Haag chronicles how she loved and lost JFK Jr.

By Craig Wilson, USA TODAY

Was Jackie aloof? Not really. Was John F. Kennedy Jr. attentive? Yes, to the point of climbing the side of a brownstone to get into his girlfriend's garret apartment. Would it last? No.

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  By Dana Patrick

  Five-year romance: Christina Haag dated John F. Kennedy Jr. from 1985 to 1990.

By Dana Patrick

Five-year romance: Christina Haag dated John F. Kennedy Jr. from 1985 to 1990.

Actress Christina Haag was JFK Jr.'s girlfriend for five years, from 1985 to 1990, but they had known each other for 15. They grew up in the same preppy Upper East Side neighborhood, traveled in the same social circles and both attended Brown University. Along the way, she fell in love. They even talked baby names. Flynn.

Now Haag, 50, who has never married, has written a memoir about those years. Come to the Edge (Spiegel & Grau, $24) goes on sale today. Some insights:

? A kiss at his mother's house in New Jersey hunt country: "I felt his hand at the small of my back. Then I smelled something. Mint. In our passion, his toothbrush had become entangled in my hair. We looked at each other, realized, and began to laugh. I had toothpaste in my hair and I was happy. I was drunk with it."

? Kennedy's advice when meeting Mom: "Call her Mrs. Onassis. Call her Mrs. Onassis unless she says otherwise." They later became friends and remained in touch after the breakup. Haag called her Jackie.

? Sleeping arrangements at sister Caroline's wedding: "In the years that I was with him, and the many nights I was a guest in his mother's home, this was the only time I was shown to a separate bedroom."

More Kennedys, in bookstores and on TV:

-Caroline Kennedy's She Walks in Beauty: A Woman's JourneyThrough Poems arrives April 5 (Voice).
-The late Sen. Edward Kennedy's best-selling 2009 memoir, True Compass, is due in paperback on April 13 (Twelve).
-Former representative Patrick Kennedy's Coming Clean, about his battle with addiction, arrives Nov. 8 (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt).
-The Kennedys, the controversial eight-part miniseries starring Greg Kinnear and Katie Holmes, begins Sunday on Reelz.

? Kennedy asks to see other women: "By that time he'd met Daryl Hannah. ... When I asked he was evasive. 'We're just friends. She doesn't even live here. And anyway, she has a boyfriend.' "

? Upon hearing of his marriage to Carolyn Bessette: "It had been years since I'd seen him ? not from ill will, but our lives had gone in different directions. Still, when I learned he had gotten married, I was devastated. ... But for a year or so after that, we would meet and there was a sense of possibility in the air."

? The day Kennedy was killed in a plane crash in 1999 at age 38: "I crumpled to the kitchen floor, my back pressed on cabinet knobs."

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