3.27.2003

 

Glancing back at me with a smile one part smirk and three parts suggestion, she bent over to unfasten her sandals, showing me the full length of her legs. Postured like that, her dark blue denim skirt left little to the imagination. Not the tallest of women, I surmised, which would normally make me think that such a bending over to show off her legs would look a little more Adam Sandler movie than late night Cinemax, but this lass managed to pull it off fantastically. In my less mature days, I would have felt the temptation to meet her smirking invitation by dropping the keys I held in my hand and taking a long time to pick them up while glancing not-so-subtlely up her skirt, but as we were standing in line waiting to go through security, I thought such a move might come off as a little improper to the other passengers waiting in line, throwing their laptops into plastic bins and taking off their shoes. Or sandals. So instead I left it at wondering what kind, and color, of underwear she had slipped into that morning.

For as much time as she and I spent together, and as much as I had pondered the answer to that question or other similar ones, I would probably never get to find out unless she told me. Though a passer-by would think she and I had slept together a hundred times by the flirting and the touching, we had never shared more than a kiss at New Years and a too-small sofa bed after a long night of drinking at a friend’s place. For as much innuendo as we always had, the raised eyebrows and the we-don’t-know-if-we’re-serious invitations, nothing had ever come of it but a lot of gulps and sentences loaded with “would” followed but “but…”

Two hours later, probably somewhere over Pueblo, Colorado, I felt the need to stretch, but sitting in the middle seat of a three-seat row on a completely full flight left me little room to move around. She felt it too; the last few months of strain and stress had left both of us with an unhappy tension in our muscles. Heading out to meet our respective sets of friends for a few days of R and R, we both felt the need to relax.

She put down her book – always something trashy – rather suddenly, rolled her neck once and tucked the left side of her hair behind her ear.

“Mmm,” she hummed, shifting her weight so that her left shoulder came closer to mine. She settled her left hand on top of the armrest separating her window seat from me.

“Good book?” I asked.

“Gives me ideas.”

“Oh yeah?” I paused, slowly raising my eyebrows, letting her suck me into the game. “What kind of ideas?”

“Mmm. Tension-releasing ideas.” That smile had returned, full of suggestion and innuendo. With her eyes, she made a directional gesture down, and I shifted my gaze just in time to watch her spread her legs eight inches.

“Tension-releasing?” I asked. I reached down, grabbing the red blanket the airline had left on my seat before I boarded the flight. Meeting her smirk, I placed it on her lap with my right hand, and taking two fingers of my left hand, I slowly slid the edge of her skirt a few inches up her thigh. The smirk on her face got wider. “What kind of ideas?”

“The kind you don’t have the courage for,” she very softly let slip from her lips, leaning back in the seat and spreading the blanket across her lap.

I shifted, rolling my right shoulder into the gap between our seats and placing my lips just next to her earlobe, close enough I thought, that she would feel my exhalations with the micro-thin hairs lining her ear. I slid my left hand under the blanket, letting it come to a rest on her bare knee for just a moment before sliding it a few inches down the inside of her left thigh. Extending my fingers and lifting the palm of my hand off her leg so that the only touch she felt was that of the tips of my fingers, I glanced back up at her, meeting her gaze that had very suddenly lost its smirk.

We stared at each other for a moment. Then the smirk returned, and a slight giggle escaped from her lips. But the sudden contact of the tips of my fingers against the lace of her panties erased that from her face. I held my fingers there, teasing just a little.

The fact that I was serious took a moment to wash over her, and for a moment I could see the indecision on her face. Act on the innuendo, preserve. Completely redefine the structure of a relationship or set it in cement for ever.

She closed her eyes and leaned her head back against the headrest.

I ran my fingers up and down the apex of her thighs, feeling varying lacy patterns and suddenly overwhelmed by the question of her underwear again. My arm hidden under the blanket, her body shielded from the rest of the plane by my back, I wondered if the rest of the passengers could imagine what the two seated in seats 21E and 21F were up to. But as I searched for a place to slip my fingers under the edge of her panties, I found I did not much care to trouble myself with that.

Then I found it. And I felt her do her best to stifle a gasp. From the heat and the ease with which the tips of my fingers slid over, I guessed what part of her trashy novel she had just finished reading. With the tip of my index finger, I drew one small circle before she shifted away.

“We can’t.”

“No one will know.”

“I don’t think I can keep quiet.”

“Try.”

Ever so subtle, I shifted her back into position, legs spread, just enough, blanket across her lap, head supine against the seat behind her, her gaze lost in the sun filtering through the window to her right.

Slow circles at first, just the index finger, round and around the bundle of nerves. Either the tension in her body ached to escape, the book contained more erotic and explicit descriptions that I thought, or the years of innuendo had been a lot more than that. I drew effortless circles as I fingered her.

Two fingers then, slowly and then quickening my pace just a bit before slowing down. Her left hand found my thigh and I felt her digging her fingers into it. Biting her lip. Shuddering.

The blanket in her lap had a strangely rhythmic motion to it. Good thing the movie had everyone transfixed.

She dug her nails in, making me feel as though she had penetrated the fabric of my pants. Building up, building up. Both fingers over the little bump between her legs.

And then. Oh.

So quiet.

Fingers boring through my leg.

Quiet breathing.

I rested my fingers.

She stared out the window. Sighed. Looked back at me.

“I cannot believe you.”

“I know.”