Charlie, part one

He can hardly be criticized for his actions that night – I want to make that very clear before you hear, before you judge – and I know you'll judge him. That's not your fault. You're only human after all, just like he was – is –, just like I am. This may seem to you a very mysterious introduction, but it's really not, not in the ways that matter. It really says all you need to know about his story: that he was human, that I am human, and that I will defend his right to be so, our right to blame that for our actions, until you prove to me that I cannot.

My own story can be summed up nicely in six words that I stole from a book of six-word autobiographies. "I fell in love with Charlie," it said, and it resonated in my mind until I came to grips with the fact that my life could easily be told in that precise sentence. I've done a lot in my life – stuff that I'm not proud of, stuff that shines so brightly that it could burn a hole in the sky – but the only thing that I ever did that really mattered was to fall in love with that beautifully broken man.

Charlie's story isn't quite so simple. It begins, as many stories do, at the beginning, but to you this beginning will seem like a middle, or even, if you're perceptive enough, like an end.

"I love you."

He said it slowly, simply, no ghost of a smile hovering in the corners of his mouth, no reflection of a twinkle in his sea-deep eyes.

And then the world came grinding to a halt, finally conforming to how Ptolemy and Aristotle thought it worked.

At least, that's how I picture it happening. I wasn't actually there, and he didn't – wouldn't ever – say those words to me. I picture it happening like that because I know him, know the smile that's always ready to burst through, know how those eyes can twinkle like the brightest star in a crisp October sky. And I know that the world came grinding to a halt, at least for him, because that's how he described it when he regained his equilibrium enough to write about it.

It doesn't matter what her response was, although I'm sure you can guess, and it doesn't matter who she was – is –, although I'm sure you'd like to know. What matters is his response to her response; after all, this is his story, and I did open it with an apology.

It's as vibrant in my mind as though I had seen it myself instead of reading about it after the fact. His email was very precise and clear; ever the scientist, he had observed and catalogued the reaction for later analysis. He described feeling the heat rise along his spine, tickling its way through each vertebra until the entire column was made of liquid fire and he had to remove his jacket in an attempt to calm it down. He described forcing his hand not to shake as he brought his drink to his lips and took a measured sip, and another, and another. He described resisting the urge to grasp her silk-clad upper arms in his big, rough hands and pull her into his embrace, to not let go of her until she understood exactly what was going through his mind. He described setting the glass down on the bar between a girl who looked like she might have been sixteen and a woman who was clearly beyond her best years, mentally comparing them both to her out of habit.

He didn't describe how his heart burst into wild flames that made their way through his bloodstream until his entire body was full of hot rage, until the stars in his eyes turned into a meteor shower that threatened to extinguish all life that got in its way, but I managed to guess. It was all there, in a hastily scribbled letter that spent the next 35 years in the drawer of his nightstand, and it was all pain, all hurt, all violent anger. The next morning, the newspaper would publish a column he had written about the power of love to turn a person's life around beneath a photo of the two of them and beside an emergency article by a too-keen new journalist about a woman who had mysteriously died in a club that night.

I know what you're thinking, but it wasn't him – it was pure coincidence that she ended up dying that night, pure coincidence that someone else had it out for her in a way that gave him weeks of sleepless nights agonizing over whether or not he had said something that had prompted someone to take initiative and kill her for him.

The courts, it turned out, don't like coincidence, and it was months before they discovered that the man who had killed her was someone else entirely. They discovered then, too, that Charlie wasn't entirely innocent that night. He didn't kill her, that much I can say without lying, but here is where I can promise you that you will judge him.

That night, he said in that bitter, violent letter, was the beginning of the end. I prefer to see it, in my habit of stealing things from books that I read, as the end of the beginning.