In Another World

At the intersection, I could go right and head home – but turning left would take me…to your apartment, one that I’ve never been to but seen pictures of online. “Home” is a loose term, as it currently refers to the hotel room I will be staying in alone in the town where I could also find you. You and your fiance, Lucy, a woman with plain brown hair and an unremarkable face, who poses wide-eyed and smiling next to you. You, gorgeously poetic and subtly cruel as John Mayer.

In another world, you and I fell in love in the Appalachian Mountains on that senior swim trip. I was the prettiest girl on the team, but I was the quietest, too. And nobody knows how to read someone who is beautiful and silent. Nobody knows how to love them either. There, we skipped bowling with the team that night. Instead, we walked over to the diner next door. And you said the words to me I was hoping for.

“Want to go back to my hotel room?”

And we left the warm apple pie on the diner table to wonder what would happen next. We waved goodbye to the middle-aged waitress, whose crows feet and cigarette-stained teeth smiled a smile that told me she didn’t have to wonder what was going to happen next. That night, I’d lose my virginity in the sweet, nostalgic way that it happens in the movies. I’d write about it on my blog for the months to come, spilling ink on paper as I sat in the dim lighting of my childhood bedroom.

In this world, I’m 29 and in Connecticut for a work conference, and I can’t help but think about how I have free will and could theoretically just drive to your apartment. Wherever it is. That is something I still have yet to figure out. I’m driving my rental car away from the airport, and when I roll down the windows, the crisp air triggers an ache in me, somewhere deep beneath my left collarbone. The leaves are turning, and they make piles that remind me of spices mixed together in a bowl: nutmeg, chili powder, garlic salt, and parsley. I’ve never experienced autumn in the Northeast, but it’s as bittersweet and gut-wrenchingly beautiful as it is in the movies.

Fast-forward a few hours. I’m in my lonely hotel room at the Hampton Inn where the conference is taking place, and I’m doom-scrolling again, missing all of the sessions and workshops. I don’t even know where you work, or what you and Lucy do for a living. All I know is that you seem to always be traveling. I scroll down on your profile and see the latest image you’ve posted. You and Lucy are both floating in the Dead Sea, mud stripes on your cheeks, the droplets just narrowly avoiding your wide-open smiles. You and Lucy seem happy, dreadfully happy.

In this world, you and I are both engaged – but not to each other. Our partners – your Lucy and my Henry – are sensible, rock-solid, and earthy. They can love moody, nostalgic poets like us and keep us grounded enough to pay the rent and car insurance on time and hold down a job. We are all happy enough - isn’t that all we can ask for in a world so tortured with hate crimes, natural disasters, and cancer diagnoses in babies?

This is what I thought, too, for the longest time. But after I was in that accident on highway 20 that involved a head-on collision with an 18-wheeler, things were different. I walked away untouched, not even a seatbelt sign or a bruise to show it. Henry, thoughtful and considerate as he is, suggested I start talking to someone professional when I started having nightmares. That is, I’d wake up screaming, urgently peeling my body off of our cool sheets and sticking my head out the window to gasp for fresh air.

“Please, Bethanie,” he urged me. “You aren’t okay.”

And I wasn’t okay. But at this time, I had begun to think about the unusual rhythm of the world and the nonsensical explanation for why things happen. In another world, my car would have shifted just right and made me into a hopeless pile of guts and blood, leaving Henry single and alone.

“That’s a terrible thought, Bethanie,” Henry always said when I confessed the concoctions created by my inner demons.

It’s worth mentioning that I didn’t think about you much at all until after I almost died. I scrolled through social media, liked your posts, sometimes thought about it for a fleeting moment, and that was it. That was all. But after the accident, it was like the many extension cords in the “feelings” part of my brain got switched around. And something was plugged into the wrong place. And all I could think about was you. You, who I hadn’t thought about in years.

“Having these thoughts means you are likely unhappy in your current relationship,” Dr. Finch, my psychologist, informed me.

“But I haven’t had those thoughts until the accident,” I reminded her. “You know, there’s a conference happening in New Haven in a couple of months. I’ve thought about going up there.”

“Do you think that’s a good idea?”

I just shrugged, looking out the window at the rain pouring down and drawing shapes in the velvet armchair.

And so here I am. Acting 19 instead of 29. Scrolling through your Instagram feed in my New Haven hotel room. I stop when I come across a picture of you and Lucy rock-climbing somewhere in Colorado. Your backs are to the camera, but your head is turned around just enough for the viewer to see your boyish grin. You love her, I think to myself. And she is so ordinary.

In another world, you and I are packing our bags for a vacation to Thailand or Australia or Indonesia, laughing as we spill wine on our old carpet. We’ve never bothered to get it replaced because all of our spare change goes to living. Back-packing through Europe and staying at hostels, getting sunburnt on the Amalfi coast, laughing off the idea of skin cancer.

But in this world, I see you. Wait, I actually see you. You’re walking up the steps to the hotel, wearing maroon corduroy pants, dress shoes, and an off-white button-down shirt. Lucy is not here. Lucy is not here. I race down to the hotel lobby, barely processing the whole scene. And just like that, I’m behind you in line to register for the conference.

“Oh hey, you look familiar,” you say to me.

I buffer for a second. You’re the same as always, but you’ve grown a beard and a mustache now. Your body still moves like an award-winning poem whose author is too shy to introduce itself.

“I must have one of those faces,” I finally say, losing my chance. Shocking myself.

In this world, I call Henry crying. I’m still in the hotel lobby.

“I want to come home,” I moan.

“Come home, then,” he says softly.

In a trance, I pack up my bags and wave goodbye to New Haven. I wave goodbye to another world. I get off the plane and see Henry, the concern like dust that has been following him around all day, looming over his head. He walks toward me, his green eyes watery and wide like a small child’s. He wraps me up in his strong arms and squeezes me so tightly I feel like a fruit Gusher, my sadness pouring out like sticky, goopy candy insides. I let myself lean into him, and I just cry. He doesn’t ask questions. He doesn’t make me talk.

In this world, I’m realizing that any other world is not one I want to live in.