Buddy

Esther had liked Buddy for a while, but never actually talked to him. Instead, she would just have a crush on him from afar. After more time, Buddy tells Esther that he is going to stop at her college sometimes to say hi to her. Esther likes him a lot because when he mentions that he has a date, she lies that she has one too. But what actually ends up happening is that Buddy asks her to the Yale prom. At the beginning, she liked him so much and thought he was very smart and “pure.”
In one of the first mentions of Buddy, Esther mentions that he was stupid enough to have an affair with a waitress from the cape. So, we know that she was upset by this. But what she was really upset by was how Buddy always acted so innocent, when he really wasn’t. Buddy had slept with this waitress for 10 weeks, and Esther had never seen a man naked before Buddy. One day, she asked him if he had ever slept with anyone. Esther thought Buddy was pure that he was going to respond he would wait until marriage. But instead he admitted to sleeping with this woman for months. She was very upset by this because he had never acted in such a way that Esther would have guessed this was the case. She was mad that he had always called her sexy and said she was so good looking, but in fact she had never slept with anyone but he had. She wanted Buddy to think that she was experienced when in reality she was not.