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Robbie leans in for a kiss and a tight hug. Wrapped in his embrace, Charlie feels a stab of guilt about her decision to leave, which was caused by another, far different sense of guilt. It’s a Russian doll of remorse. Guilt tucked into guilt that she’s ruining the only thing that has yet to be ruined.
“I’m sorry,” she says, surprised by the hitch in her voice that she’s forced to swallow down. “I know this is hard.”
“It’s been worse for you,” Robbie says. “I understand why you need to do this. I should have understood sooner. And what I hope happens is that your time away will be exactly what you need and that when the spring semester rolls around, you’ll be ready to come back to me.”
Charlie’s hit with another pang of guilt as Robbie looks down at her with those huge brown eyes of his. Bambi eyes, Maddy used to call them. So round and soulful that Charlie couldn’t help but be mesmerized the first time they met.
Although she suspects that initial meeting was probably mundane, her memory of it is like something out of a classic romantic comedy. It was at the library, she a sophomore strung out on Diet Coke and midterm stress and Robbie a ridiculously handsome first-year grad student simply looking for a place to sit. He chose her table, one that comfortably sat four but had been commandeered by Charlie and all the books she’d spread across it.
“Room for one more?” he said.
Charlie looked up from the Pauline Kael book she was reading, saw those eyes, and promptly froze. “Um, sure.”
She didn’t clear space for him. Didn’t move at all, in fact. She only stared. So much so that Robbie swiped a palm across his cheek and said, “Do I have something on my face?”
She laughed. He sat. They started chatting. About midterms. And college life. And life in general. She learned that Robbie had been an undergrad at Olyphant and chose to remain there for his graduate studies, well on his way to becoming a math professor. Robbie learned that Charlie’s parents took her to seeE.T.three times in the theaters and that she bawled all the way home after each screening.
They ended up talking until the library closed. And talking more after that at an all-night diner off-campus. They were still talking when they strolled up to Charlie’s dorm at two a.m. That was when Robbie told her, “Just so you know, I wasn’t really looking for a place to sit. I just needed an excuse to talk to you.”
“Why?”
“Because you’re special,” he said. “I could tell the moment I saw you.”
Just like that, Charlie was smitten. She liked Robbie’s looks, obviously, and how he seemed to be oblivious to them. She liked his sense of humor. And that he didn’t care at all about movies, which seemed so refreshingly foreign to her. It was a far cry from theGodfather-obsessed man-children who populated most of her film classes.
For a time, things were good between them. Even great. Then Maddy died and Charlie changed, and now there’s no going back to being the girl she was that night at the library.
Robbie checks his watch and announces the time. Five past nine. Josh is late. Charlie wonders where that should fall on the worry spectrum.
“You don’t need to wait with me,” she says.
“I want to,” Robbie says.
Charlie knows she should want that, too. It would be normal to want to spend as much time with him as possible before they part. But, to her, normal is wanting to avoid a rushed goodbye in front of an almost complete stranger. Normal is desiring a sad, quiet farewell witnessed by no one else but them. Bogart putting Bergman on the plane at the end ofCasablanca. Streisand sweeping a hand through Redford’s hair inThe Way We Were.
“It’s cold,” she says. “You go on back to your apartment. I know you have an early class tomorrow.”
“You sure?”
Charlie nods. “I’ll be fine. I swear.”
“Call me when you get home,” Robbie says. “No matter how late it is. And call me from the road, if you see a pay phone. Let me know you’re safe.”
“We’re driving from New Jersey to Ohio. The only danger is dying of boredom.”
“That’s not what I mean.”
Charlie knows, because she’s thinking what Robbie’s thinking. The thing neither of them wants to articulate because it will ruin this goodbye.
Maddy was killed.
By a stranger.
One who’s still out there. Somewhere. Likely waiting to do it again.
“I’ll try to call,” Charlie says. “I promise.”
“Pretend it’s one of those movies you were always making me watch,” Robbie says. “The ones with the French-sounding name.”