Distance

The flight was short, but any air travel seemed to drain me of all my energy. It was late afternoon by the time we got through customs and into a cab. Robert gave the driver his address, then relaxed back into the seat beside me. He reached out and gently took my hand, making me look at him sleepily.

“It’s only half past four,” he said incredulously. “How are you possibly yawning already?”

I shrugged. “Planes make me groggy.”

“You would almost think that you were popping pills to make it through the flight. You look exhausted.”

“Really, I’ll be fine. I just need to wake up, that’s all.”

“Let’s get you a coffee. I actually have some food in this flat, so you can have something other than tea if you’d prefer it.”

“Don’t worry about me. I just still can’t believe that you brought me here. Where are we going to go first?”

Robert paused, appearing to be rethinking his rash decision to let me tag along. “We’re going home first, Maggie. We’ve got all of our luggage with us.”

I waved him off. “That’s not what I meant. After that. Can we see Buckingham Palace? Or Big Ben? Or what about that Ferris wheel that is always in the London skyline?”

“You do recall that I’m not a tourist here, right? I do have to live in this city.”

I scoffed. “Live a little, Robert. Oh!” I jumped a little as I remembered the one place that I really wanted to go. “Can we go to Whitechapel?”

“Why on earth do you want to go to Whitechapel? It’s nothing special.”

“I want to see where the Ripper murders happened. I really like that kind of thing.”

“Should I be worried that you are this intrigued by serial killers?”

I shrugged, leaning back against the seat and looking out the window. “I’m pretty sure my mother worries about that enough to more than compensate for the rest of the world. Besides, just because I like learning about those things, it doesn’t mean that I’m going to use that knowledge to start attacking people or anything. I’m weird, not psychotic.”

“I guess if we’re going to do all of this in one weekend, we’d better not waste any time,” Robert sounded mildly resigned. I frowned at him.

“I’m not saying that we have to do these things, I’m just saying that I would like to see them. If you just want to stay in and hang out, I’d be alright with that too.” I wasn’t lying. I would be perfectly content to stay at Robbie’s apartment and do nothing but talk over tea for the next few days. It would give me a chance to really get to know him. That would probably be beneficial, since he was the only person that I knew in London.

“I’ll make you a deal,” he proposed, placing a hand gently on my knee and giving it an encouraging little squeeze. “We can spend one day doing all of that tourist nonsense, and one day just relaxing at home.”

I smiled. “I like the sound of that. But what about tonight?”

He met my stare with the now-familiar glimmer in his eye. “Don’t worry about tonight, okay?”

“If you’re surprising me with another movie premiere, I’m probably going to hit you.”

He held up a hand, palm facing me, as if he were being sworn under oath. “No movie premieres, I promise.”

“No fame stuff?”

“None.”

My smile grew. It wasn’t that I minded doing things that involved Robert’s celebrity status, but it was more the fact that we hadn’t had all that much time to just be together as two normal human beings. And now I was going to get a few full days of just that. I could feel my excitement spreading, pumping through my veins like a virus in my bloodstream.

We stopped at a tall apartment building, and Robert paid the cab driver while I began pulling our suitcases from the trunk. As we hauled our belongings across the sidewalk, a doorman appeared and held open the heavy door for us. He greeted Robert as if they were old friends, and I watched the scene in a bit of awe. I had never been inside of an apartment building that had an actual doorman working there. I knew that it was nothing terribly foreign, but back home we’d all had simple intercom systems to let one another up to our homes. Of course, it was simple enough to sneak in when someone else was leaving the building at the same moment that you were trying to get inside.

I found, once inside of Robert’s apartment, that he had put a bit more money and effort into decorating this apartment. There were paintings on the walls, and his furniture was slightly more upscale than the décor he’d had back in Dublin. Clearly, this was where he spent the majority of his time. The thought made my stomach drop just a little bit.

“I am so glad that I remembered to clean up before I left last time,” he murmured, looking toward the kitchen.

“I wouldn’t have minded,” I told him. “You’ve seen my dorm; I always forget to clean up.”

He started walking down an adjacent hallway, dragging his luggage behind him. “I wasn’t really considering it for your benefit,” he called back over his shoulder.

I felt like I should have asked what he meant by that, but I decided to let it go. The last time he’d left this apartment, he hadn’t even known that I had existed. Actually, I hadn’t known that he’d existed either. It was almost alarming how much could change over the span of a week. I followed him down the hall and entered his bedroom. For a moment, I was stunned to see that it was bare and undecorated in comparison to the rest of the apartment. His bed took up the majority of the room, with a nightstand on either side of the headboard. A large closet spanned one entire wall, and Robert was gathering empty clothes hangers from its depths in order to empty out his suitcase. There was no other furniture, and the empty walls were painted a boring eggshell white.

“You need to fix this room,” I stated, looking around.

He shrugged. “I don’t spend much time in here, aside from sleeping. I was far more concerned with getting the rest of the place looking decent. By the time I got to the bedroom, I just didn’t feel like doing anything anymore.”

I set my bag down on the floor by the foot of the bed. I sat down, watching Robert hang up his clothing. He was more organized than I had ever really expected. “That’s fair,” I admitted. “My apartment back home wasn’t very well decorated either. Of course, you don’t really have the money for that kind of stuff when you’re in university.”

“If you keep bringing up the fact that you’re in university, people are going to know that I’m seeing someone smarter than me.”

“You could have went to college, but I feel like I would have done the same thing if I were you. The acting was there, and it was much easier to make money doing that than it would have been to get into a crazy amount of debt by going to school. I mean, we can’t all be James Franco, can we?”

He looked genuinely perplexed as he zipped up a sweater to secure it to the hanger in his hand. “What do you mean by that?”

“He got a degree while he was still acting. I think the guy must be superhuman or something. I could hardly hold on to a part-time job while I was in school, let alone something like acting that takes up more time than a full-time job.”

Robert zipped up his empty suitcase and tucked it inside of his closet. “I always kind of wanted to get a better education. I just haven’t got the time for it. Come on, let’s go get some groceries. I have nothing fresh in the entire flat. It has a tendency to go bad when I’m gone for more than a few days, you know?”

“Funny how that happens,” I got to my feet and walked with him back toward the front door. He paused to grab a sweater from a hook near the door and handed it to me. I slid my arms into it, but was too afraid to zip it up. Robert was probably close to my size around the waist, but I knew that my chest would be too big for any of his clothing. I didn’t want to stretch it out. He grabbed a second sweater and threw it on before opening the door and letting me pass through before him.

The nearest store was only two blocks away. We chose to walk, enjoying the crisp bite of the autumn air. It didn’t take us long to get everything that Robert wanted, though on our walk back we both regretted not bringing the car. I was grateful to see the doorman as he let us inside. There was simply no way that either of us could have opened the door on our own while we struggled with the heavy grocery bags that we were carrying.

“Cheers, man,” Robert said in gratitude. “Oh, and by the way, there’s going to be some people showing up soon claiming to be my guests. Just send them up, alright?”

“Of course, sir,” the doorman nodded.

“Who’s coming over?” I demanded as soon as Robert and I were alone in the elevator.

“Just a few friends. You’ll like them, don’t worry.”

I wasn’t really concerned. I had liked Ben, so I assumed that the rest of Robert’s friends would be equally nice. I was more worried about cleaning myself up than anything. I hadn’t really been focused on looking nice this morning; I’d been more worried about making it to the airport in time for my flight.

While Robert put the groceries away, I set about applying my make up. As I did so, I marvelled at the fact that I hadn’t felt self-conscious without it all day. Usually it took me a long time to work up the courage to hang out with a hot guy without wearing any make up. With Robert, the thought hadn’t disturbed me at all. Which, when I considered it now, seemed absolutely bat-shit insane. He was more attractive than anyone else I’d ever gone out with. But he was also a lot more kind, despite the fact that I wasn’t generally the type that found myself attracted to assholes.

Robert walked back into his bedroom just as I was slipping a merlot-coloured dress over my head. “I wish I got that kind of a show every time I walked in here.”

I smirked at him as I adjusted the straps, making the dress fall the right way against my hips. “Well, the more you walk in on me when I’m alone in a bedroom, the more often things like this will happen.”

He looked genuinely rueful for a moment as he watched me tie my hair back into a long ponytail. “Why did I invite people over? I would be perfectly happy to just stay in with you tonight.”

“We have all weekend for that,” I replied lightly. “I think it’ll be fun to meet your friends.”

“You’ll love them. And they’ll love you.”

There was a knock at the door, and from that moment on I got nearly no time with Robert at all. Ben and Madeline were there, and as Robert schmoozed with his other friends that I didn’t know, I was glad to have someone else to talk to. Whatever strange attitude Madeline had had around me before seemed to have vanished. She seemed to be incredibly sweet now, and when she was behaving this way I could understand why she and Ben had been together for so long.

I met a few new people that night, and some were familiar faces from the work I’d seen of Robbie’s. Most, however, seemed to be just average people. Whether they had been his friends before he found fame, or whether they’d only met him recently, it didn’t really matter. It was like a gentle reminder that he really was incredibly grounded. It made me appreciate him just a little bit more.

“So where do you want to go sight-seeing tomorrow?” Robert asked once everyone else had left for the night. He peeled off his hoodie and rubbed his eyes sleepily.

I got up from the couch, still smiling widely. The grin hadn’t left my face all night. Even when Ben had left early, I’d thoroughly enjoyed just watching Robbie interact with other people. He had made a valiant effort to include me in all of his conversations, but I found that listening was much more interesting.

“I don’t feel like it anymore,” I said.

He raised his eyebrows. “No? Why not? I thought you had your heart set on it.”

I shrugged my shoulders as I followed him down the hallway. “I just decided that if I don’t do those things now, then I’ll have to come back. I mean, you have to get a few days off from filming sometimes, don’t you?”

A sudden, impishly delighted grin broke out across Robert’s face. His eyes lit up in a way that seemed to stop my heart for a moment. “Really? You want to come back?”

“That’s kind of a stupid question, Robbie. Of course I want to come back. How else am I going to get a vacation? I’m kind of already on vacation for the whole year, but it doesn’t really count when school is involved.”

“Glad you think so much of me.”

I shoved him playfully as we walked back into the bedroom. “You know that’s not really why. Besides, if you want me back here, I know that your need to come back to London doesn’t mean that you’re choosing to leave me behind.”

A shadow of confusion slipped across his face so quickly that it was almost unrecognizable. He blinked it away. “I wouldn’t leave you behind. I highly doubt that anyone would leave you behind.”

“You would be surprised.”

“Want to talk about it?”

I found myself wanting to play it off as nothing. I most certainly didn’t want Robert to know that Kellan had vowed to wait for me. I felt like a bad enough person already; I didn’t want him to think that I was a cheater. After all, I wasn’t. I hadn’t promised anything to Kellan when he’d left. It wasn’t fair for me to have to do anything of the sort when he’d chosen to leave for so long.

I waved a hand arbitrarily, hoping that the gesture made the topic seem light and unimportant. “My best friend went to Australia for a year. I got all my things in order and came here. So he might have left me first, but I won’t be there when he gets back. It’s kind of stupid, actually. I came here because I felt lonely. I left behind everyone that cared about me, and I still can’t quite explain why. But you take that loneliness away. That’s why I want to come back here.”

His eyes were serious. There was no hint of pity in his expression, which made me feel a lot less pathetic. “It’s not stupid. And if you’re ever lonely here, you can come anytime. I mean it. Even if it’s just for one night in the middle of the week. I’ll be here. And I’ll come back to Dublin, too.”

I was vaguely aware of the fact that we were moving rather fast, but I couldn’t bring myself to care. I’d known people who declared their love after the first week, and somehow were still together. At least we weren’t moving that fast.

I kissed him then, realizing that our pace was probably just about perfect for two people who knew that they had less than one year to truly be together.