deliberately break the contact with his eyes, turning to the window once again. My gaze is unfocused because my senses are all in a major twirl. I can feel his eyes at the back of my head. My head feels warm just by that fact alone. I feel compelled to turn around. He is looking at me like he cannot look anywhere but at me. He smiles suddenly and then ever so lightly raises his index finger, dragging it ever so slightly across my right cheek. My vagina clenches even as my breathing stops for the second he touches me.
Okay, time out. What the hell? What is he doing? And what the fuck am I doing? He is my brother’s best friend for goodness sake. So what if he looks and smells good? So what if his one touch strikes a fire in my belly, producing wet panties like never before? My brother has other friends but I have never felt like this with either one. And they probably never felt like this about me. Well, maybe they did but they knew I was my brother’s sister and that some imaginary line may not be crossed between them and I. He, on the other hand, did not get the memo and so did not know of any line that existed or may not be crossed with me. So he crossed it many times over without any fear of probable consequences. He was saying, “You in pink and smelling like you do is doing things to me, Ms. Sharma.” And I am sure if pink would show on brown, my cheeks would be flaming red.
I keep my eyes away from his. My body has broken into a sweat and so has my vagina. This is not a set of sensations that I am at all familiar with. But god! It feels sensational.
Probably two minutes elapse before I feel his palm cover mine. My head whips around to his, terrified now at this seemingly innocuous display of PDA. I don’t want anyone on the bus to see. It would be so embarrassing if they do because they will talk. They will tell someone who will tell someone and finally someone I know will know what happened in the bus on a certain fateful day. There will be questions, many in fact. And finally the proverbial line in the sand will be drawn, proscribing certain behaviors in public even though it was never meant for the public.
I try to snatch my hand back, but his hold tightens. As I try again to wiggle free from his grip, I see that our hand lock is actually hidden from any public view by his gigantic leather briefcase now sitting on his lap.
The briefcase is serving its camouflaging potential real well in the moment. I stop fidgeting immediately. I let my palm rest in his as he slowly relaxes his hold on me. I now get to touch the fabric of his pants. His thigh feels sinewy, seemingly bunching and hardening as I gently smooth our locked hands over it. I am not sure what else I could do within the permissible parameters of the hand lock.
So I just sit there taking in the warmth of his clasp, now spreading to the crook of my elbow, my armpit, and finally through the area under my breast. I am a little lost around his audacity but welcome the thrills coursing through my nervous system as a result.
He slowly turns my palm inside out to begin making feathery circles with his index finger. I didn’t know that certain nerves in the center of my palm are directly connected to my stomach. One of them explodes at his touch and my breath expels like I have been punched in. I am all sensation and no thought. My brain had stopped doing its work. It had probably short-circuited by now. Did I care? Na! I wanted him to continue doing what he was. But I also wanted this madness to stop. See, short-circuit? Don’t know what I want or what I should want. The lines have been blurred, on the verge of erasure, I would say. I know my stop is approaching. I need to stop him before he starts becoming imaginative in this boring public bus. I need to get off, breathe again, and manage the rest of my day like I would any other day.
The bus conductor announces my stop. I snatch my palm and this time he lets me go. I snatch my bag and prepare to sidle