PUT ME IN A MOVIE - Charlie Barber.

Chapter 22 - Christmas.

After the opening night of Romeo and Juliet, Charlie never saw you again.

Throughout the week that his show had been playing, he searched for you every night in the crowd, lingered until nobody remained in the building after the shows, all in hope of seeing you again, in hope of talking to you, fixing things. But, on the last night, he had figured it out; you weren't coming back.

He hadn't told Henry or Nicole about the interaction he had with you. He figured it would have made Henry confused, and Nicole angered. Thanksgiving was still an open wound for his family and him. He wished he could have told someone, but instead, he bottled it inside.

As weeks passed, he grew desperate. He began to drive past the cafe that you worked at down the street everyday after work, but he never saw you. Maybe he had just been looking at the wrong times, or maybe, you weren't there at all. He never found out where you truly went.

At some point, he began to believe that he had made you up in his mind. Every night he had spent with you, every kiss, every argument, every memory — all a figment of his imagination. It could have been possible. You came at a dark and desperate time in his life — maybe his divorce had driven him so crazy that he imagined a perfect lover of his own. If that was the case, his mind betrayed him, discarded of the thing he needed most.

But he knew that wasn't the case, and that you had been real. He still found lingering pieces of you from time to time; hair elastics sitting on shelves or in the drawer of his nightstand, a shirt you had left in his drawer, a drawing made with Henry still hung on the fridge. With dread, he had to get rid of those pieces, slowly but surely. You had clearly moved on, so should have he.

Henry struggled to cope at first, too. He would have crying fits, or grow silent for hours on end, just laying in bed. The joy he used to have when playing with his toys was no longer there, because you weren't there to play with him anymore. He stopped asking questions of where you had gone after a series of Charlie shutting him down.

A silent understanding hung over Charlie and Henry's home; you were once there, and now you weren't, nor were you ever going to be again.

Charlie had cried too. A grown man brought to tears by your absence. It usually happened after a long day of work and one too many beers, once Henry had been put to bed. He would sit on his couch, mindlessly watching the muted TV, beer in hand. And then, he would look to his side, where you should have been sitting with him, and then he would cry.

He hadn't cried like this since his divorce. Heartbreak was a raw emotion for Charlie, one that he wished he wouldn't have to experience continuously. Perhaps it was god punishing him for some unknown cruel reason. Or maybe, he was unloveable. His parents broken relationship had translated into his own broken relationships with his partners. It was a generational curse.

But then, things became easier. Suddenly, your absence was nothing more then a ghost that haunted Charlie at night, and things began to fall into schedule again. Henry became lively again, and Nicole had settled. Things were seemingly normal again, except for Charlie, but he pretend as if he was. After all, he was experienced in acting.

It wasn't until four months had passed that Charlie realized he would need a new babysitter. The snow had fallen, and Christmas was approaching. Charlie needed to push out one last play before Christmas break, and he couldn't do that without extra help.

He dreaded the idea of a new babysitter. He only wanted you to take after Henry, to stay in his home, to be by his side. But that was no longer an option. He had to move on.

So, he began his search for a new babysitter. After countless calls and lunches, he finally found a fitting girl. She had been young, only eighteen or nineteen, with red hair and blue eyes. She reminded Charlie of Nicole when they had first met, before she had cut her hair short and gotten pregnant with Henry.