Reader Response to "We Didn't"

Side note: I read the transcript of that random thing and thought that was the story we were supposed to be reading. Awkward.
Anyway, I like the actual story much more, fortunately.
The piece has a rhythm, an undercurrent that Dybeck keeps flowing throughout that drives the reader to keep going, to answer that question that the title promises: they didn't? Did they really? Lacan says that within every word, its inherent opposite is contained, so to me the title still asks the question of whether they did or not. Intentionally or not, this story played on this concept heavily:

we didn’t, not in the moonlight, or by the phosphorescent lanterns on lighting bugs in your back yard, not beneath the constellations we couldn’t see

They didn't, they could have - there's something beautiful in that concept alone.

Well, anyway, we find out they didn't. For me, that's not really the sad part. The sad part is the paragraph where they're sitting in the car.
This story comes alive in the specificity of the details right in the places they're needed; the details give it energy.
Maybe the most energy for me is contained in the part "in the Rambler at the dead end of the street" because basically this exact thing happened to me. But I feel the way that it's written gives the experience a universal quality that makes it feel like you could have been there, and felt those things, even if you haven't. It's written like a letter, to you, the unnamed you, that could be anyone that happens to be reading. For these people who are made very real by the details, it was a Rambler, for me it was a pickup truck. The rain brought out the smell of smoked fish for them, for me it was the heat simmering the candy bar you'd bought from the ice cream shop for your dad, because it was his favorite. But the same realization: I wanted to find some way that wasn’t corny sounding to tell you how much fun I’d had in your company and that we'd overlooked how close we’d been as friends -
I wanted you to like me again.
These lines capture so well what I think is going on in people's thought lives. Why is it so much easier to say "What beautiful weather we're having this afternoon" than "I had fun with you, can we have fun again?" We don't want to be vulnerable, so things just never get said, and the one we didn't turns into a string of we never dids.