The Story of Us - By Susan Wiggs Page 0,4

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 him boldly.

With my friends’ protests growing fainter in my ears, I put on a blue denim shirt and my grubby Adidas sneakers. I always used to wear Adidas because, unofficially, the name is an acronym for All Day I Dream About Sex. Which, as the oldest living virgin in my sorority house, I pretty much did.

Steve Bennett probably realized I’d never been on the back of a motorcycle before. He was kind enough not to ask, but my inexperience was pretty obvious. I mean, I fumbled with the spare helmet, unsure as to how to put it on. I couldn’t figure out the footrests until he showed me, and I wasn’t even sure which part of the seat to straddle.

Riding with someone, anyone, on a motorcycle is a strange situation of forced intimacy. Our pelvises fit together like spoons, and my bare legs were snuggled next to his muscular thighs. At first, I put my hands demurely on either side of his waist.

“You’re going to need to hold on a lot tighter than that,” he said and pulled my hands all the way around his thick, hard torso.

Finally, he turned on the motor. I felt the jolt of power course through me, and I clasped him even tighter.

“Ready?” he yelled over the sound of the motor.

“Ready.”

The bike rolled off its kickstand as my sorority sisters stood in the roadway, calling warnings I couldn’t hear and wouldn’t have heeded even if I could.

Chapter Six

When I rode into Edenville on the back of Steve Bennett’s Harley, I felt like