The Story of Us - By Susan Wiggs Page 0,7

Star, clinking our frosty mugs together. Then he asked me to dance, and that was a surprise. The men I’d met at college didn’t dance. He did, though. He gave me that spectacular grin and said, “I learned in officer training school.”

Social graces were only one of the many small ways the Navy shaped him. As we got to know each other, I learned more about all the things that came his way through the Navy—a life, a home, a purpose, a sense of belonging. Lacking all of that in his early life, he found it in the service of his country.

I admired his ambition so much. It was one of the first things I loved about him. I never stopped to consider that one person’s ambition might create tensions when there were two people to consider.

But on our first night together, all of that was far from my mind. I was lost in him, and in the dreams that were igniting fireworks in my heart.

Chapter Nine

At the end of our date, Steve drove me home and walked me to the door. We stood together on the front porch, holding hands and facing each other, making small talk in order to put off saying goodbye. I was grateful that my parents no longer waited up for me, and had no fear that they’d be hovering on the other side of the door when I walked inside. That, thank goodness, ended with high school.

I wanted him to kiss me but was too shy to say so. Four years older than me and more experienced than I could possibly know, he wasn’t shy at all. With exquisite delicacy, his hands cupped my face, and a soft darkness fell between us as he leaned down and touched his lips to mine, lightly, with a restrained passion that turned to fire. I forgot to breathe, and grew light-headed with the heat that surged through me.

“I’d better go,” I said, never wanting to leave his arms.

“I’ll call you.”

“Yes,” I said.

When I went inside, there was a light on in the parlor. I was surprised to see that my grandmother was still up, sitting in her chintz-covered chair and watching Johnny Carson on TV.

Gran came to live with us when I was in high school, after Granddaddy died. She had a suite of rooms at the back of the house, and they were cluttered with mementos of her sixty-year marriage. There was a shelf of sepia-toned photographs of her as a young bride, and a series of pictures of my mother and Uncle Kyle, growing up in Edenville. Gran had a collection of thimbles from all the places she’d been—New York City, Hollywood, Miami, Mexico City, Niagara Falls. She had a passion for knitting and the soap opera As the World Turns, and it was no secret that the money in our family came from her. She was the daughter of an oil field roughneck who struck it rich, married a genteel Daughter of the Republic of Texas and became genteel himself. It wasn’t a huge fortune, but enough to allow the next generation to live well in the slow-paced small town world of Edenville.

Despite her old-fashioned ways, my grandmother possessed a deep and subtle wisdom about life. She rarely gave advice or even offered her opinion, but when she did, she was always right.

“Are you okay?” I asked her. “Couldn’t you sleep?”

“I’m fine, Grace,” she said, turning down the TV. “How was your date?”

“Perfect,” I said. “I think I’m already falling for him.”

“Then,” she said with a sparkle in her eye, “what are you waiting for?”

I took my grandmother’s advice to heart and flung myself headlong into this relationship. Was I naively premature to call it a relationship?

Steve and I spent nearly every waking moment together for the rest of the weekend. We went swimming in Eagle Lake and then lay together in the shade of a cypress tree, looking up at the sky through the branches. Later we sat on the wicker divan on my parents’ front porch with Asleep At The Wheel playing on the radio. On Sunday, we went to a pancake breakfast at the firehouse, and my sorority sisters gave him the third degree. Trudy Long, even before she entered law school, had a way of prying information from people.

Thanks to her, I learned that the Navy paid for him to attend Texas A&M, the best school in the state. I learned that he was in training to fly carrier-based aircraft.

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