Susan Wiggs - The Story of Us

Know him? As it happened, I had grown up on the same street as Seymour “Buddy” Plawski, and deemed him the most annoying boy in Hayes County. A year older than me, he was one of those skinny, restless kids who was always getting into trouble in school because he couldn’t sit still. Yet he was fiercely smart and zoomed through the toughest math and science classes Edenville High School had to offer. He once got in trouble for climbing the water tower, not to spray paint “Seniors 1980” like everyone else, but to shoot a homemade rocket at the sky.

We were all shocked when the time came to go to college, and Buddy was offered an appointment to the United States Naval Academy. It was rare in Edenville for a boy to aim himself so high, and we all looked at Buddy through new eyes. On those rare occasions when he did come home for a visit, we didn’t just look, we gawked. He’d bulked up like a bodybuilder, razored his hair in the style of a seasoned recruit. The physical changes were one thing, but it was the change in his demeanor that I always found so dramatic. Although he used to be an awkward boy, he now had confidence, even a swagger, and an air about him that set him apart from ordinary mortals, like a priest, maybe, or an astronaut.

“Yes,” I said. “I know him. He lives on my street, as a matter of fact. I mean, he 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.

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.

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