We always hated it when it was Martin's turn to drive, though we only said it behind his back. It was about the only bad part of the carpooling situation the five of us had set up. We all took advantage of the corporation's digital bulletin board to find that we all lived in the same town about an hour outside of the city. Gas is expensive as is car upkeep, so sharing the costs of our commutes was just an intelligent thing to do.
The reason why we hated Martin's turn to drive was his compact car's heater only worked intermittently and it was terribly cramped. Four of us met at Martin's car that mid-December evening at 5:30. Joe had called us and said that he was meeting his wife who'd come to pick him up early from work at lunch. That left Martin driving with Earl next to him in the passenger seat. I was lucky. I was in the cramped backseat with the lovely Mindy.
Mindy was the youngest of us all. She was a lovely young wife of one of our town's lawyers. They'd married a year after he graduated law school, and she moved to the town with him. She worked in accounting while I worked in human resources as a recruiter, so we hardly ever saw each other. Even so, we both enjoyed the time we had to talk every morning and during the ride home in the evening. I especially enjoyed it. I found it difficult to date again after a ten-year marriage that ended in a bitter divorce. Her talks were fun and flirtatious and reminded me how fun it could be to have women as friends. The sexual tension made every conversation a nice escape from my otherwise lonely life.
We climbed into the backseat and instantly started teasing each other. We sat in the dim light of the backseat, only made bright every once in awhile by a street light as we drove through the city. I texted her phone, "Maybe that skirt could be a little tighter. Who U tryin 2 impress?"
She smiled at me and answered via text, "Shut up! Maybe those pants could B tighter; esp. around the bulge." I silently laughed without looking at her.
"Maybe it's the company I keep," I texted, referring to her.
"Who? Martin?" she texted back. Ha Ha! She got me on that one.
I looked out the window as we started to leave the metropolitan area into the darker wooded area leading to our town. My state of contemplation was disturbed by the vibrating of my phone.
Her text said, "What? Pouting?
I smiled and texted her back: "Just thinking about that skirt UR wearing. "