The Relative Merits of Olive Garden Breadsticks

Romantic what-ifs in a Central Florida parking lot.

“What if there was someone else?”

Josh is looking at me. He’s shifted his body so he’s almost facing me, and I can’t quite see his eyes because the parking lot lamp above us is glowing against his glasses.

I know what he means, suddenly and with complete clarity.

But to back up:

Josh and I have been friends since high school. He is tall, in seemingly effortless fantastic shape, a little nerdy, and always wears clothes a little too big.

We met in our Christian youth group, during the adolescent years I most needed a community. At the time, he had a beautiful girlfriend. She was petite, had a kind and thoughtful spirit, and looked like the muse of a French New Wave director. They were the epitome of a teenage power couple until they broke up when she went off to attend Duke.

It never occurred to me that Josh was attractive until he called me while I was shopping with a friend during Freshman year of college. She stared at me as he asked whether I was going to the beach with his roommates that weekend. While coordinating our plans, I glanced at her questioningly and told him I’d see him later that night to finalize details.

“Who the hell was that?”

“Josh, you remember him? Tall guy, glasses, lives with Michael and Wally and the other guys?”

“OK, yes. Can we discuss how incredibly sexy his voice is?”

“Oh. I mean, I guess so.”

“He’s like…low-key very hot. Is he still with that girl?”

“No, they broke up a few months ago.”

“Why are you not hooking up with him immediately?”

“No, Ashley. That’s not…no.”

And it dawned on me: Josh was handsome. He was also smart, funny, wealthy, sarcastic, and energetic. I enjoyed spending time with him. I spoke to him nearly daily. I had ogled him when we went swimming.

But this isn’t really a story about Josh.

This is a story about Michael. Michael was his roommate, his good friend, and his classmate.

Michael was also my good friend, my classmate, and my ex-boyfriend.

Michael and I had a short-lived high school romance that resulted in an outsized amount of drama, as teenaged hormones are wont to engage. There were tearful recriminations, flirtatious MySpace messages, snubs by his ex-girlfriend, whispers in the hallways. At my eighteenth birthday party, he recited a poem he had written for me into a microphone in front of 100 guests and then informed me he had asked someone else to prom one hour later. They were confusing times.

By college, we had come to a simple understanding: be friends and don’t try to be anything else. We were never on the same page emotionally unless we held to this basic unspoken rule. The Trobriand Islanders of Papua New Guinea have a word: mokita. Essentially, mokita is a shared understanding between two or more people that cannot be uttered aloud. When your alcoholic uncle asks for a third glass of wine at dinner and you glance at your mother? Mokita. When a bloviating manager launches into his weekly spiel about sales numbers but you know he was a nepotism hire, so you roll your eyes at a coworker? Mokita.

When Michael stops walking suddenly and I run into his back so he turns to grab my arm when I stumble, but we both look down at his hands on my skin and then look at each other for a long moment before looking away? Mokita.

It caused our friends an endless amount of amusement and frustration.

“Michael looks good, huh? You checking him out again?”

“So remind me why the two of you keep pretending you don’t have the hots for each other?”

“You sure spend a ton of time together for two people who are ‘just friends’.”

“Jesus christ, please start dating again. This is getting out of hand.”

“Stop making mopey eyes at her and just ask her out.”

We would laugh and change the subject every time. I knew and he knew that there was something irreversible at stake.

So I dated another man named Nathan and he dated another woman named Katy. We talked about our dates as if we weren’t knotted up with jealousy inside, dancing around consideration for each other and simultaneously egging each other on. By that summer, all of our friends wanted to punch us in the face.

One weekend in late May, I was on a babysitting job when I called Nathan and said, “I don’t think this is working out for me. You’re a really wonderful person, but I’d like to just be friends.”

I was standing under a large bay window, suffused with hot Florida sunlight, and I felt lighter. I had to stop kidding myself. I wanted Michael but if he didn’t want me, that was ok. I was resigned to smoldering in silence.

I immediately went to his apartment when my job was over. But Michael wasn’t home. I’m not sure what I would have said or done had he been there. There was no plan.

Instead, Josh opened the door.

“Hey, I was going to play Halo, you in?”

“Oh. Sure, if we’re going to co-op a level.”

“Yeees, we can co-op, because it’s no fun killing you thirty times in a row.”

I slapped him on the arm, threw myself on their disgusting couch, and picked up the controller. We played a silent five minutes when I casually told him I’d stopped seeing Nathan.

“Really? Why? I thought you really liked him.”

“I thought I did. He was very sweet and handsome. A little too into Josh Brody though. And he did this weird thing where he held my hand during a movie, but then immediately dropped it when we were walking out of the theater.”

“Candace, you have bad taste in men.”

“I don’t think that’s fair. You’ve only known three guys I’ve liked.”

“Nathan: weird. Nick: not into you. Michael: I don’t even know where to start.”

“The heart wants what it wants, dude.”

“Hmmm.”

Suddenly, he stood up and turned off the game.

“Let’s go get food. You hungry?”

“Sure. Where do you want to go? I’m basically broke right now so nowhere pricey.”

“Don’t worry about it. My treat. Seriously, don’t argue. Let’s just go eat.”

That’s how I ended up at Olive Garden with Josh on a Friday night. The options for fine dining in a Central Florida college town are extremely limited. Olive Garden and the Romano’s Macaroni Grill off Alafaya Trail are the only two options. With the Olive Garden, you get an excellent view of the local Target.

We had a nice time, chatting in a way I wasn’t used to with him. We spent plenty of time together, but rarely alone and with no other source of entertainment than each other.

We talked about school (“I never see you taking notes but you always pass the tests, how, tell me how”), our families (“they didn’t want to gain weight but they wanted chocolate cake so they bought one, put each bite into their mouths, and then spit it out in the trash”), our failed relationships (“she and I almost had sex one night, but ultimately decided not to, then prayed about it”), how we had been changed the last year (“I thought I knew what I wanted, and I’m figuring out I don’t know anything at all”), and Italian cuisine (“they don’t really consult chefs in Italy, do they”).

At the end of the night, we were sitting on the hood of his Lexus hatchback. The shopping center across from us was notable for having the college life essentials: an 18+ night club, a liquor store, a pizza shop selling extra large slices, a mediocre sushi restaurant, a hookah bar, and a space that seemed to changed every three months but was, at the time, a Wingzone.

We sat facing the shopping center, half-lit by the street lamps and savoring the unseasonable summer breeze that kept the humidity from settling on our skin.

“So, what is it with you and Michael?”

I glanced at him, then back down to flexing my feet back and forth as they dangled off the car.

“What do you mean? We’re friends.”

“Sure, sure, we all know that. But how do you really feel? What do you really want?”

“I don’t know, man. He makes my skin tingle when I’m around him. He makes me laugh harder than anyone else. I love when he draws doodles in my notebooks during class. And it kills me that he’s dating that girl.”

“Oh, Katy? Yeah, I think they’re on a date right now.”

“See, now I feel like shit. I just don’t get what he sees in her.”

“Well, she’s not you.”

“Great, thank you. Love hearing that.”

“No, I mean. She isn’t like you. She probably doesn’t mean anything to him, and he’s just dating her to distract himself from you.”

“Why do you think that?”

“Because it’s so obvious he has a thing for you. I know he thinks you’re incredibly smart, and beautiful, and adventurous. He probably thinks you’re the best person in the world, and that you make people happy, that you make life more fun. He’s crazy about you.”

I was quiet for a second.

“I just know we can’t be together, it always seems like the wrong time. But I also think about him all the time.”

“What if there was someone else?”

As if a light switches on in my brain, I realize: Josh just took you on a date. Josh is the one who has said all these wonderful things about you. Josh is sitting here with you, alone in this still night, hoping you’ll look at him and see him. And maybe he just began feeling this way tonight or maybe he’s been feeling this way for months, but now he’s looking at you. He’s looking and he sees you, and he wants you to see him too.

There are deciding moments in our lives, as soft and thin as silk. In the instant I looked at him, shifted my gaze and saw his eyes behind the streetlight glare, I knew what it would be like to step forward with him.

We’d kiss. We’d hold hands. Eventually, we’d destroy our sweet, misaligned Christian values to have sex. He’d move into a condo his parents bought, and I’d move in soon after. We’d fight, because he’s stubborn and I’m a know-it-all and he’s spoiled and I’m not used to being cared for so I lash out. It would be fun, easy, and probably end before we left college.

But what about Michael? Even in this fantasy, I knew I’d always look over my shoulder and wonder where he was and what he was doing.

Four years later, in reality, this is exactly what I will do.

I will sit in my living room and look over my shoulder, wondering where Michael is. It will feel like he is in every corner of my apartment, unattainable as a ghost. I will lose 45 pounds that winter and tell my friend when she comes to check on me that, “I can see the places where my face has permanently changed from crying so much.” I will spend countless hours curled in a ball on my bed and replay every moment of our relationship, every burst of joy and every icy silence. He will (and I mean this as a truth) ruin me for the next decade as I jump from one man to another trying to take back control of my feelings. I will keep surrendering to them. I will do my best to stop. I will fail.

Right now, though, Josh is waiting for my response. I turn my head away, take a slow, deep breath. I look up at the dark sky, register how few stars I can see, and shape my hopes into something tangible.

“There’s no one else.”

We talk a bit more, and he drives me back to his apartment. We both know we’ll never talk about this night or what might have happened. Mokita.

When we walk in, all of his roommates are home on the couch watching TV.

Wally asks, “Where were you?”

“We just went to get some food when none of you were around.”

Michael looks up at me but doesn’t say anything.

I sit down between Sean and Wally. Josh goes to sit by Michael on the adjacent couch. While they fight over what we should watch next and the relative merit of Olive Garden breadsticks, I glance at Michael and see that he’s looking at me. He smiles. I’m already smiling back.