The rain is dribbling down the windows of the bus. A cold breeze is blowing on me β the bus driver must have the air-conditioning on β and I'm shivering in a short, sleeveless floral dress and sandals. My straw hat is sitting on my lap. Maybe it will shield me from the rain when I get out.
I'm doing this for him. He has a vision of me stepping off a Greyhound bus in the shimmering heat and dust of a one-pub town, and walking towards the car where he sits waiting for me. Then we drive off together to a beach shack where, for two days, we can act like we're a couple.
It's raining and cold, but I'm not going to let that spoil his vision. The bus heaves its way up the road, and I catch sight of a sign. Only 10k to go.
I am always nervous before I see him, but this time I am more nervous than ever before. I hold my hand out in front of me, and can see it shaking. It's nerves as well as cold. This will be our first weekend together.
Two years is supposed to be the honeymoon period for a relationship. After that you fall out of love. Us, we're the other way round. We've been in a relationship for two years, and nowβ¦well, he's become very fond of me. He brings me up in conversations with other people so he can hear my name, he turns up to places I might be so he can watch me in a group, and he keeps calling up an internet page that has a photo of me so he can stare at it.
Oh, I've done stupider things. I've looked up not just his name on the internet but my first name with his surname. I've held onto a free pen that I picked up once when I was out with him as if it was a present he gave me. But that's me. I'm stupid. I didn't expect him to get like that.
We're not in a real relationship. We're married to other people. We started fucking each other because we both wanted something extra that wouldn't cause any trouble. I felt safe with him, because I knew he wouldn't let it turn into anything more than just fucking. I was so proud of myself for being able to fuck someone without expecting more. Now it has turned into something more, and I'm not sure how I feel. I don't know what I want.
Once he stroked my cheek, and once he called me "little one". Those are the things I think of when I'm lying in bed drifting off to sleep. But when I'm lying in bed fingering myself, I think of his cock in my mouth.
Something will happen this weekend, I know it. We'll find out one way or the other. By the end of the weekend, either we'll never want to see each other again or we'll know that we have to be together.
Suddenly the bus is slowing down and we're here. It is a little shithole of a one-pub town, not shimmering with heat and dust, just grey and miserable in the rain. But his car is there.
I plan to take my time walking from the bus to his car, looking sultry, but I step in a puddle and one of my feet gets muddy. And my short thin dress is quickly soaked, revealing to any inhabitants of the one-pub town who might be watching that I am not wearing any underwear. My nipples, hard from the cold, poke through, and a dark patch of hair between my legs where the wet dress is clinging shows that I am a natural brunette. These strangers will know so much about me. They'll think I'm a shameless hussy, and they'll be right.