What Have I Done For Me Lately?. Isabel Sharpe

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      Imagine the résumé: Exceptionally skilled at sullen smoldering looks and general bad attitude. Expert in alcohol consumption and high-speed motorcycle operation. Some experience with mild street drug use. Unpredictable outbursts available upon request. Vast experience in seduction of women, including one shy straightlaced girl from Southport, Connecticut, who had never forgotten a second of their time together….

      Jenny’s rapturous sigh trailed off. But of course he had probably forgotten, most of it anyway. Before that summer when they’d both been home from college—she from Tufts and he from UC Berkeley—he’d undoubtedly thought of her only as the daughter of his widowed mom’s friend from down the street. She’d thought he was way hot, like every other breathing female that saw him, and made herself sick with nerves every time their families got together—his family being a loud, out-of-control one with six kids and an always stunned-looking mother; hers consisting of her and her parents, jovial, but reservedly so, warm, loving…quiet. Jenny and Ryan had overlapped two years at Fairfield High, but they hadn’t acknowledged each other as more than familiar faces passing in the hall, though once in her sophomore year he’d made a point of complimenting her performance in Brigadoon and she’d nearly hyperventilated. That was it.

      Why he’d turned to her of all people…Maybe at such a turbulent time he’d needed someone rock-solid predictable and not at all challenging.

      Jenny lay back, holding up the picture of his staid, respectable face, bland smile in place for the camera. If his name hadn’t been under the photo, she wouldn’t have believed…

      He was extraordinarily good-looking, no question. She’d bet heads still turned. But not like before. Not like when he strode around the village of Southport, Connecticut, looking like a savage bomb that could go off any second.

      Not like the night a month or so after the motorcycle accident that killed his best friend, when he came to her house while her parents were away, pale and haunted, soaked by the rainstorm he’d been walking through, dark hair hanging over his forehead, blue eyes glowing behind the clumped strands.

      On her doorstep, he’d mumbled something she hadn’t heard. She’d let him in anyway, and he’d stopped next to her, fixed her with an angry pleading look she’d never forget, and to her total rapturous shock, he’d kissed her. Not a sweet peck, not a gentle “may I?” kiss, not the soulless kisses Paul had given her. But a hot, hard rush of a kiss. A kiss she measured all subsequent kisses against.

      That night and many nights after, in the park by Southport harbor, in cars, on the country club golf course, on the beach by Long Island Sound, she’d let him use her body to rid himself of his rage and his guilt over his friend Mitch’s death. She’d never told anyone, not about the visits, not about the sex, not about the way he’d cried in her arms after.

      She’d just wanted to heal him. And then, sweet, ignorant, impressionable girl that she’d been, she’d fallen in love.

      Jenny tossed the paper aside. Right. Love. Who knew anything about love at age nineteen? It was a crush, that’s all, born of his appeal and the thrill of being the one he’d picked out in his time of grief, the last girl anyone would have expected, least of all her. Predictably, the night she’d finally given voice to her feelings, he’d run. Far, fast and into someone else’s arms. No big surprise, though it had hurt like hell anyway.

      She picked up the paper again, as if he still had the ability to draw her, after all these years, even as an image on newsprint. What did Ryan Masterson now think of what he’d been?

      And what would he think of what shy, sweet Jenny Hartmann had become?

      3

      “TELL ME ABOUT your childhood.”

      “Oh.” Christine smiled at Ryan over the white-cloth-covered restaurant table and stalled with a sip of beer. She preferred white wine, but he’d made some comment about Thai food killing any chance a wine had, and she couldn’t very well order it after that. “Charsville, Georgia. Southwest corner of the state, not far from the Alabama border. I guess you knew that already.”

      “I did, yes.”

      He looked at her expectantly and she kept smiling, searching for what to say next. He’d told her about his childhood, mostly pleasant impersonal facts, though she got the feeling all had not been rosy, even in such privileged surroundings. Maybe he’d tell her the whole truth someday, as she would tell him hers. But not today. Charsville was an entirely different world from Southport, Connecticut. You could count the number of wealthy on no fingers. People didn’t live large there, they grew up, married, had kids, grew old and died. She didn’t want to give Ryan any chance to think she wasn’t good enough for him.

      “It was a safe, quiet, wholesome place to grow up.” As long as you didn’t venture out when the Dargin brothers had been drinking. “People didn’t lock their doors, kids hung out at the Dip-Delite ice cream and candy store, and everyone knew everyone else’s business.”

      She gave a laugh as if the last was a quaint and lovely trait, whereas she’d found it a suffocating junior high existence.

      Ryan was listening politely, but watching her with a blue-eyed intensity that unnerved and excited her at the same time. What was he thinking?

      If she had her way, he’d be thinking thoughts that had nothing to do with her childhood past and everything to do with her womanhood and her future. Especially because being across the table like this for so long, she’d barely been able to keep herself from imagining their first kiss, though she doubted it would happen tonight. But maybe soon? They’d had a nice time so far, talking easily, laughing together and sharing food.

      Or was he wondering why he’d asked her out in the first place, this small-town girl from nowhere with nothing of real substance to say? Should she embellish her life? Beef up her education from a two-year degree earned in four years to a four-year degree earned in two? Casually drop some mention of her mom’s catering business and her dad’s club? Ryan would picture elegant cocktail parties, pools and golf courses—things he could relate to. He didn’t need to know Vera Bayer threw kids’ birthday parties, and that the pool at Dick Bayer’s men’s club involved cues and drunken betting.

      No. She’d keep to the bare-minimum truth. Any false picture she painted would come crashing down when he met her parents.

      “What kind of girl were you?”

      “Shy. Lonely. A dreamer.” With iron determination driving her life. “But I knew what I wanted.”

      “Which was?”

      “To leave Charsville, live in New York and see the world someday.” And marry someone exactly like you.

      “Why New York?”

      “After small-town living?” She lifted her eyebrows, thinking no other answer was needed, but he still seemed to be waiting for an explanation. “The bigger the better as far as I was concerned. But L.A. has earthquakes, and Cairo and Tokyo were too far away and exotic for me.”

      “Makes sense.” He nodded seriously where she expected him to laugh. Was it her imagination or did he look disappointed? What had she said? What was wrong with loving New York?

      “So I came here.” She forced herself to calm down. Ryan could undoubtedly live anywhere in the world he wanted, so he must love the Big Apple, too.

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