Charlie doesn't believe in love.

Not the kind that would require more than a few moments of his time, anyway. He just believes in want and basic need and simple, uncomplicated encounters with nameless faces that provide intimacy without actually being intimate. There are no feelings and no connections- just pure lust and a desire to quell it.

He hasn't always been in this way. There was a time where he believed in falling in love and forming bonds and finding someone to care for who also cares for you.

That changed the summer he turned fifteen.

That was the year the Walker family had moved in next door. Their daughter Evelyn was two years older than Charlie and easily the most gorgeous girl he'd ever laid eyes on- all long legs and blonde hair and a perfect hourglass figure that was always clad in what his mother considered to be too tight dresses and too short skirts.

From the moment she'd moved in, the entire neighborhood talked about her- spreading rumors and gossiping about the alleged things she'd done and the supposed trouble she'd gotten into- but Charlie didn't care. He couldn't see what they saw because she was so different and so free spirited and taught him so many things that over the course of that summer, he'd fallen in love with her.

He had had relationships before and she certainly hadn't been the first person he'd ever developed feelings for but he'd fallen harder for her than he'd ever fallen for anyone.

She always made a point to spend time with him and even when she'd begun to make friends her own age; she invited him everywhere with them, never leaving him out of anything.

Evelyn brought him to parties and let him tag along on camping trips and midnight drives to nowhere. She turned him onto rock and roll and would just lay with him for hours listening to her records- Buddy Holly and Chuck Berry and Jerry Lee Lewis; the things that would cause his mother to have a stroke if she overheard them. Evelyn gave him all kinds of books like The Catcher In The Rye and On The Road- the two she'd deemed as being the greatest ever written. She'd gotten him drunk for the very first time and given him his first cigarette and his first joint.

The most important thing she'd given him was a feeling of truly being himself for the very first time. He didn't have to act with her and he never had to worry about pleasing her- he could be free. Just like she was. When they were together, he felt like he could do nothing wrong. No matter what he said or did, she'd be right there and she'd laugh at him and ruffle his hair and she'd always tell him that he was a great kid.

Until he wanted to prove he was more than just a kid, anyway.

When Charlie had returned home from Welton that winter for break, she'd invited him over and they'd just sat in front of the fire place and talked for hours until he couldn't handle talking anymore. Instead, he'd just leaned over and kissed her. He'd half expected her to throw him off and then throw him out but he was pleasantly surprised when she just simply kissed him back and began peeling off his clothes with effortless ease not more than a moment later.

The whole thing was awkward and messy and over much too quickly for Charlie's liking but she was his first and she was perfect and he'd never felt happier than when Evelyn clutched at him and sighed his name.

After they'd quietly redressed and she was shoving him out the door with the insistence that her parents would be home soon, he'd taken her hand and told her exactly how he felt about her, using those three little words for the first time in his life.

And all she'd done was laugh. "Charlie," she told him, reaching out to ruffle his hair. "It was just sex."

He'd left as quickly as he could, her words echoing through his mind with the force of a rampant freight train.

It was just sex.

Charlie had finally realized then that she was exactly what everyone said she was. She was loose and she was trouble and she did whatever she wanted to and she'd broken his heart because he hadn't been smart enough to realize that.

He avoided her the best he could until he went back to school and he never did speak to her again after that but try as he might, he never forgot her or what she'd showed him.

Feelings complicated everything and they let you get hurt and there was no need for that when there were people out there who would give you exactly what you needed for nothing at all. Everything was just about fun and mutual enjoyment and there wasn't much about that that could wind up hurting you.

Charlie can now understand the way Evelyn looked at the world and the things that she'd done because she'd trained him to be the same way. It's just fun- all about fun and getting what you want and not needing someone else to make you happy.

He had always been certain that you needed to be in love but now he really doesn't care. He's perfected the charm he's always had and now there's no girl- or guy, for that matter, because there's really no reason to have a preference- he can't get into bed and he wouldn't have it any other way.

He's lost count of how many people he's been with and he tries to ignore thinking about how many of them he's hurt and the look he always seems to get when he crawls out of bed because he knows exactly how they feel. He's hurting people just like he was hurt but there's a certain feeling of being invincible that comes along with people just falling at your feet and Charlie loves it. He doesn't need to love someone else because everyone loves him and that's more than enough.

It's just sex.

That's what he'll always tell them, usually throwing a wink in their direction. That's how it is for him and that's how it's always going to be- not only to protect his reputation but his heart as well.