The One In My Heart

It could have been the potluck get-together at which Rob and Darren first met Bennett—or it might have been a different party. But Bennett was young, eighteen or nineteen, a gorgeous, gorgeous boy in a white T-shirt, ripped jeans, and a pair of Vans.

I stared at him for a long time before I realized this must be around the time we almost met—if he had bothered to come to the Bal des Debutantes. Not that he’d have found anything in me to hold his attention then—he was clearly drawn to the sex and drama of a woman who had experienced the full spectrum of life, and I was but a young girl completely wrapped up in the state of her stepmother’s mental health.

I hadn’t changed much in the years since. I used to go to school and come back home right away. Now I went to work and came back home right away.

And my life had all the sex and drama of a filing session at a county registrar’s office.


A WINTER STORM SHOULD SWEEP across the Amalfi Coast. Instead the sun rose in a bright, clear sky, and Bennett somehow managed to convince me that we should head out and see Capri.

We were on the ferry, not far from the island, when he set a hand on my shoulder. “You all right?”

“Yeah. Just enjoying the scenery,” I said mechanically.

Although one could easily be rendered speechless by the sight of Capri: white sea cliffs rearing from cobalt blue waters, houses and roads clinging to dizzy slopes, and a lemon-bright light that had probably dazzled generations of artists.

“Let me know if you need anything,” Bennett said softly.

Our ferry disgorged us at the Marina Grande. We rode the cable railcar up to the town of Capri and from there set out on foot toward the ruins of Villa Jovis, the retreat once beloved by Roman emperor Tiberius.

The street that led out from the center of the town was barely wider than a table runner. I stopped by a café and browsed the postcards for sale on a spinning rack. While I made my selections, Bennett ducked into a tiny shop across the lane and emerged with a bag of groceries. As I tucked my purchases into my purse, he offered me a handful of dried figs.

The way he peered at me, half-curious, half-concerned, made me realize that it had again been a while since I’d said anything other than, “Sure, we can go that way,” or, “Do you mind if I have a look at the postcards?”

I took the figs and searched for something to say, something so banal it would be a waste of breath. Nice weather. Beautiful place. Do you know what time is it?

“What happened after you and Moira broke up?”

What was wrong with me? I used to be able to say all the right things.

Bennett shrugged. “I got smashed and then went out and got laid…or was it the other way around? You know, stuff everybody does—except you, I guess.”

How did he do this? How did he turn the topic back to me—and always manage to catch me flat-footed? “Why do you presume I don’t?”

“Do you?”

His voice held a hint of incredulity. And he was right; I never had. The ends of my affairs were always a relief, a return to equilibrium.

Or what passed for equilibrium for me.

I bit into a fig and wished I hadn’t retorted. “Never mind me. So you do know how to get laid.”

His eyes were on me again. Did he notice how ungainly my conversational pivot had been? How could he not?

“It’s an acquired skill, like anything else,” he said finally. “When Moira and I broke up for good, I was like a man in a midlife crisis: I’d been with one woman for so long, I had no idea how to work the room anymore. It took me months to rediscover my predatory instincts.”

I’d have preferred a smirk in his voice, the usual masculine boastfulness. But he was matter-of-fact—dismissive, even.

“What did your predatory instincts tell you to do?”

I couldn’t help my tawdry curiosity. I’d never bothered to glance at any celebrity sex tape. But I’d watch every second of his, aroused and angry at the same time, if there was one floating around.

“I learned that it worked pretty well if I went up to a woman and said, ‘Hey, I just broke up with my girlfriend after seven years. Why are you here?’”

The first rule of communication: It’s not what you say; it’s how you say it. And the way Bennett said it, with sexual interest belied by aloofness—or was it the other way around?—did something to me. It made me, who already knew his story, want to know infinitely more about it. And it made me wish I were half so cool and nonchalant, that I too could take it or leave it.

“And what did you tell them about Moira when they asked?”

“Not many did—it’s not that hard to keep people talking about themselves. And if anyone did ask, I told the truth: that she was my first and I wanted to spend my life with her, but it didn’t work out.”

I wanted to spend my life with her, but it didn’t work out. A man perfectly capable of commitment, paying to pretend-date me, about as demonstrable an instance of noncommitment as possible…

“Lucky for me you never tried to pick me up.”