Thanks for Reading, —a short story

Today we are going to have story time on the grim design company blog! I don’t know if many people know this about me now, but I really like to write. I majored in journalism and did several internships during college, but ultimately chose a different path in coaching college tennis. I haven’t written much in the past few years, but this spring and summer I started again. Something about being engaged and getting married sparked me to explore different relationships I’ve had in the past. It was cathartic to dig up some of those old memories and put them on paper—even the hard ones.  

“Thanks for Reading,” is the first story I’ve finished so far. It’s gotten good feedback from the few that have read it, so I thought I would put it out there! In the style of Kitty Wells, this is a response story. It is also a true story—from my perspective. Each chapter has a song to help set the tone and add to the reading experience. Enjoy!

Play Sound Track

Thanks for Reading,

Amanda

“Don’t feel like you have to respond, I said what I needed 

and have no need to say anything else, goodbye.” —Benjamin Carpe

To Carpe, It’s been a while. 

Table of Contents

THE BEGINNING

THE KITE

THE KISS

AMANDA

CARPE
SARA

THE POSTAL SERVICE

WASHINGTON D.C.

SIX MONTHS

NEW YORK CITY 

TWO YEARS

A COUPLE OF DECOUPLINGS

ROCHESTER

CLOSING REMARKS

THE END

APPENDIX

SOUNDTRACK*

RANDOM FACTS

______

*Each chapter opens with a song lyric. Play Sound Track. 

THE BEGINNING: 
“And we’ll collect the moments one by one i guess that’s how the future’s done.”

I saw him differently when he came back from New York. He attended our Winter Ball with a friend who needed a date. He was better now, looked better, more confident. Suddenly he was this interesting possibility: Benjamin Carpe.  

I’d known him for a while, since I was in seventh grade. We were in advanced tennis drills together. He was older, a sophomore—not like wow a sophomore, he’s so cute and cool—it’s just a fact, he was a sophomore. A goofy one, too chunky with long weird hair who always tried to borrow my extra hair ties. We were twice-a-week friends. Every Tuesday and Thursday we would hang out at tennis and then go our separate ways. 

At the Winter Ball he asked me to dance.* He was 19 and I was almost 16, a sophomore, a goofy one, too tall and too skinny. He didn’t seem to see me that way. He was so interested in catching up and told me all abou New York and his plans. We hung out again before he went back to school. 

He came back a few times while I was in high school. He transferred to a college in Oklahoma and visits home were easier for him. Every time he made time to see me. I told him once, that he would be a perfect guy to marry someday. He laughed, and then tried to make me touch his hair because he was still that goofy, weird guy. 

Playing tennis was our thing. Every time he came back we had to play a match.* One visit, it was windy and unusually cold for Oklahoma in early fall. We stopped playing and walked over to Roosa Elementary. I was a senior now, 17, and this “someday” guy was feeling more and more like a real possibility with each visit.

*He gave me his hoodie to stay warm. A navy one, at least two sizes too big for me, but it smelled like him and it felt good. We sat on the swings. Swaying into each other and being silly. I’d been kissed before. Not much, but at least I felt somewhat prepared. When he looked at me I was ready. 

——————————————————————

*A slow dance to “All or Nothing.” 

*For anyone who likes to keep score, I hold the most career wins even though he beat me the last couple times.

*In this moment, imagine a movie scene where everything is playing out in the exact, right romantic pace to the song, “First Day of My Life.”

THE KITE: 
“Why do you let me stay here? I’m just sitting on the shelf.”

“What is that?”

….

….

….

????

….

….

….

It took me a second to realize the actual situation I was in, and then another to disregard the perfect-romantic-moment which was only happening in my head. 

After reconciling this, I realized he had been looking past me, not at me...at a kite. 

He was looking at a crumpled kite in the corner of the playground. It was beat up, but not in terrible shape. Mickey Mouse was on it. We walked a block down to Quick-N-Easy* and grabbed 10 extra long slurpee straws to fix the back bracing. It worked and we spent the rest of the day flying mended Mickey through the sky. 

This wasn’t  the day we had our first kiss, but it was the day I decided that I could marry him...someday. 

Someday. Maybe after I graduated college. Maybe when I was 23. Then two years later we would have a baby. And then after two more, we’d have another. The perfect Oklahoma family starter plan. 

Someday that would be really nice. 

_____________________

*Quick-N-Sleazy as we immaturely called it in HS

THE KISS:
“I want to take you far from the cynics in this town, and kiss you on the mouth... Everything will change.”

Four years later we had our first kiss*. 

On October 13, his 25th birthday. The best birthday he’s ever had, he still says. I was 21, a junior at Northeastern State. I was living with my cousin, Brian. Carpe had settled in Tulsa after bouncing around a few years. 

He started working at a tennis club about 45 minutes away from me. He helped Brian get a job there too. They became friends, and then Carpe finally came to visit. We had somewhat kept in touch, but had seen each other only once since I graduated high school. 

 It didn’t matter. It was easy to fall back into a rhythm. Like time and space had made no effort to move forward since we last saw one another. We drank “Wet Pussies” a tequila rose drink that later became an inside joke for years because of the funny way I was ordering them at the bar, “wet pooosie.” It was the first time we had ever drank together, and alcohol gets a lot of the credit for the first kiss. 

Back home we talked, physically closer than we had ever been before. He touched me when he talked or laughed. On the back of my shoulder or on my forearm; the more innocently intimate areas of the body. The part of my lower back where he guided me forward into his kiss. His other hand on my neck with his fingers in my hair. 

It was amazing. Four years or more of anticipation and buildup on both sides. Finally culminating in that first kiss. The best first kiss. 

He stayed the night, and I fell asleep with his arms around me. It felt completely right. 

The next morning he was ready to be together.

I was not. 

I freaked out. 

______________________________

*FOUR YEARS! Crazy, right? 

AMANDA:
“She takes just like a woman, but she breaks just like a little girl.”

We didn’t date. I didn’t want to. It was too soon for me to date him. I still had too much college life I wanted to experience. I mean someday I could marry this guy so how could I date him now? Right now-- that just didn’t fit into my someday plan.

I’d never be able date anyone again. 

Brian broke the news. 

**************

CARPE: 
“Cold hard bitch.”

He was disappointed, and he was mad, and really hurt. 

It was Sunday, October 16 when he stopped talking to me. 

A day later he met the woman he would eventually marry. 

SARA:
“I just need somebody to love. Could it be anybody?”

Sara met Carpe on October 17. 

When she found out his birthday had just passed she baked him chocolate chip cookies. They went on their first date that week. Just days after our first kiss. 

Sara was average size, shortish, blondish, and that typical, Iowa-girl type of pretty. And she had a lot of things going for her. 

Timing was one. 

Also she was nice, single, done with school, and accessible. She picked up all the pieces I shattered. She arranged them neatly around herself. She was really in love with him. 

She was like clay and molded into the kind of girl he was interested in. She dyed her hair. She got interested in good music, started playing tennis, and became a Phillies fan. They went to shows, dressed up for Halloween, went shopping, and cooked together. If it had existed back then she totally would have tagged every picture with #relationshipgoals. 

Creeping on his myspace, I thought they looked like a cute couple. 

THE POSTAL SERVICE:
  “I’m thinking it’s a sign, that the freckles in our eyes, are mirror images and when we kiss they’re perfectly aligned... But everything looks perfect from far away.”

That April Carpe decided to move back to Philadelphia. He had enough of Sara and of Oklahoma*. Things just weren’t working out. He was done. 

He called me. He invited me to his going away party. Of course I went. We drove around Tulsa, played mini-golf, listened to records, went to the party, went back to his place and listened to more records. 

At 6:45 am during The Postal Service’s “Such Great Heights” he kissed me. It was just as good as the first, maybe better. I don’t remember as clearly the moments leading up to this kiss. I don’t know if he led me toward him with his hands or if it was me. But I remember the force of feelings that accompanied it. 

Six months of hard feelings. Guilt and doubt, wondering if I’d made a huge mistake, and blew our chance. Jealousy, seeing him fall in love (though short lived) with another girl. Watching her have all the moments that I could have had with him. All mixed with relief and comfort and want now that I was sitting on his bed. It was my first make-up kiss*.

It was thrilling. It was desperate. He was leaving again and I needed him to know how much he meant to me. I needed him not to forget. I felt the desperation from him too. I fell asleep clinging to him. 

I woke up wrapped tight in his arms and felt at ease. The calm after the storm of emotions. We were OK. Everything had fallen back in place. An unspoken agreement seemed cemented. Now was not the time, but someday. 

He kissed me on the forehead before he left later that morning. 

———————————————————-

*The broken heart/ego from me didn’t help. 

*Those two kisses are the best I’d had in my life. But, it’s just unfair to compare others to something like that.

WASHINGTON DC:
“Laugh until we think we’ll die, barefoot on a summer night, never could be sweeter than with you.”

In May I received a journalism internship. I went to Washington DC for training. Carpe drove down from Philly and met me. 

We lost time and ourselves immersed in Chinatown. Passing so many people and absorbing all the bright colors. We ate noodles with chopsticks while we watched the staff sing karaoke. I took a picture for a Japanese family in front of the metro before we hopped on, bound for the National Mall. 

We went to all the monuments. There at night, in stark contrast to Chinatown, there were no tourists. And it was quiet as if we were alone in a world of marble and stone. 

We laid on the benches in front of the Washington Monument and watched the birds fly under the lights. Each one illuminated creating the illusion of cafe lights swaying in the wind. We sat on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial and watched the ducks walk one by one to take night swims.  Everything was in slow motion or still, waiting to be noticed. It was magic just for us.

I’m not sure how long we were there. Long enough to see the first peeks of sunlight. 

SIX MONTHS: 
“To the outside the dead leaves they’re on the lawn. Before they died, had trees to hang their hope.” 

That fall, my senior year, Carpe got back together long,distance with Sara, and I started dating Eric. 

We still talked. Randomly, but sometimes hours on the phone. We would talk shit, talk about shit, just anything and everything, except our relationships. 

One call every time either of us made a statement the other would respond with “indeed,” each time with a different accent or inflection.

“Did you hear the news? This happened.”

“InDEED!” Excitedly as a fat man in a suit holding a scotch might say.

OR

“Indeed.” Gruffly, disapprovingly as a old southern statesman might say while slightly shaking his head*. 

On and on, for hours. Both of us topping the other and laughing back and forth. Even though we were both in relationships it seemed not much had changed between us. 

Then near my birthday in December, Carpe told me that he was going to propose to Sara. 

“Indeed.” (Solemn as someone who has resigned hope might say.)

__________________________________________

*I think almost all my voices were of old men.

NEW YORK CITY: 
“You say you’re still in love if it’s true what can be done, it’s hard to leave all these moments behind.” 

I graduated college. Carpe drove up to meet me in New York City while I was on a celebration trip with my Mimi. He went to dinner with us and we all walked around Time Square where we were staying. Later, after we dropped her at the hotel, we went out. 

We bar hopped a bit then settled in at an Irish bar where we drank White Russians and had Carbombs. I knew Carpe was a my good friend. He was constant. The only person that I ever had put any effort into staying in touch with. 

We talked about how we never worked out. And how it was different than we thought it would be. Not being together, being serious with other people. 

Eric called a lot. Sara called a lot. Probably 40-50 times between them. We didn’t answer. 

I loved Eric. I didn’t know he wasn’t the one for me yet, but I knew she wasn’t the one for Carpe. I was too afraid, even with the alcohol help, to tell him. But, I reasoned, there was no guarantee we would work. And we would both be giving up someone we were really happy with on a gamble. 

Still, a part of me wanted to tell him to not get married. Now could be someday—or at least someday could happen sooner. I graduated, he figured it out (at least job-wise). I was 23, the original plan layed in my head all those years ago was still attainable.

It would be hard. Other people would get hurt, but Sara hadn’t moved from Texas to Philadelphia and Eric and I hadn’t made plans to follow each other, yet. 

There was a window, albeit a small one. Barely cracked. If we really wanted we could push it open...

He showed me the engagement ring for Sara. 

The window crashed down, and I kept my mouth shut.

TWO YEARS:
“I do not mean you trouble...don’t get upset, I’m not pleading or sayin I can’t forget you...but yet, mama you’ve been on my mind.” 

Carpe and Sara got married at a small church outside of Philadelphia. It wasn’t a long engagement. The leaves had just started to change. I was invited. I didn’t go, but sent a card wishing them the best. 

Eric and I moved to St. Louis. 

About four months or so after the wedding Carpe wrote me to say he couldn’t talk to me or stay in touch anymore. It was at Sara’s request for the sake of their marriage. 

We didn’t speak for two years. No loopholes, no contact. 

Do you remember MySpace? MySpace was the precursor to Facebook. Much cooler I think. On MySpace you could customize your wall with art, songs, top eight friends—it was really something to be in the Top 8. 

I was really proud of my page. It was very much the image I wanted to promote to the internet world. I had an artsy, edgy skull and crossbones, punk rock type background, a doodle page where people could draw pictures (most kept it PG), and all the cool indie songs I was really into. Carpe stayed in my Top 8, and I stayed in his. 

I always kept “Mama, You’ve Been on My Mind” on my page. It was an appropriate song to represent those quiet years. 

A COUPLE OF DECOUPLINGS: 
“Come on skinny love just last the year.”

A lot can happen in two years. Eric and I were slowly, agonizingly breaking up. I’ve never been good at shutting the door, clean breaks. We couldn’t cut each other loose especially living together in the same city. I loved him and he loved me. We just weren’t good for each other, and it was hard to let go. I moved to New York. The distance helped. 

As for Carpe, I will never know everything that led to it. All I know for sure is he wrote to say he was telling Sara he wanted a divorce. I tried to tell him to not give up, he made a choice and he should try to work on it. Compromise or at least give her a chance to change. 

They divorced. It was fast. No work through it, no counseling, no let’s sleep on it. He told her, they signed the papers, and in a week she had moved back to Texas. 

ROCHESTER: 
“On se prend la main, comme des enfants. Le bonheur aux lèvres...Et on marche ensemble, d'un pas décidé. “

We hadn’t played a match in years. And for the first time in years we were both free and clear, unattached. We could talk and hang out, whatever we wanted. So the match was set. He was on his way to see me*. It was December and it was snowing*. I hadn’t seen him in five years, not since New York City. 

We started talking again when he got divorced. About 6 months later, in the summer, I moved to Rochester, New York. Eric and I survived the first months of the move, but had finally ended it that November. 

Carpe was 31 and I was 27. I was really mad at him for getting married, and mad at him for getting divorced. I guess in my mind he hadn’t held up his end of the “someday” agreement. He married someone else. And it didn’t last so it wasn’t even worth it. 

But when he walked in it all melted away like the snow on his boots. I was just happy to see him again. 

We had a few New Castles each, and by the last swallow we were snowed in. 

We decided to walk to the closest bar. 

I don’t remember it being cold. I don’t remember the bar. I only remember it was fun like it always was with him. It felt like we were the only ones in the whole city. It was like walking through a snowglobe, isolated, with glitter falling around us. 

We trailblazed through the untouched snow in homemade snowshoes out of plastic grocery bags. We snapped off limbs from icicled trees for walking sticks. We were pioneering the city of Rochester. We drank White Russians and played the jukebox. 

It was the same, but it was different too. There was still chemistry, still a connection, but there was something else. It was subtle. He saw himself differently. He introduced himself to people as Benjamin*. 

Maybe I saw him differently now, too. But maybe it was that I just didn’t know Benjamin very well.

We played our match the next morning. He beat me. I wasn’t that upset. 

I think he needed a win. 

————————————————-

*Of course he came to me. I will give him credit here. He constantly came to me. 

*Although that winter Rochester was 90 inches below the snowfall average, for this Okie girl, it still snowed A LOT.

*I still called him Carpe. He always said he loved the way I said his name. 

CLOSING REMARKS: 
“You’re wonderful, when it’s beautiful. But I'm tired of being down, I got no fight.”

I saw Carpe one last time in Oklahoma in November 2014. He was 34 and I was 30. I was living there and he was visiting for Thanksgiving. 

It didn’t go well. We had been playing the same match for years. Like a tennis ball going back and forth, hello/goodbye, will we or won’t we. We were played out. 

All those years, we floated in and out of each other’s lives. But we were never really a part of each others lives. We never integrated our worlds. 

I didn’t even know his friends. He didn’t know mine. We had no substance. 

I thought we knew each other well, but we only knew the parts we showed each other. A collection of moments don’t make a relationship. People who make choices do. Things don’t just fall into place because we assumed someday they would. We never chose each other. All this time we had been swimming in the shallow end afraid to take the plunge. 

Someday was a dream, and we finally woke up. 

THE END:
“ The grey remains of a friendship scarred.”

Bottom line, I don’t want to be your friend or communicate with you on purpose anymore, and I thought about just not saying anything at all (it’s not like I talk to you a ton anyways) and just let it fade off into the distance.  I had half a mind to think that you could care less anyways but I felt that it would be rude on my part, or make it seem like our friendship didn’t matter to me. And it did.

  You’ve been a great friend at different points in my life.  Before I came back to Oklahoma this last time, for some reason I decided to try to find the oldest messages still on my hotmail account and it was email after email from you.  I read over a couple of them and really felt how far back and deep our friendship went… it was extremely rare and truly amazing and heart warming.

  Over the last couple of years I feel like you’ve been not as interested in the friendship as me.  Maybe I creeped you out by always being interested in the possibility of something more and you just didn’t know how to say it.  But I always feel like I’m the one extending myself. Even when I come back into town and haven’t been there in years… I’m still the one hunting you down and leaving my family and their house to come see you, and it’s always me initiating it or asking “can I come see you?”  Even though before every trip you talk about all the fun stuff we are going to do when I get back, and it never happens.
  I think that either you didn’t really care if we hung out or not or you are just a bad friend to me.  I feel I let these things slide because I always thought that “one day there would be something more” and (apart from drunken texts) I gave up on that awhile ago so all that is left is something that I don’t want to do anymore.  I’ll never have a bad thing or anything to say about you to anyone else, I wish you well in your future endeavors. Don’t feel like you have to respond, I said what I needed and have no need to say anything else, goodbye

Thanks for reading,
Benjamin   

“Is it all? Is this how it ends with a simple telephone call email? You leave me here with nothing at all.”

APPENDIX: 
“Goodbye, so long, farewell, au revoir.”

Soundtrack: Thanks for Reading,

Track List: 

“It’s Been a While,” Staind

“Mushaboom,” Fiest

“First Day of My Life,” Bright Eyes

“Why Do You Let Me Stay Here,” She & Him

“Brand New Colony,” The Postal Service

“Just like a Woman,” Bob Dylan

“Cold Hard Bitch,” Jet

“With a Little Help From My Friends,” The Beatles

“Such Great Heights,” The Postal Service

“Home,” Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros

“The Funeral,” Band of Horses

“Kissing the Lipless,” The Shins

“Mama, You’ve Been On My Mind,” Jeff Buckley 

“Skinny Love,” Bon Iver 

“Comme des Enfants,” Coeur de Pirate

“All or Nothing,” O-Town

“How to Say Goodbye,” Paul Tiernan

Random Facts and Thoughts

• Rarely were both of us single at the same time
• In all this time neither made a real move to be together. The closest he ever got was after our first kiss when he asked Brian to ask me if we could be together. 
• We kissed on two occasions only. 
• He loved my family. My WHOLE family including uncle, aunt and cousins. So much that sometimes it felt like part of why he liked me was to be close to them. Like he was going to get a great bundling deal all for the small price of one girlfriend! 
• He met my parents at the US Open one year. He gave them really good seats and hung out with them all day. He was cool like that. 
• Sara sent me a really long Facebook message after they got married essentially marking her territory. I wish I could find it for this story. It was so wonderfully passive aggressive and so horribly veiled in her effort “to be friends.” 
• I told Carpe she wrote me and that he needed to make sure she understood we were friends only. She hacked into his account and read the message. That’s what led to those quiet years. 
• I never met Sara in person. That message was the only time I had any contact with her. 
• Carpe has great taste in music. And because of him so do I. 
• No Subject—dude, it’s bad enough you sent that horrible, unnecessary email, but you couldn’t even bother to subject it? Try—Closure? Farewell? You’re the Worst?? Come on. 
• Also, “I wish you well in your future endeavors” WTF—I mean it’s like a teacher signing my freakin yearbook. 
• And did you see? He signed it “Benjamin.”