I shivered a little and pulled the blanket tighter around myself as I tried to nod off to sleep as I was swayed back and forth. The tour bus was lumbering down the dark interstate and the blustery winter night continually swatted it to and fro. Rationally, I knew that the bus driver was an experienced professional with hundreds of thousands of miles under his belt, but I had never been a very good passenger and didn't like giving up control to someone else. Between that unconscious nervousness, the chill coming through the window, and the movement of the bus, I was having a hard time getting any rest.
The lights were dimmed down and most of my fellow riders were out cold. When we had pulled out of the parking lot three hours ago, there was music playing from phones, pillows being tossed about, and conversations that competed to be heard over each other. As the bus trundled on, however, the music moved to earbuds, the pillows found their places propping up drowsy bodies, and the conversations eventually died out. There were a few people still awake, but they were sitting quietly and being gently illuminated by the light of their phones. Since I wasn't sleeping anyway, I tossed the blanket to the side and unfolded myself from the thinly-covered seat, taking a moment to stand in the aisle and get my sea legs, as it were. Once I had caught my balance in the swaying bus, I shuffled towards the back where I could use what they had for a rest room and throw a little water on my face.
As I returned from my excursion and began lowering myself into my seat towards the front of the bus, I was surprised to find that I now had a seatmate. The light trace of peach and cherry that lit up my nostrils announced that it was Jenna. She looked up at me with a smile as I collected my blanket from my seat and unceremoniously dumped myself back into the uncomfortable chair. While I began to cover myself up with the blanket again, she leaned closer to me to whisper.
"Having trouble getting some sleep, Mr. Landrum?" was what she asked in a hushed tone.
Jenna was a complicated situation. After a tryst at her homecoming and a crazy night after she conned my nephew out of my address, we had seen each other a few more times, but it wasn't really a romance. We both found the idea of an older man helping this 18 year old experiment with her sexuality to be intensely arousing, which is why she liked calling me Mr. Landrum instead of Dave and I could feel my loins twitch every time she used that husky bedroom voice to say it. Because of the age difference and the way we met, our interaction -- could we call it a relationship? -- was a hidden one that we had, by silent agreement, confined to my house. At this point, we had explored every inch of the master bedroom, the shower, the couch, the dining room, the kitchen, and even the staircase on one particularly desperate afternoon. After homecoming, I had become an expert at coming up with excuses when I was called to be asked to chaperon dances or field trips or help with any of the other projects that I previously would have bent over backwards to find time to do. I felt bad about it, but I knew that being around Jenna like this was a risk.
That risk is what I was thinking about right at that moment. We were on the Senior Trip with which I had no intention of offering to help. But the administrator from my nephew's school had called me at the last minute and caught me in a moment of weakness. Apparently, another student's parent was supposed to be one of the chaperons, but he had contracted pneumonia and wasn't able to go and they were desperate. Since I had no kids of my own and a flexible work schedule, I had a reputation for being available to drop everything and help at the last minute. When the phone rang on the day before the trip, it sounded like it was a real scramble to try to find a replacement male chaperon and I just couldn't say no. The trip was optional, after all, so maybe Jenna wasn't even going to go, I rationalized. But, of course, when I showed up at the school parking lot to load up, there she was. And now she was sitting next to me on the bus.
"Jenna!" I hoarsely whispered at her. "What are you doing up here?"
"Well, I saw that you had gotten up to use the bathroom and figured you were awake. Since I heard that you were in sales," she was now saying loudly enough to be sure to be heard by anyone still awake, "I thought maybe I could ask you some questions about that. I was thinking that might be an interesting career option for me when I get out of college."
She wanted to talk about career options? My fear subsided a little bit as she talked since it certainly wouldn't be untoward for me to be seen giving mentorship and advice. Over the last few months I had discovered that Jenna not only had the book smarts to be near the top of her class, but she also had a really good sense of the world. We had spent a couple nights by the fire where we sat and just talked and tried to solve the world's problems.
"Yeah, I'm a rep for a medical devices outfit," I whispered back. "I'd be happy to tell you how I got my start and what kinds of things you might want to explore in college. We should probably keep our voices down, though, since people are sleeping."
"Mr. Landrum, don't you think there are things I could explore before I got to college?" she whispered. At the word "explore" there was a slight tug on my blanket and I felt a hand moving across my thigh. The gears in my brain started crashing into each other as I realized that I was right the first time. She hadn't come up here for conversation at all. It was the second time she had ambushed me in public. My eyes got big as I stared a warning at her; this was hardly the time or the place!
