Blonde, well-shaped, medium height, attractive. She exuded an aura of health, fitness, and decency. She was the ultimate girl you took home to meet your mother. The ultimate. He looked at her mouth, and the perfect teeth behind her lips that appeared when she laughed, setting off her bright blue eyes. Her eyes were wide-set and managed to keep her from being actually beautiful, but the total effect was one of glowing health and natural fulfillment.
Ridiculous.
She was laughing musically at a story he'd just told, a shockingly off-color tale of an encounter with a street prostitute who'd jumped into his car when he'd left the passenger door unlocked. Her head tipped back and she displayed a smooth, lovely neck, topped by her perfectly shaped head. Her hair, held in a ponytail of appropriate length, swished across her back. She was conservatively dressed in a youthful way, with a well-fitted, white T-shirt with a small logo on it, and tan shorts from some slightly upscale boutique. She had simple Keds on, white, and she was tan but not too much, figured but not cartoonishly, and pretty but not done up. He noticed a little cross on a discreet chain around her neck, just long enough to usually hide under the neckline, not long enough to dangle between her breasts. She looked like she was going golfing.
Christ, she was wholesome. He had to wonder why she didn't have a boyfriend. He knew she was in night school, in one of his classes, for some wholesome thing like physical therapy or pediatric medicine or something altruistic. He didn't really expect anything less from her, really. She'd put on a white coat and work at a well-appointed clinic, smelling of organic soap and freshness, making everyone jealous of her, particularly because she was so nice she was impossible to hate; for anything. She was extremely nice as well as fresh.
"Like a freshly squeezed glass of orange juice," he thought, weirdly. She could do health food ads. She looked like a fitness magazine cover: good looking, glowing, but not threatening to the grocery store army of women with three kids, not dirty enough to turn on their husbands. She'd finished the bottle of water she'd removed from its carrier on her bike, and looked around behind her at the landscape.
They were in a park, having met up by accident. He'd been out moving around, trying to get some sun after a heavy work week of being under fluorescent lights at his rather pointless job, and taking a break from the crush of homework. He'd been running, and stopped to rest when Carrie had stopped on her bike, recognizing him from a night class at the community college. It was a beautiful day, and they were sitting at a remarkably clean picnic table talking and basically shooting the breeze. He wanted to think the phrase 'shooting the shit' but couldn't manage to associate a vulgar expression with Wholesome Carrie.
"We've been here over an hour," Carrie said.
He started. "Really?" and involuntarily looked around and up at the sky. "Wow."
Carrie stood up, displaying nicely proportioned legs that managed to be both perfect and not quite perfect enough to be model quality. She looked firm and fit and glowed with freshness. Her hair gleamed and shined in the warm sun. She turned, and he watched her butt in the shorts, which managed to be sexy but not trashy.
He muttered, moving his mouth behind closed lips so as not be audible, "Good God."
