Robinson Crosby 

Robb Crosby walked into my life like a vision you don’t forget—an impossibly handsome, 6’5”, eighteen-year-old rocker carrying a red Gibson Flying V like it was an extension of his body. His real name was Robinson Lantz Crosby, but his friends called him Robb or Cabb.

There was something immediately that clicked about him: the thick blonde lion’s mane, the quarterback’s build, the calm confidence of someone who didn’t yet know how powerful he was yet.

We started as friends, the kind that just fit. Then life got messy, like it always does. At the time, my boyfriend cheated with a few of my friends, and his girlfriend. Hearts were bruised. Suddenly Robb and I were crying into our beers, and learning how to laugh at the wreckage.

We fell into each other easily, making out like crazed teenagers—because we were crazed teenagers, We adored each other. Robb was overly sensitive, full of feelings, and co-dependent like me--needing connection as much as solitude, scarred us.

Robb saw that I was in a toxic relationship, and it was breaking me down piece by piece. He didn’t sugarcoat it, he told me what I needed to hear. The truth. The hard, uncomfortable kind. And that truth gave me the clarity—to walk away.

Sometimes lovers, always friends, we were deeply connected without needing to make it a storybook. We didn’t label it. We just… were.

What mattered was that we loved, and cared for each other. Even when we were in relationships with other people, we stayed in touch and nurtured each other—for two and a half decades.

If my life were a movie, Robb was the perfect hero; he was the handsome cowboy on the horse, dramatically saving the damsel in distress that was tied to the railroad tracks.

We saved each other more than a few times.