhoea is not something you can simply overlook after two dates.
    …nor is shitting into a bin.
     
    There are no words.
    The mutual embarrassment is so cringe worthy there’s simply nothing to say.
    I scuttle past Jamie into the hall and grab my coat. My stomach rolls again as I catch a whiff of the kitchen.
    ‘You don’t have… have to go,’ Jamie says.
    ‘I really think I should,’ I argue. ‘This might not be over yet. I want to get home.’
    His little face crumples. ‘Aah. Okay.’
    He opens the front door and I walk out into the blissfully cool night air.
    I know I should turn and say goodbye, but the mortification is too much to bear. All I can do now is keep my head down, run back to El Denté and drive back to the flat (with its lovely clean girl’s toilet) as quickly as possible.
    As I reverse the car out, I look back at Jamie still standing in his doorway, watching me go with a face like a kicked puppy.
    I see him clutch his stomach again and grimace - and know he’ll be running upstairs any moment to finish the evening with a bang.
    I feel another wave of nausea pass through me and hope I get home before the rotten fajitas assault my lower intestines again.
    El Denté’s dashboard may be wipe-clean, but that is of scant comfort. Besides, the seat sure as hell isn’t.
    In the space of two hours this has gone from the very best date I’ve ever had to the very, very worst.
    I’m frankly surprised the whole debacle hasn’t given me severe emotional whiplash.
     
    I did make it home, Mum.
    Just .
    Things finally settled down about two in the morning and I dropped into an exhausted sleep.
     
    It’s been two days now and I managed to eat some dry toast for tea this evening. I think I might be ready to try something more exotic like a tin of baked beans tomorrow.
    What I won’t be trying again for an extremely long time is dating.
    When it results in a near death experience and the most embarrassing moment of your life, it’s probably time to give it a rest for a while, don’t you think?
     
    Love you and miss you, Mum… as always.
     
    Your poorly daughter, Laura.
     
    xx

 
     
     
    Jamie’s Blog
    Monday 4 July
     
     
    Today marks the one month anniversary of the worst night of my adult life.
     
    It eclipses the day I was fired from a lucrative freelance contract with a popular restaurant chain due to a spellchecker changing the word ‘taste buds’ to ‘testicles’ in a promotional pamphlet I was responsible for. Thousands of people got a chance to read all about how the cuisine on offer would ‘tickle their testicles with flavour’.
    It was also worse than the time I broke my ankle while pretending to be Spider-man at a fancy dress disco, and had to spend eight hours in casualty dressed as the web- slinger , because nobody sober enough was around to bring me a change of clothes.
    Yep, straight to the top of the pile of shame is the night I gave a pretty girl food poisoning, causing her to take the shit from hell upstairs in the bathroom, while I defecated painfully into the pedal bin downstairs.
     
    …look, I had no other choice, alright? By the time I reached the kitchen, my bowels were screaming at me to do something constructive. It was either the bin or the sink, and when you lift the bin lid it looks a bit like a toilet seat. I wouldn’t recommend it as an alternative to the more conventional set-up. Let’s just say there’s a real danger of splash back and leave it at that.
     
    It was