Write him off.

I got on the bus with Linda, I didn’t know her very well at the time, and wouldn’t normally have chosen to go such a long way with her, if I hadn’t had that screaming fight with Jill, my oldest friend. Jill had gone too far and said too much,  I wanted to hurt her by leaving her in Delhi with the others.

I wasn’t too sure why Linda wanted to go up north, but it seemed like a good idea, and I would get time to fume and prove that Jill was wrong about me becoming boring since I had moved in with S.

We knew the journey North took ages, and the bus was old and almost falling apart, so we set ourselves up near the back with all our stuff crammed in by our legs and got as comfortable as we could. Most of the day was spent getting to know each other better and looking at the Punjab passing by the window. Every now and then the bus would stop for a while at some obscure spot and someone would get on or off, sometimes the bus would be full and then it would empty. As the day wore on the stops seemed further apart, until by the time it was dark we seemed to not be stopping much at all.
The rocking and jolting of the bus had exhausted both of us, but by now it had become almost hypnotic and almost impossible to keep awake.

I remember waking up in this small town, There must have been a factory or something, because loads of workers got on the bus, men and women with all sorts of packages. By the time we drove out the bus was absolutely packed with people, they filled the isle, and every spare inch, some were even on the roof. The next time I woke up, we were still moving, in the dim light I could see that everyone had managed to find a place on the floor of the bus, the snoring signalled that nearly everyone was asleep, I re-arranged myself and went to sleep too.

A while later I half awoke, aware that the person sitting in the isle next to me must have slumped against me and was resting their head on the side of my leg. I think I thought about moving, but there was no room so I decided just to let it go, and began drifting back to sleep.

In a dream I imagined his strong warm hand firmly gripping my calf and opening my legs, deliberately coaxing, it felt gorgeous, I went with it, dreaming on. The hand stroked slowly up the inside of my leg, too slowly. As I slipped out of the dream and remembered where I was, the hand relaxed and stopped, but it definitely was a hand, a warm male hand on my knee, and the weight of a sleeping head on my leg. Just opening my eyes I could make out the man laying against my seat, merged with the mess of other sleepers. This man must have just fallen against me, his touch had triggered my dream, it was a bit strange that his hand was on my jeans, but I was sure he was fast asleep. Besides that was quite a dream I was having, I felt really good and wanted to get back there.

I closed my eyes, every bit of my attention focused on that hand, its warm weight and the way it had made me feel, I leaned my leg towards it and relaxed. Back in my dream nothing, then a tingle shot up my leg when the hand moved again, and I realised I was not dreaming. The man asleep next to me was slowly moving his hand up my leg, gently pulling it towards him, I told myself that he was dreaming too, just like I had been, making love to his girlfriend in his sleep. It turned me on to think that he wasn’t aware of what he was doing, I pretended to sleep, beginning to ache for his hand to move more.

Before long he must have known by the way I was moving in response to him, that I had agreed. He stopped using the jolts of the bus as an excuse for another inch, but we never broke the pretence that we were both asleep, both dreaming, his head in my lap, his hand in my knickers. I came before he touched my skin, and again before the bus stopped and they all got out.

Linda woke up and asked where we were, I pretended to be asleep.

Submitted by anonymous.