That Weekend Never Even Happened
By Beth Puget
We never magically met one day and we surely weren’t left in awe of one another. So much that we continued about our lives. Dating, fucking, working, sleeping, & eating two thousand miles away, but never forgetting the two conversations we had.
We joked on Facebook for months with lots of silly emoticons that hinted at me visiting Seattle. Yeah right, like I would ever travel that far for a man.
So I never did. I didn’t save every penny I could find to purchase a plane ticket. I didn’t beg my parents and workplace to help subsidize my trip. Though I did plan a trip to a great city that was home to my favorite business. That did happen.
There was never a long, anxious first-time-flying flight across the country where visions of you and I played out in my mind. Parks and Recreation wasn’t the in-flight entertainment. Well, actually, it was. I didn’t make friends with a cute Asian girl who told me about her long-distance boyfriend. I didn’t think, “Hey, that’s going to be me.”
There was an old brewery an hour outside of Seattle that only a handful of people have explored. Photographers and bums to name a few. We most certainly didn’t go there. You didn’t drag me along with your friends for hours while you shot awesome photos while flirting with me. You didn’t catch me when I let go of an old, rusty pipe that hung over our heads. You didn’t kiss me on the rooftop where I could see the mountains and what seemed like the entire state of Washington. None of this ever happened. There was a crazy owl though, he was angry.
Then, we most certainly did not have awkward shower sex when we got back from our day of exploring old buildings. We didn’t fit perfectly into your shower. We didn’t watch the water run off each other. I didn’t watch you wash your hair and you never told me to use your loofah. None of these things happened. We didn’t laugh at how shower sex is only successful in the movies, about how nobody really does it because it’s fucking hard and everything is really wet.
I didn’t fall sleep naked in your bed while you listened to music and went through that day’s collection of photography. I didn’t doze off to some vague song that I actually liked. I didn’t wake up and feel completely at home. We didn’t spend that night eating with your friends and laughing. You didn’t lead me around Seattle with your right arm while acting like you cared. You didn’t make inappropriate sexual innuendos that I actually laughed at over sushi.
We didn’t eat brunch at a tiny, greasy, chaotic diner that everyone is supposed to go to at least once during their trip to the Pacific Northwest. This was not another one of your favorite places you wanted to show me. You didn’t introduce me to your closest friends and favorite places. It just didn’t happen. We didn’t have that brunch where Carol King played over the speakers. I didn’t sing along to her music, the music I grew up to. You didn’t sing to Elton John, either. I didn’t draw a portrait of your face to hang on the diner wall, which was filled with the artwork of eaters who had dined before. There were lots of memes, of course. Now, there is a horrible drawing of your damn face. That one thing is true. Don’t say I drew it, though.
We didn’t spend four days together, just feeling comfortable. Apparently, you were feeling pangs of incompatibility all along. I wasn’t feeling these pangs. I wasn’t planning my next trip out to Washington. I wasn’t thinking about my flight back, where I’d leave and we’d both cry. I never thought those things. I didn’t think about your last name sitting beside my first name. Nope, never.
This trip never happened. You didn’t break my heart and suck the life out of me during the early hours of the morning. We weren’t lying in bed in the dark when you told me there would be nothing else between us. You weren’t just being honest. You were however, playing a game. I didn’t lay there alone while you slept, holding in every emotion in the universe. I didn’t stare at your ceiling for three hours until it was time to get up.
You didn’t drive me to the airport in silence. You didn’t tell me random stories about attending boarding school. I wasn’t listening. My heart was still in in your apartment. Now it’s kicked under your bed with the rest of the hearts and socks you no longer need.
I didn’t watch the city lights fade into the distance from the passenger-side window as all hope of us ever becoming something greater sank into the Pacific. I didn’t cry a thousand times on the inside while you pulled into the airport drop off-area. You offered to hang out when you came to my town in a few weeks. I didn’t look you in the eyes. I couldn’t. We did not kiss but we did part ways like friends who were just friends. I didn’t roll off into the Seattle-Tacoma Airport at 6:00 a.m. on a Wednesday morning.
I didn’t walk into the building feeling like an empty zombie of a woman. I didn’t reflect on the past six months of crushing, courting, and completing what now seems like an assignment. I didn’t order a screwdriver at 7:00 a.m. with no shame. I may have cried in the women’s bathroom. That may have happened. You didn’t text me twenty minutes later asking how the airport was. I didn’t reply as if you hadn’t just killed every good feeling I had ever known.
I didn’t feel my heart combust when the plane took off. My heart was still under your bed. The wheels didn’t leave the tarmac and I didn’t cry in front of strangers. I didn’t suck in air like it was the last gasp of my life. I didn’t stare out into the dark Seattle morning and wonder where you were. I didn’t question your feelings for me. There were none.
There wasn’t another crying woman in the layover airport just like me. I didn’t want to interrupt her sadness because she probably needed to cry, too. I didn’t text you a semi-soul bearing message in Dallas. You didn’t reply with a cold yet friendly response.
I didn’t cry in the shower when I finally arrived at my sister’s house in the Midwest. That didn’t happen. I didn’t step into her house and down two glasses of Cabernet Sauvignon in ten minutes.
I didn’t drive five hours back home and cry along the way. I wasn’t sad for a few hours. I didn’t go out and laugh with friends. I didn’t’ drive home from said laughter-parties crying. I didn’t cry so loudly in my bed that the sounds of my own pathetic, pain scared me.
It wasn’t me and I never took a trip to Seattle. It never happened and neither did you. In fact, I don’t even know who I’m writing about.