I guess I left off with our Charter Bus pulling back into the school grounds around 12:30 AM. Robyn and I were returning from New Jersey, where our Lacrosse teams had played in a huge weekend preseason tournament. As the lights of the bus turned back on, and everyone struggled to their feet, I looked at her, and though the trip had been draining, without a word I knew that our evening together was far from over. In fact, if I'm honest, I had the thought that someone had entered my life who would be there always... Anyway, we gathered our gear and returned it to our lockers, and walked out onto campus. My teammates did not even ask me if I was joining them for the traditional after-trip party. I guess the word was out. I was glad.
One thing I've not told you about Robyn, besides the fact that she was incredibly beautiful, dedicated to her family, academically brilliant, and an extremely hard worker, is that she was quite an Artist as well. She toyed with the idea of majoring in Art, and would have done fabulously in the program had she so chosen. However, she chose Political Science as her major. Her minor however, was Art. She was an incredible painter and ceramist. She was great at many things. I mention this, because we walked all over campus together that night. As we approached the Art building, she looked at me and asked: "Would you like to see my stuff?" To which I coughed, and replied, "Um, yeah." She laughed, and we walked up to the door of the building. She took a ring of keys out of her pocket and opened the door. I was impressed, because only the top students are given keys to buildings-one of my fraternity brothers had a key to the Physics Labs, and one of my friends had keys to the Theater and the Music Buildings. They were both brilliant. Once again, I was impressed with Robyn. It would not be the last time.
We walked into the building, and she took my hand and walked me up the stairs to a huge, open loft space. This room had been the old theater, and was now just a huge parquet floor with lots of space that had been doctored up over the years-they called it the "Black Box," because it essentially looked like that-four huge black walls. But there were individual carrels and rooms created by room separators-a very eclectic room. Robyn walked me over to her area, which was a corner area, blocked off by room separators. Once we stepped in however, it was awe-inspiring. She not only had several paintings and ceramic items in the room, but had painted her side of the separator walls-it was essentially paintings of people that she knew-her family, her friends, her sorority sisters, her teammates. It was incredible. There seemed to be nothing she could not do. Such meticulous detail. Her actual paintings were fabulous as well-she was working on a series of paintings chronicling her family's arrival in America. Her grandparents married in Ireland, came over and opened a business in Philadelphia-working long days and nights to provide for Robyn's mother and her seven siblings. She had portraits of each of them in a progression of colors-it was really quite striking. "What do you think?" she asked me as I stared at her work. "Incredible" was the only word I was able to get out. Incredible. It so was. I saw people that I knew on her walls, and it not only looked like them, but captured the very essence of who they were. She had painted a picture of Corinne, who as you may recall from my earlier story, was one of Robyn's best friends, with whom I'd had a brief yet torrid relationship as a freshman. I got to know Corinne, and we were friends-It was simply spot on-almost to the point that it was unsettling. I should tell you, to this day, there is a painting of me on that wall, but that is another story entirely.
"I want to show you something," she said, drawing me from my admiration.
