I can’t believe how many years of my life I wasted rejecting soda.

I came of age in the early aughts, and we always had soda in the fridge. When my great uncle died, my dad put his inherited white refrigerator in our garage, and we had a brief stint as a two refrigerator household (Alexa, play “Puttin’ on the Ritz”). That second fridge was obviously full of backup soda. It was an inherent, assumed staple: we were a soda family.

And then, sometime between the premieres of Super Size Me and the Dr. Oz daytime television show, we ceased to be a soda family. We went from buying dozens of boxes of dozens of cans to none, seemingly overnight. Anti-soft drink rhetoric transcended, and I drank it up — in place of all the soda I was no longer consuming. What was once a pillar of my day (my after-school root beer or Diet Coke) disappeared, and I hardly drank soda at all for some 15 years. I didn’t have it at home, I never ordered it at restaurants, I never bought it. In college, wielding a loaded, early-in-the-semester meal plan, I would very occasionally and very shamefully invest in a bottle of A&W when I felt sad or lonely, seeking some nostalgic comfort via this heinous indulgence. I felt bad about it every time.

Eventually, after years of depriving myself of something I love (okay, dramatic), I decided to stop feeling bad about it. Once my therapist diagnosed me with what she so affectionately referred to as a “raging eating disorder,” I started trying to just eat what I wanted, when I wanted it (have you read that book Intuitive Eating? It’s great. I read most of it. Maybe half... I definitely bought it.). Soda was one of the first things that I set out to conquer, after spending my formative years indoctrinated by diet culture to believe that consuming such a beverage was an act morally on par with homicide. But I didn’t really feel like I properly “honored a craving” (See? I did at least read the back of Intuitive Eating... That counts!), until I was in a Mexican restaurant in Queens last year. Hungover as all get out, I sat down for my first food of the day in the middle of the afternoon with my ex-boyfriend, and ordered a Diet Coke (yes, Pepsi is totally fine). Nothing has ever tasted as good as my first sip from that glass — complete with a lemon wedge and a plastic straw! Chic!

It was late last Fall. We had been broken up for six months, but had recently reconciled over a coffee and a walk around Fort Tryon Park. We were back to talking every day and sleeping at each other’s apartments a night or two a week. There was an ease of tension, and a little more openness from both of us — very diametric to the emotional stalemate that marked the end of our relationship. Many of my friends were less than enthused by this choice (this is an exceptionally polite way to put it) — they worried that he had hurt me once and would do it again, which is a nice thing for them to worry about. But I thought their protective wariness, while kind and well-intentioned, was misguided. I just felt like they didn’t really get it. And how could they? They had never heard him try to do an impression of someone, anyone, and then, every time, accidentally slip into doing Daniel Craig in Knives Out. Who wouldn’t be charmed by that?! They had no idea what I was up against here!

Terrible yet impossibly endearing impressions aside, I did have my own reservations about opening that door back up — even though I had pretty much always wanted someone who broke up with me to tell me they regretted it. This is, of course, every petty person’s dream. But all the other (two) men who had dumped me were, much to my chagrin, right to do so. The first, my high school boyfriend, I cheated on (not great! I do regret it, but I was seventeen, all I did was kiss someone else, and to be frank I didn’t really like him that much. Plus, I hear he’s really into guns now… My actions were bad but my instincts were excellent). Then, several years later, after college, I found myself in huge, alcohol-fueled fights every single Friday night with the second man to have the honor of dumping me (babe, it’s time for our weekly Scream At Each Other On The Sidewalk appointment! Hurry up and knock a few more back! We’re going to be late!). All this to say, neither situation was really going great when someone put a stop to it. But I was never thrilled to reach those conclusions, despite how badly they were needed. I was dramatically-throw-yourself-on-the-couch-level sad to hit the end of each road, certainly, but rest assured that in both cases I had no desire to get back together. What I really wanted was for them to come back around and tell me they made a mistake so that I could tell them, no actually, I don’t want you back — so there. That’ll show them!

Needless to say, neither of them ever wanted me back. Fair enough!

But Scott came back around and spent a damp October afternoon with me. We walked around the park and sat on benches with dramatic views of the Hudson River and New Jersey, talking and laughing, catching up for the first time since we’d unceremoniously broken up five months prior. He rattled off every detail of the new place he was working, filling most silences with more information about the soup entremet and other fine dining and restaurant terms I had become familiar with in the time we dated. Eventually, he came up to my apartment so we could grab a cigarette (which I, swear to God, had not intended to be any kind of “move”). Then he plopped himself on my couch and told me he’d been thinking about me lately.

Now, I hadn’t so much as shaved my legs in anticipation of this hang — I even had my period as a final sign from God that we should remember to tread lightly — but I couldn’t stop my ears from perking up. In the months since I had last seen him, I diligently squashed every lonely feeling that arose and numbed myself with endless episodes of Real Housewives. I actively tried not to think about him, and indulged in any distraction I could find — good and bad (Housewives could be on either end of that spectrum, depending who you ask). I told myself that I didn’t want him back, I didn’t want to get back together — that I don’t do that. He hadn’t even broken up with me to my face, which made me feel disposable, disrespected, and hurt. And yet somehow (the astonishing result of my own actions — I olive-branched my way into this situation, for God’s sake), the man who had dumped me over the phone was again sitting on my couch. My couch! Where I watched all that Real Housewives! A SACRED SPACE!

But I was soft. Despite my best efforts (and the many valiant efforts of my friends, God bless them), I could never get myself to feel vindictive toward him. Make no mistake, I was completely heartbroken when our relationship had ended in the Spring. Blindsided, even. While I had certainly felt him resisting a bit in the week or two leading up to it — a friend even encouraged me at the time to break up with him before he did me, like ya do — I chalked the behavior up to fear, and didn’t waste my energy on worrying. And, for my part, I didn't want to break up with him. I loved him. I had faith in us. I always did. I invited him to come with me to a wedding that was four months away because I hadn’t even considered the possibility that we wouldn’t be together then (the twist? The wedding itself didn’t even end up happening... It’s tough out there, folks!). I laughed when he told me that he watches Napoleon Dynamite with his family every holiday season, not because I thought it was a bad choice (Napoleon Dynamite is a perfect movie), but because it so delighted me to learn this detail about his life, and made me acutely aware of how excited I was to know everything about him. When his mom offered to fly us to France to visit his family, I didn’t feel any urgency to take her up on it because I was sure there would be many opportunities in the future (DuoLingo still reminds me every day to practice my French, but it turns out it’s actually impossible learn a language from scratch on DuoLingo. Like, who do I think I am?). I thought I would be with him for a long time, and instead I found myself suddenly single, talking about him over drinks with anyone who would half-listen and accidentally starting to cry into my rosé. But, salty and watered-down glasses of wine aside, I didn’t feel bitter.  I wasn’t screaming along to the more acrimonious Taylor Swift songs in the car. I wasn’t making plans to ruin his life (how do people have time for revenge plans? Don’t you guys have jobs?). I never felt that same desire to set the dominoes back up so I could be the one to knock them over, which I had certainly felt with the Ghosts Of My Boyfriends Past. It felt like we never really got to finish setting them up in the first place (even though it had so much potential to be a really beautiful display of dominoes — the kind people would react to on TikTok). Even in the wake of a disappointing bummer of a breakup, I’d just really, really missed him. So, of course, hearing that he had been thinking about me piqued my interest, but I was very chill about it and didn’t let him know that meant anything to me (just kidding — we had sex, like, ten minutes later. Whoops!).

So, then, fast forward a month or two, and here we are in Woodside, together but not, at this Mexican restaurant near his place where I ordered a soda and didn’t feel bad about it.

From my adolescence into young adulthood, I would have never ordered a soda in front of someone. Worse, I would clock anyone who ordered one in front of me — never outwardly judgmental, and certainly never saying anything, but noticing and criticizing it internally (like I’m some kind of Health God — really I was just craving some sweet, sweet Barq’s!). It was very easy to figuratively point fingers and willfully ignore the three pointing back at me that begged to indulge the vending machine, just this once. But my choice to order a Diet Coke on this day had little to do with the comfort I felt with my not-boyfriend as we reinvigorated our profound almost-love story (as much as I wish I could say that — I mean, come on! The DRAMA). I just wanted some of that gorgeous, carbonated aspartame, so I ordered it at the restaurant we went to — how goddamn inspiring, can you even imagine?! Somebody press play on that song from Rocky!

Throughout that tragic era when I actively refused and avoided soft drinks of all kinds, I still wanted them. And of course I did. I mean, have you had soda? It rules. But I spent all of that time thinking that soda was Bad. I didn’t come here to argue about the nutritional merits of soda, but drinking it does not result in eternal damnation (last I checked anyway — if the Bible one day prints a new edition that says, “Thou shalt avoid run-ins with the Mug Root Beer bulldog,” I promise I will edit this accordingly). I — and SOCIETY — gave it morality, which is something it doesn’t need. I walked around thinking soda is Bad, and I am Bad if I drink it. But once I dropped that moral assignment, I was able to consume soda in a way that was just neutral, more similar to my feelings about long subway rides or the more recent, decidedly less-good seasons of The Great British Bake-Off (What? You know I’m right).

I drank a Diet Pepsi at the Mexican restaurant on his corner, without shame, and no one died and/or went to Hell. Groundbreaking.

Over the course of the following year, things were a tad volatile with Scott and me (this is an exceptionally polite way to put it). While we talked about some things that we had neglected to discuss in our first-round relationship and even went so far as to parse through The Breakup like we were macheteing our way through the jungle (where’s our award for that, huh?), when it came to figuring out how to proceed in this new dynamic, we did what we do best: avoid. This predicament could seemingly have been solved by plucking the petals off a flower (are we together, are we not…), but unfortunately no daisies were harmed in the not-making of this not-relationship — no thanks to me. Any elation I experienced being close to him again, any warmth I felt each time I watched him smile from his shoulders to the top of his head, was shrouded by my embarrassment at the prospect of really getting back together with an ex. I was ashamed of it, and not because of anything he did or any advice I received. I just thought it was Bad — the kind of subconscious stance that’s rooted in formative childhood experiences and brain-wormy media (I love The Real Housewives, but man, those bitches HATE it when people get back together!); something I always judged others for doing. I desperately didn’t want to be a Get Back Together Girl, and I did everything I could to distance myself from the very obvious reality that I was on the razor’s edge of being one. I would lie if my parents asked what I was up to when I was with him (meanwhile, if his mom or dad called when he was with me, he’d readily say, “I’m with Emma,” and then I’d listen to him remind them who the hell that is). I tweeted about going on a crappy Hinge date and conveniently left out that I thought about him the whole time (all 45 minutes). Once, we were out with his coworkers and the new guy asked if we were a couple. Scott warmly and playfully glanced at me, but as he did, I answered “no” with such firm, dismissive swiftness that even in the moment, he raised his eyebrows and remarked, “Wow, you said that really fast.” And then we went home together, and acted very much like we were, in fact, a couple. I wanted to be a couple (DUH). But I just couldn’t get that out of my dumb mouth — it was too full of the together-or-not flower I had recklessly decided to just eat, in hopes of dodging any answers that might end it or, perhaps worse, force me to reckon with my own anti-reconciliation manifesto. Sometimes no answer just makes it all easier to swallow.

All the while — through petty fighting, ghosting and un-ghosting, seeing other people, airing things out online, confused expectations — I took great comfort in pointing at him and saying, “You are bad at communicating, you are bad at being vulnerable.” I heartily subscribed to the holier-than-thou narrative that the avoidant nature I could so clearly see in him was the only point of contention, even though I, too, did not bring up any “what are we, what is this, can we fall in love again” conversations. He was not a perfect angel, certainly, but I was there with him, haplessly trying to build a ship around ourselves when we were already out to sea. I would throw critical parts overboard and blame him when those critical parts were missing. I hid under the cover of my own flair for chatter, as if never shutting up counts as fearless openness, turning a blind eye to the fact that anyone who gets too close to me or pokes the wrong nerve tends to become the victim of mysterious arson. Lost in a storm of quietly shared fears and reservations, we both resigned to say nothing and ride the in-between, so I just did my best to go with the flow. But I had never had a reason to consider, let alone challenge, my innate anti-Get Back Together platform, so trying to poker face my way through a Shakespearean internal battle of desire and resistance proved arduous, to say the least. I was white-knuckle clinging to this arbitrary, intrinsic rule.  Even though I had managed to let go of my years-held judgments against other people who found their way back to old relationships (maybe take a page out of my book, judgy Housewives!), in my own life, the not-even-once policy had me in a stranglehold — maybe those middle school D.A.R.E. assemblies were effective after all, and I just forgot to listen to what exactly it was they were talking about.

But, stranglehold or not, Scott came back into my life to tell me he missed me, as I had always wished my exes would. He bravely yet unwittingly lobbed me an opportunity to play the vengeful Jenga game of my dreams. To knock that shit over myself! And I didn’t want to. It never even crossed my mind, even if it felt impossible to tell him I had missed him too. The best I could do was stick around when it got murky and confusing and hard, despite everyone else in my life being sure I had gone off the deep end (this is an exceptionally polite way to put it). Whether or not my friends were ready to have me committed, I still hadn’t gotten what I wanted — or at least said what I wanted. It felt like it was a Bad thing to say, a Bad thing to want. But I wanted him and I wanted to be with him, which is not morally bad or good. It just is.

We sat in many restaurants, Mexican and otherwise, and drank many drinks, soft and otherwise, over our year of tumult. On again, off again, maybe again, never again, on again; October to October.

This Fall is warmer than last, I think. Taking another Uber would have tipped the amount of money I spent on cars in the last two days into the hundreds (plural), so the train had to suffice. Upon reentering Manhattan this morning, I find that the A Train isn’t running above 168th Street this weekend. I get off there and walk over to the 1 to ride up to Dyckman. I’m a little hungover. I’m exhausted. And I want a soda.

I stayed with him last night, even though we’re sort of in the middle of a fight right now (full transparency, the fight was mostly my fault. 60/40… Maybe 70/30… Please stop looking at me). Our raging waters had been calmer lately — the worthwhile result of finally noticing and releasing myself from the grip of my personal vendetta against reconciliation. I allowed myself to want him and to feel close to him, and it was like opening a window for fresh air in a room that’s been closed up for too long. We were having a lot of fun. It felt easy and comfortable and right for the first time in some time. But I rocked the boat, because he is not the only one entitled to panic-stricken self-sabotage (isn’t it so cute how much we have in common?). We had been operating on sparse text conversations since then, but last night I was hanging out with a mutual friend of ours and asked him if he wanted to come join us when he got out of work. The three of us sat at a park chessboard in Brooklyn with tall boys from the bodega for two hours, just chatting. Our friend said he liked third-wheeling with us, and no one leapt at the opportunity to correct him on the nature of our relationship (not even me!). Scott and I hopped in a car back to his apartment around four in the morning. We went right to sleep. 

In the morning, I absentmindedly played with his hair while he slept, having woken up hours before him, as ever. He made me a cup of coffee when he got up. He took a shower and got ready for work while I watched TV on his couch. He asked me if we had already watched this episode of Girls. He waited for me while I got dressed, and we left his apartment — him for work, me for home.

He dashed away from me on the street for the subway, trying to catch the train that was arriving as we neared the stairs. I didn’t run because I knew he’d never make it. As it pulled away, he walked to the other end of the platform, me trailing him. He buried his head in his phone — a classic, expected move, as predictable as any time he chooses to play Carly Rae Jepsen or guesses someone’s age completely wrong. I sauntered up to him and asked if he was still mad at me (sort of unnecessary to ask — I mean, he did literally run away from me a second ago). “A little.” Fine. I asked if he wanted to talk about it. “Not really.” Okay. Is there anything I can do? “You could give me a little space.” I was, physically, very much up in his grill at this moment, so, you know, fair enough. I backed up and stood a few feet away. I put my AirPods in and said nothing. We got into the same train car and stood next to each other but didn’t speak. He gave me a hug on his way out at his stop.

The biggest trouble with this wave that we were riding was that lack of security. Every issue in the purgatory between together and not felt like the end-all be-all, because there was nothing legitimate to work toward by working through it. We weren’t in a relationship, and thus had no light at the end of the tunnel. There’s no “we fought and got through it and now we’re more in love than ever before.” We were fighting only to return to that purgatory, like the contestants on The Great British Bake-Off (they care so much about that tent, and they’re not even competing for a life-changing amount of money like American game show contestants! I wish I cared about anything as much as those sweet British bakers care about working insanely hard and enduring stress and criticism for ten weeks to win a fucking plate! Are you kidding me?! What I wouldn’t give!).

But, weirdly, I felt a calmness that I hadn’t experienced with him in a long time. We were in the post-apology, pre-resolution middle of a fight. But he still came out to hang, we still had a nice night in the park with our friend, we still slept in the same bed. We still talked, we still touched. The boat rocked in the face of conflict, sure, but it didn’t sink, and that made me feel hopeful. Like there was actually something on the horizon to make a rocky time worth it. Maybe that’s naive.

The 1 Train is farther from my apartment than the A line, but it does have one benefit: it will allow me, on my way home, to swing by Taco Bell, where they have fountain root beer (I prefer brown sodas — please do not accuse me of Baja Blasphemy). Better yet, Nacho Fries are back, so I’ll also get some Nacho Fries to go with my large fountain soda. The soda I will get because I want it. I’m not doing anyone any favors by pretending that’s not true.