“Are you going down for a nap?” I ask, amused.
“Mmm, just getting comfy. Time for a little snuggle.” Hescooches in even more and slides his arm across my lap so it rests on my thigh.
I tilt my head and rest my cheek on the top of his head, inhaling his hair. He smells like cedar today. I close my eyes and let myself float in his aura.
After a few minutes he tiptoes his hand off my leg to stroke the place on my wrist where my pulse is quickening. It feels just to the left of ticklish, giving me goose bumps. Then his hand wanders along the bottom hem of my shirt, his fingertips grazing the skin underneath.
The parts of me that were drowsy moments before are now wide awake, enlivened, my nerve endings tracking the touch of his fingers like a helicopter searchlight tracking a car chase.
All the while, he looks as unmoving as a dead body to anyone viewing us from outside our blanket retreat, his head so heavy and still on my chest that even I am having trouble believing that it’s attached to the curious hand exploring my torso. His caress is fully under my shirt now, moving along the edge of my bra until he finds a gap. When he brushes my breast, I gasp audibly, then quickly cough in a pathetic attempt to cover it up. I look around, but no one seems to notice. Across the aisle, Amanda is fully engrossed in a movie on her phone, and the window seat next to her is empty. Periodically, a Nerf football launches over my head from the back of the bus to somewhere midway up the aisle and back again.
We are in a parallel universe, a bubble unto ourselves, able to observe the activity around us but somehow invisible. My eyesare resting on Amanda’s placid face when Richard’s fingers start to trace circles, and the opposing impact of my two senses makes my cheeks hot.
But why am I trying to hide my connection with Richard from Amanda, anyway? Maybe this is exactly what she needs to witness to brush her back, so she’ll go and find herself a different boy to drive around and have cutesy nicknames with. When Richard starts to tease my skin, stroking and then stopping and then stroking again with more intensity, I allow myself to giggle audibly. “Richard!” I say in a perfect stop/don’t stop sort of way. He looks up at me, grinning, then resumes his position. I sneak a look over at Amanda, but there’s still no outward sign that she’s paying attention to us. Man, she is like a Jedi or something. I decide to give up on my agenda with her for now, to put her out of my mind. I don’t want anything to interfere with the deliciousness of this moment.
Richard has settled into a rhythm now; he’s swirling his fingertips around and even throwing in a light pinch here and there. But it’s when he pulls back and barely touches me that I wriggle with elation.
My other breast feels decidedly neglected; there’s a strange desire for symmetry tugging at me, but the way our limbs are intertwined Richard would have to have an extra joint to reach it. Instead, his hand wanders from under my shirt to down between my legs. I’m sitting with my thighs pressed together, there’s really nowhere for his hand to go, and it feels too embarrassingly obvious to just spread my legs. But his hand encouragesme, pressing gently outward on one of my thighs until it slides to the side enough for his fingers to be able to trace all the way up the inner seam of my pants. At first, I’m not really sure how much he can accomplish with his hand when there is a layer of thick denim in between him and my skin, but everything has felt so good this far that I’m not about to discourage him. He seems to instinctively find the thinnest spot in the fabric right next to the seam. He leisurely rubs the spot with the tip of his fingernail. Somehow he’s exactly on top of where I must have about a trillion and one nerve endings. My body recognizes this as a match that sparks a forest fire.
The striving nature of it fills my body, and I realize this is going to go all the way for me, right here on the bus, in a public place. If anyone noticed, it would be the most mortifying moment of my life, and yet I can’t bear to stop it—I still want him to keep going. I also want to grab him, throw him on the ground, and tear his clothes off, but that is unfortunately off-limits with Amanda within arm’s reach. I just have to keep my breathing nice and even, and keep the pleasure growl lurking at the back of my throat in check.
And then it happens. The feeling of perfection spreads outward from my core, followed by total contentment. Anything that was tense now relaxes. The change causes Richard to lift his head to look at me. I feel so good, and Richard looks so proud of himself, that I burst out laughing.
“You seem refreshed from our little nap,” he says with a smile.
“So refreshed,” I say. “Positively invigorated. I should makenaps a part of my daily routine.” I stand up to stretch and an arcing Nerf ball hits me on the back of the head. The universe never seems to skip an opportunity to keep me humble.
“I’ve got it!” I call, as if I haven’t just had a revelatory sexual experience and was instead waiting around to be part of this fun travel game. I grab the ball from where it has tumbled by my feet. Jeff claps his hands and holds them up high to show he’s ready, and I toss it to him at the back of the bus.
“Nice spiral, Hatts!” he says after he catches it, then immediately launches it again toward the front. I slide back into my seat.
“You’re a woman of many talents,” says Richard.
“I might say the same about you,” I say, giggling, then, “I mean, except for the woman part.”
“Such a talent,” he repeats. “Although you do seem to get hit in the head a lot.”
“That’s my secret. It keeps the brain stimulated.”
“Ah, so that’s what I’ve been doing wrong. I have so much to learn from you,” he murmurs, picking up my hand, kissing the center of my palm and locating nerve endings I was entirely unaware I had. For a moment, I think he’s going to start round two of canoodling under the blanket, but instead he takes a 180-degree turn.
“And now, I believe it is time for snacks!” he announces. It seems like he’s said it louder then he needed to until I realize he has not one or two bags of goodies in his backpack, but three. One for himself, one for me, and one for—sigh—Amanda. As I watch her find the gummy bears inside and hold them up likea trophy, I try to pep talk myself again. Better to share food than to share the kissing, right? My pretzels taste like sawdust. I want to snatch the bag away from her, to announce my unilateral decision that her bizarre privileged status with Richard has now been permanently suspended, and she should feel free to walk right off this bus and out of our lives forever. But that would make me look paranoid and insecure when how I want to look is like I’ve never had a petty thought in my whole life, and certainly not one about Amanda. Like she’s barely on my radar.
“Want mine?” I say, reaching across Richard’s lap to hold out the candy to her. You can have all the gummy bears, and I’ll have the guy, sound fair?
“Seriously?” She takes the bag and holds it to her cheek like she’s cuddling with it. “Don’t you like them?”
“I do, I’m just in the mood for something else, I guess,” I say, trying to catch Richard’s eye. But he’s looking at her.
“Remember that giant gummy bear you got at Six Flags?” he says to her.
She rolls her eyes. “I remember the vet bill when Archie ate half of it! Oh my God, my parents are still mad about that.”
They keep reminiscing, which means there is precisely no place for me in the conversation. I look out the window, trying to act comfortable, like I want to be left alone with my own thoughts. Suddenly, I find myself imagining what this trip would have been like if Mason were still alive and sitting in the back seat with Jeff right now. Would I even be sitting with Richard then, or would I be in the back, too, laughing with theBeaver Bunch boys? Richard and I wouldn’t have fooled around, that’s for sure, not where Mason could have witnessed it; he would have teased me endlessly. Which then makes me wonder—did Mason get to hook up with anyone before he died? Ever even kiss a girl?
I realize I’m imagining what kind of kisser Mason would be when Richard tucks his hand back into mine. He’s still talking to Amanda while he touches me, which in this single isolated moment is a good thing because it means he doesn’t notice my cheeks burning red as I quickly push the image of Mason’s lips out of my mind. Where did that thought come from, anyway? Too many hormones running around inside me after that pleasure-fest, I guess. It’s Richard I want. And I’ve got all weekend to prove that.
Every so often you find out about entire other worlds, worlds you never knew existed but that have been bustling and thriving just beyond the perimeter of your awareness for your whole life. The skiing world is one of these for me. I knew that some people were skiers and I wasn’t, but I had no idea how rounded out the culture was, complete with its own language, costumes, and rituals. And so, so many people.
