Story of Us Read Free

doesn’t anymore and actually, I don’t live there anymore, but…” I paused and admonished myself to quit babbling. “Anyway, our parents live on Alamo Drive, and Buddy’s at home. According to his mother, he’s recovering from an injury. Maybe you know he’s in the U.S. Navy? He was hurt in a flight training accident.”
    Steve Bennett didn’t seem to mind the babbling. In fact, he seemed perfectly happy just standing there, checking me out, and I’m not ashamed to say I liked it.
    I became aware that in the background, my sorority sisters were whispering and giggling, having finally noticed the stranger.
    I didn’t ask him how he knew Buddy, where he’d come from or how long he was staying. None of that mattered to me, and I suppose a part of me was afraid to push. It was like not wanting to awaken from a magical dream for fear of losing it.
    Anyway, I had no idea what lay ahead and I wasn’t about to question fate. All I saw was a man who took my breath away.

Chapter Five
    I was always the good girl in my sorority house. I was the designated driver, the one who made excellent grades and didn’t get caught up in all the passions and dramas of college life. At the end of junior year, RaeLynn had jokingly made a sign for my door that designated me the “Oldest Living Virgin of Delta Delta Delta.”
    My friends thought I had been born well-behaved. I’m sure my parents like to believe it was their training.
    But what nobody knew was that I never was a good girl. I was just waiting for my chance to be bad.
    Steve Bennett was that chance, even though he didn’t know it the first day we met, and even though being bad with him was the best thing that ever happened to me.
    When he said he needed directions to Bud Plawski’s house, I made it sound overly complicated on purpose: take the lake road past the broken rock at the entrance to the Ryder fishing cabins, and head into town on the old farm-to-market road…. As I spoke, I could see him taking it all in, and he probably could have navigated his way through town to Alamo Drive just fine.
    But I was feeling bold and maybe just a little bit bad, so I said, “I could show you right where your friend lives, but I don’t have my car.” I gestured vaguely in the direction of RaeLynn’s convertible.
    I knew what he’d ask. Lord help me, I was hoping he’d ask it.
    “Ma’am, I’d be obliged if you’d show me.”
    “Ma’am” to a twenty-year-old. He was definitely a Texan. “Show you. You mean, ride with you?”
    “Yes, ma’am.”
    He probably expected me to say no. Even though I was more than ready to be bad, I still looked well-behaved on the outside. And he had to know how he looked—big and muscular, clad in all black, riding a Harley Softail. I smiled at him and said that would be fine, and then I went to tell my friends.
    You would have thought I’d told them I was going to start selling my eggs or move to Detroit. They were mortified.
    “You can’t just hop on the back of some guy’s motorcycle, Grace,” RaeLynn said. “It’s not safe.”
    “What if he abducts you?” Trudy demanded.
    Oh, please, I thought. Please let him abduct me.
    “I’ll be fine,” I assured them. “He’s going to see Buddy straight-arrow Plawski, of all people.”
    Not good enough for my girlfriends. They approached Steve Bennett and peppered him with questions, thus learning more from him than I’d managed to extract in my tongue-tied state. He was on a rare two-week leave from the Navy and had ridden all the way from Pensacola just because he felt like it, and because a friend had invited him. I felt foolish for not concluding he was in the Navy as soon as he said he was a friend of Buddy.
    He told my girlfriends he’d ridden all day from Pensacola, Florida to see him. It was a shock to hear that he’d driven straight through, stopping only for a nap at a rest area outside Lafayette, Louisiana. He must be dead tired, I thought.
    “Let’s go,” I said to