What people don’t know about having parents who are madly in love is that it makes it harder to fall in love yourself—the bar’s set way too high. I was never expecting to fall in love with Charlie. I never expected to fall in love with anyone the way my parents are in love. Their love is like the fucking white whale. No one else has it. No one in our world, anyway. But there it was, the night I met Charlie. Maybe we Whitneys are blessed, maybe we’re cursed. No one knows for certain, but it sure feels like a curse right now.
What people also don’t know is that Charlie, though a frequent patron of many other summer enrichment programs, was just kind of bumming around London that summer. I met him while I was in the program, but he was selling a bunch of old vinyls online. That’s why I don’t mention it a lot—because Charlie and I technically met online. And that’s still vaguely embarrassing if you’re under the age of twenty-three. He posted the vinyls on Craigslist and put a link to the ad (labeled “Moving Sale”) on the campus online message boards, and I answered it, and that was that.
Well, not exactly.
I showed up at Charlie’s place around eight thirty on a Sunday night. I had classes the next day at seven a.m. and had just moved all my stuff into my summer dorm room with this girl, a violinist named Alice Choi, who barely looked up from her book when I came in. It was going to be a super fun summer.
I got to Charlie’s and knocked on the door and it immediately opened because two shirtless dudes wearing black jeans and carrying a bookshelf walked out. They let the door slam shut behind them before I could grab it, so I had to knock again. This time a girl—tall and blond and big-boned—answered.
“I’m here for the records,” I told her. My hair was red then and my fingernails were gray and chipped.
“Charlie’s back there.” The girl motioned with her head down a long hallway, so I walked past a bathroom and a tiny bedroom with exposed brick walls, barely big enough to fit a twin bed in it. It was more like a glorified closet. I remember thinking how I’d never live there, not in a million years and (I thought later) not for a million Charlies. That’s where Charlie and I differed. He was adaptive; I had standards. He had access to money but could take it or leave it. Not me, no way.
I saw Charlie a second later. He was standing in a little room that served as both a kitchen and a living room, talking to some old guys about a lamp. “I mean, I liked the look of it,” he said. “I’m not really familiar with antiques, so I don’t know if it’s worth anything.” His eyes flickered over to me.
“I’m Lena,” I said. “I emailed you about the vinyls.”
“Right.”
It sounds stupid, so I never bothered telling anybody this, but in that one little flicker of the eyes was everything: our whole relationship, an infinite path I just had to let myself step onto. I could see everything laid out in front of me, mostly in shades of blue and ivory. Which is strange to think about now, because those are calming colors, and nothing about us was ever placid. I could envision our first kiss and all the things that would go along with it. It was certain—I didn’t have to do anything. And I wanted to step onto that path. But I also wanted to make him work for it. I grabbed the carton of vinyls, which was super heavy, and tried not to strain too much under its weight. My red hair was pulled back in a messy bun and I was wearing this big baggy dress I’d found in a designer consignment shop, something supposedly fashionable that was probably more akin to an old lady’s discarded muumuu. I knew how I looked (crappy) and I knew I didn’t care and he didn’t care and it didn’t matter. It was all there in that one look: the inevitability of it.
Inevitable. It was the word for us. The word our relationship would rest and revolve on.
“Okay, well, thanks,” I said. “Here’s your forty pounds.” I sounded like I didn’t care, but inside, my heart was beating like crazy. I wasn’t nervous, exactly, because I knew how it would all pan out. It was like someone said, “Here’s how it’s going to end; now enjoy the ride.”
“These guys will be gone in a minute,” he told me. “Stick around.” I leaned against the windowsill with my crate of records at my feet. Charlie looked over at me, smiling a little under blue eyes, hooded lids. Everything about Charlie other than his eyes was dark: his hair, the way he moved. Everything he did seemed like it had some deeper message I was supposed to decode. But I wasn’t intimidated. Charlie had met his match in me, and we both knew it. Charlie fiddled in the refrigerator and I stood there and then the guys were gone.
“So you like The National?” He nodded toward the stack of vinyls. The record on top featured a woman with her face split in two by a mirror. Trouble Will Find Me is one of my favorite albums.
“I do. Easily top five. Are you cleaning out the fridge?”
“I am. But I figure you’re going to need help carrying those when I’m done.”
“No need,” I said. “I’ve got it covered. Not so sure about you, though.”