"You go to Croweville?" I asked the bus driver.
"Sure do, we'll be there about 2:15. In the a.m.," the driver said pointedly.
"Thanks," I said, my eyes adjusting from the buglight glare of the terminal to the dark interior of the coach. I scanned up and down but every pair of seats had at least one taken, most by dozing older folks or wary-looking migrant workers. There was a somewhat chubby girl about my age, 23 or so, with pulled-back brown hair and a spaghetti-strap purple blouse, sitting looking out the window about halfway back. Better her than some old guy drooling on me, that was for sure.
We nodded to each other as I sat down but it was too dark and quiet in the bus to really strike up a conversation. She looked out the window and I stared into space as the bus pulled out, precisely at 11:35 p.m. as promised. Hopefully I could get some sleep.
An hour later everybody else on the bus seemed to be asleep except the driver (I hoped) and myself. I watched farmland go by the dark, then shifted my gaze down to the girl next to me. As I said, somewhat chubby, but pleasant to check out under the circumstances, there was something kind of sweet about the little bulge of cleavage between her big round breasts, the roll of her tummy, her little chubby fingers with tribal-style rings on each hand, the tattoo on one ankle, the little chubby toes in her flip-flops. From her feet I looked back up at her face-- and her eyes were open, staring at me.
"Busted," she whispered.
"Sorry," I said, my face flushing. "Not much else to do on this bus but look around."
"I'm kind of cold," she whispered, apparently unbothered by what I'd been doing. "Is there a blanket anywhere?"
I looked up the aisle; there was a small stack of them on one seat, unused. I got up and grabbed one quickly, and handed it to her.
She unfolded it and started to pull it over herself, then offered one corner of it to me. "If you're cold too," she said.
"Yeah, a little, I guess," I whispered.
We both scrunched into our seats, kind of but not really facing each other, and she closed her eyes. I sank back into the zoned-but-not-really sleeping state that I'd been in for the last hour.