11/16, 12:00pm—Burnet Road, Austin TX

I decided to let it end without fanfare. In years past, I’d been determined to make the most of the final days of the Pasta Pass—to ensure that the last few days, I went every single day, even when I didn’t really want pasta, just because this would soon be over and the option would no longer exist. This year, I knew that would be more difficult. I had a work assignment that was going to send me to Houston on Saturday, and then on Sunday the Bears were playing Sunday Night Football, and I didn’t want to watch that from an Olive Garden bar with the sound off, surrounded by other desperate Pasta Pass holders, all seeking one last fix. Instead, I decided to go to lunch on Friday afternoon with my friend Emily and her toddler, Benji. When you’re there, after all, you’re family.

I rode my bike, because it was about 76 degrees and sunny on Friday afternoon, and getting in your car when the sun is shining and you’ve the time to ride a bike is like spitting directly in the face of whatever god there may be. Which is normally a cool, heavy metal thing to do, but also, I was in the mood for some exercise. I hustled my way up the 4.6 miles to the Olive Garden, locked my bike up as a throng of business-casual diners awaited a table, and made my way inside. I told the hostess I was there to meet a friend, and she asked, “Are you Dan?” She escorted me to a table, where Emily and Benji sat.

We chatted a bit about, I don’t know, it was three days ago—it doesn’t really matter, because Emily is so easy to talk to that every conversation feels kind of like a part of the same ongoing one that we’ve had running over the past two or three years, however long it is that we’ve known each other. The server came over, and she was nervous—she was brand new, and wanted to do a good job. Both Emily and I would sooner saw off a toe than let an earnest, friendly human being who approached us in good faith feel bad about the encounter, so she was in good hands as she took our orders.

Hospitaliano is a two-way street.

We split a salad and breadsticks, Emily ordered something I hadn’t seen before with a bunch of slices of zucchini, I think, and I played the hits and got five cheese marinara and cavatappi with crispy chicken fritta. One last time.

I made faces at Benji, who is very interested in faces, and served the salad. Emily tore up little bits of bread for him to eat, which he was surprisingly uninterested in—salty, buttery bread is passé among the current crop of almost-two-year-olds, I’ve learned. Instead, he was fascinated by the salad tongs, which he clicked a few times and then successfully attempted to fit his entire mouth around. Good kid.

It was a nice afternoon, in other words. I haven’t known Emily very long, but one of the things I’m shamelessly proud of as I’ve gotten older is honing a talent for cultivating close friendships with new people, the kind that you might otherwise only make when you’re all 20 years old and scared of the world and lost and looking to build a team to get you through a strange time and place. I’ve been fortunate to recognize that the world is still strange, the times are stranger, and everything is terrifying and it’s best not to go it alone. Somehow, the close friends I’ve made since turning 30 fit comfortably into my life alongside the close friends I’ve had since I was younger, and life feels richer for it.

My friendship with Emily would have been special at any point in my life, though. I was joking about “when you’re here, you’re family,” but it is a familial bond. She likes to talk about it in terms of, like, past lives and stuff, and I have a car battery where most people have a spiritual center, so I don’t think about it that way. But it does feel like family.

When you’re younger and building friendships, those relationships are really about building a family to replace the one that you’ve moved away from as you find your way into the world on your own. It doesn’t fully work—all of the people in the makeshift family you create are 20 years old and confused and lost, too, which has obvious flaws—but I think that’s the drive, to form a group that feels safe and nurturing the way that we believe families should be, whether the one you’ve left behind actually was those things or not.

When you’re older, I think you’re more likely to seek friendships with some professional impulse behind it—it’s less building a team to get through a confusing life and more building a team that might take you on to other opportunities, or something. I could be full of shit, but it rings true, whatever “professional” means to you—sure, maybe it’s a lawyer networking with colleagues, but maybe it’s a community theater actor looking for people to work with on the next show. But even though Emily and I were in the same line of work when we met, our friendship hasn’t really been about that—it’s more about watching Benji chase Dio around her living room while I hang out and watch The Muppet Movie with her and her husband, or realizing we lived across the street from each other fifteen years ago, or otherwise just being a person with someone you don’t feel like you have to impress. I haven’t thought about the movie Almost Famous in a long time, but as I’m trying to write about this now, the line “The only true currency in this bankrupt world is what you share with someone else when you’re uncool” comes to mind.

And so we went to the Olive Garden, which is decidedly uncool. I ate my pasta, which was satisfying and delicious, exactly the way it had been for at least one portion of the previous fifteen visits. Benji, who was apparently battling a virus, got cranky, and then discovered the Ziosk and watched cartoons on it. The server came back and was flustered about how long she was taking, ensuring herself all of the warmth and kindness that our table could muster as we reassured her that, no, she was serving the spirit of hospitaliano with great dignity. I asked Emily if she would be willing to let Dio stay with her for the night when I went to Houston, and she agreed; I gave her the second portion of cavatappi the server brought out in a to-go box; Benji started to fade, and we settled up with the server and left.

I got on my bike and closed the door on another year of Never-Ending Pasta, full and content as I pedaled on to my next stop.