Insatiable

The day had been taking the piss since nine twenty-three that morning, which was specific enough that I could still remember the exact time because that was when a man from Wirral had explained my own job to me for eleven minutes without once allowing me to finish a sentence.

By half five I had the sort of headache that sat behind my eyes and made every fluorescent light in Liverpool feel personally offensive. I’d spent most of the afternoon smiling into a headset while people who had ignored three letters, two emails and a voicemail discovered that their problem was now apparently urgent, and by the time I got out of the office I’d decided there were only three things I wanted from the evening: something cold to drink, something hot to eat and something capable of getting the day out of my body.

The last one was proving the most interesting.

I caught the bus home because I always caught the bus home. I didn’t have a car and had never particularly wanted one. Between insurance, petrol, parking and the general misery of having to find somewhere to put the bloody thing, I’d rather spend the money on something I actually enjoyed. Match tickets. Drinks. Clothes. A bra that made my tits look magnificent without pretending they belonged to somebody twenty years younger. Important things.

The bus was warm in that stale end-of-day way public transport gets when half the city has finished work at once. Somebody had opened a window three rows ahead, which meant a thin current of warm July air moved through the smell of deodorant, fabric softener, old upholstery and whatever somebody at the back had bought from Greggs. I took a seat on the left, dropped my bag between my feet and leaned my head against the glass for about three seconds before remembering that bus windows are filthy and I had only washed my hair that morning.

Wonderful.

I sat up again.

My blouse had stuck slightly between my shoulder blades. My bra had been comfortable at eight that morning and was now conducting a small campaign against my ribs. My feet hurt. One of my colleagues had asked, as I was leaving, whether I had anything nice planned for the evening, and I had said no, probably just something for tea and an early night. That had been true when I said it. Mostly.

By then the day was sitting in me physically. My jaw kept tightening without permission. My shoulders felt too high. I was too warm under the blouse and every few minutes I shifted because no position quite settled me. The restless, prickly charge had been building since lunch and had nowhere useful to go yet.

I could deal with it at home. Shower. Food. Maybe a glass of wine. The drawer beside the bed if I still felt like it. I had managed my own moods for forty-six years and did not require a committee.

The bus stopped again and three people got off. Five got on. I moved my knees as a shopping trolley was dragged past me and nearly took out my shin.

That was when I noticed the blue shirt.

Not the man first. The shirt.

Mid-blue, sleeves rolled twice, slightly darker beneath the arms because the day had been warm and he was human. Nothing fitted within an inch of its life. Nothing fashionable enough to suggest he’d spent Saturday afternoon being advised by a twenty-year-old in a shop with music too loud to think. Just a decent shirt on a broad enough man, maybe early fifties, maybe a little older, with grey beginning properly at the temples and a stomach that sat comfortably over his belt.

Nice forearms.

Very nice forearms, actually.

He was standing at first, one hand around the pole near the doors, and when the bus lurched away from the stop his fingers tightened without fuss. Big hands. Short nails. A watch that looked used rather than displayed. No gym veins, no moisturised catalogue perfection. Just a man’s hand holding on to a bus because the driver had apparently been trained by somebody who hated standing passengers.

Then his left hand moved and I saw the ring. Gold, plain, worn enough to have belonged there for years.

I noticed it. By then I had already noticed the forearms, the hands, the soft stomach under the shirt and the complete absence of anything polished about him.

I looked away before he could catch me looking, which of course meant I immediately became aware of him in the reflection of the window. I could have been watching the weather, the traffic or the woman across the aisle trying to stop her toddler licking the rail. Instead I was using a dirty bus window as surveillance equipment because a middle-aged man had become more interesting than the journey home.

I gave myself a quiet mental bollocking and checked my phone.

Two messages from Dani. One from Gabi. A supermarket offer I had no memory of signing up for. I opened Dani’s first.

She wanted to know if I had any milk.

Of course she did. Two doors down and still apparently unable to maintain a functional relationship with dairy products.

I told her I had about half a pint and she could have some if she was desperate, then opened Gabi’s message.

Long day?

I smiled despite myself.

She still knew. Two years since she’d left and she could apparently detect an office-wide shitshow through the atmosphere.

I typed: Biblical.

Then, after half a second: Considering crime.

Her reply came before I’d locked the screen.

Finally.

I snorted.

The man in the blue shirt looked over.

Not dramatically. No cinematic meeting of eyes. He just glanced because I’d made a noise, and I happened to be looking up at the same moment.

His face was better than I’d expected, which sounds awful but was true. He had lines beside his eyes, a nose that had probably been broken or at least hit hard at some point, and a mouth that looked as though it smiled more often than it sulked. He met my eyes for a second, looked away, then came back briefly enough that either of us could still have pretended it meant nothing.

I looked down at my phone again.

Oh, mate.

The restless charge that had been following me since lunch had changed register. My shoulders were still tight and my feet still hurt, but my attention had narrowed until I was suddenly much less interested in getting home than I had been five minutes earlier.

I’m horny.

There were looks you recognised because you had given them yourself: the quick check, the return, the fraction too long before good manners reasserted themselves.

He had looked at my face first, which I appreciated.

His eyes dropped later.

Also appreciated.

I was wearing an ordinary work blouse, cream with a V-neck that showed precisely as much cleavage as I considered acceptable when being paid to speak politely to idiots. My work bras were built for support and discretion rather than entertainment, but there were limits to what engineering could do with the amount of breast I had been issued. If a man was determined to notice them, I wasn’t going to start apologising on behalf of gravity.

He noticed.

Then he made a reasonable effort not to notice again.

Admirable.

Completely fucking unsuccessful.

The bus moved on.

For the next ten minutes nothing happened, which was probably why it became interesting.

He got a seat when an older woman stood to leave. I stopped pretending I wasn’t aware of him. He stopped pretending quite so hard too. Not staring. Not smiling like an idiot. Just the occasional look when one of us thought the other was occupied.

At one point he took his phone out and a photograph flashed across the screen before he angled it towards himself. Woman. Two teenagers, maybe. Holiday somewhere sunny. I only saw it because I happened to be looking past him when the screen lit.

There was the ring again when he scrolled, and the little curl low in my stomach sharpened.

I saw the woman and the teenagers, registered them, and went back to the man sitting across the aisle. The photograph told me almost nothing. His hand, his forearm, the way he kept checking whether I was looking and the fact that I was still looking told me considerably more about the only situation I was actually in.

The bus stopped hard enough to pitch everybody forward. His hand shot out to brace against the seat in front and I watched his forearm tighten.

Fuck, yes.

That landed lower than the earlier looks had. I crossed one leg over the other, less because I needed to than because suddenly I was aware of exactly how I was sitting. His eyes flicked down and back up. I almost laughed.

A woman was allowed to notice forearms without immediately organising an incident. I was also allowed to admit that the possibility of an incident had become considerably more entertaining.

I could have gone home. In fact, I fully intended to. Bootle was not going anywhere. Dani would steal my milk. I’d make something easy for tea. I’d shower off the office and find a more reliable method of taking the edge off.

Perfectly sensible.

Then the bus hit the next stop and Blue Shirt stood.

My stop wasn’t for another six minutes.

He looked towards the doors, then back at me. It was only a look, useless as evidence and more than enough for my body, which had already made itself very clear by then.

I watched him step off. The doors stayed open.

I want him.

Oh, for fuck’s sake.

I grabbed my bag and got off the bus.

The doors closed behind me with the smug finality of a decision made.

He was ten yards ahead when he realised I’d followed. He stopped beside the shelter and turned, and for a second we both stood there with traffic passing behind us and absolutely no dignified explanation available.

I could have said I’d got off at the wrong stop.

He could have pretended not to understand.

Neither of us bothered.

He smiled first. Small, surprised, a little disbelieving.

I liked that more than I would have liked confidence.

He said something about thinking my stop was further on. His voice was lower than I’d expected, local enough without making a performance of it.

I told him it was.

That made him laugh.

There was a pub across the road, the kind with dark windows and three tables outside, and he glanced towards it before asking, carefully enough that I could have refused without either of us having to be embarrassed, whether I fancied a drink.

I looked at the time.

Six seventeen.

Dani could survive without milk for another half hour.

One drink, I told him.

Not because I had suddenly become coy. Because sometimes one drink is how two people agree to spend another twenty minutes establishing whether the thing they both think is happening is actually happening.

The pub was cool and nearly empty. He bought lager. I had wine because if I was going to derail my own commute I could at least have something cold in a proper glass. We stood at the end of the bar rather than taking a table.

He told me almost nothing useful about himself, which suited me perfectly. I learned that he worked somewhere south of the city, that he had been in town for a meeting and that the bus was not his normal route because his car was in a garage. He learned that I worked in customer service and had reached the point in the day where I might start biting people.

That was enough biography for anybody.

He kept glancing at my mouth when I spoke.

I kept glancing at the ring when he lifted his glass.

He noticed that too.

His thumb moved over it once, absent-mindedly or not. I couldn’t tell.

I didn’t need to.

Nothing grand happened in the pub. He stood slightly closer after he returned from the bar with a second drink I had not asked for. I told him I wasn’t having another; he apologised and drank it himself. That made me like him more. Whatever existed between us was doing perfectly well without a confession or a discussion of his marriage, thank Christ.

Outside, somebody dropped a crate behind the bar and the crash made us both look towards the sound. When I looked back he was watching me again.

This time neither of us looked away.

My pulse gave one hard thud.

Yes.

He asked if I was sure.

I asked what about.

That made him laugh again, softer this time.

Then we stopped pretending there was any point finishing the conversation.

We went out the side door rather than the front.

There was a narrow yard behind the pub with two wheelie bins, a stack of empty crates and a brick wall that had been painted white once and given up. The evening light still reached it, but only just. He glanced back towards the door once, then at me.

I set my bag down against the wall.

That was all the ceremony either of us needed.

He stepped in and kissed me. Properly this time. No testing the water. His mouth was warm and tasted of lager and the day, and I answered him the same way because I was done with the looking and the almosts. One of his hands found my waist. The other stayed braced against the brick beside my head as if he still expected somebody to walk out and catch us.

I liked that.

I slid my hands up under the blue shirt and found the heat of his skin. Soft at the middle, solid at the sides. He made a small sound into my mouth when my fingers went lower. I undid his belt myself. The metal was warm from his body. Zip. The practical business of getting what I wanted without turning it into a performance.

He was already hard when I got my hand around him. Thick enough to fill my grip properly, skin hot, the head already slick. I stroked him once and watched his face change. The careful man from the bus disappeared for a second. What replaced him was simpler and better.

He pushed my blouse up. Not roughly. Just enough. My work bra was still doing its best under the circumstances. He looked at the amount of me spilling over the top of it and made another sound that was almost a laugh.

“Christ.”

I took that as the compliment it was.

His hand went under the bra. Big, warm, a bit clumsy with the volume of what he found. I arched into it because it felt good and because I wanted the day out of my body more than I wanted elegance. He rolled my nipple between finger and thumb and I felt the jolt go straight down.

I squeezed him harder in answer.

He swore under his breath and fumbled my skirt up. Fingers between my legs, over the tights first, then under when he realised that wasn’t getting him anywhere useful. I was already wet enough that the first proper touch made me shift my feet wider without thinking about it.

“Here?” he asked.

“Yes.”

That was the entire negotiation.

He turned me so my back was to the wall. I braced one hand against the brick. The other stayed around him, guiding. He pushed my tights and knickers down just far enough. The air on bare skin was a shock. Then the head of him found me and he pushed in with one steady thrust that took the last of the day’s tension and replaced it with something much more useful.

I made a noise I would not have made on the bus.

He held still for a second, breathing hard against my shoulder, then started to move. Short, deep strokes. Quick enough that I was very aware of how little time we had, with no room for anything resembling romance. The brick was rough under my palm. His belt buckle kept catching against my hip. Somewhere on the other side of the wall a car stereo thumped and then faded.

I reached back and pulled him closer by the shirt. The fabric bunched in my fist. He thrust harder. The wet sound of it was unmistakable in the quiet yard. I could feel every inch of him and the exact place where the day finally started to leave my body.

He came first.

I felt the pulse of it, the sudden heat, the way his whole body locked for a second against my back. He kept moving through it, shorter now, and the extra slick was enough. I pushed back onto him and finished with my forehead against the cool brick, biting down on the sound because even I had limits in a pub yard.

For a few seconds neither of us moved.

Then he eased out carefully. I felt the warm slide of it down the inside of my thigh and thought, with perfect clarity, that I was going to have to deal with that before I got back on a bus.

He was already tucking himself away, slightly pink in the face, mouth pressed into a line that kept threatening to become a grin. The blue shirt had a dark, unmistakable stain across the lower front where he’d been pressed against me. Cum and whatever else we’d managed between us.

I looked at it and felt a small, private smile start.

He followed my gaze, saw the mark, and swore again, softer this time.

I pulled my tights up, smoothed my skirt and straightened my blouse as best I could. The bra was doing its job again, more or less. My bag was still against the wall where I’d left it.

Once I stepped back into the evening air, I noticed the change properly. My shoulders had finally dropped. The headache behind my eyes had thinned to almost nothing. My thighs felt slightly unsteady, and between them everything was warm, tender and impossible to forget when I walked. The cool air finding the damp skin at the back of my neck made me shiver.

I picked up my bag and checked the time. The next bus was due in eleven minutes.

I found that out standing on the pavement with my phone in one hand and my blouse sitting slightly differently than it had when I left work.

Blue Stained Shirt had gone the other way after a brief, slightly sheepish smile that made him look younger for about three seconds. We had not exchanged numbers. He had told me his first name at some point, I thought, but by then I had already filed him under something more useful.

Blue Stained Shirt.

Gabi would understand immediately.

I opened our messages.

Still alive? she had sent twenty minutes earlier.

I typed: Unfortunately.

Then deleted it.

Typed: Better now.

Deleted that too.

What I finally sent was: Missed my bus.

Three dots appeared almost at once.

Of course you did.

I laughed out loud and an elderly man at the stop looked at me as if I were simple.

Fair enough.

The next bus arrived two minutes late. I got on, tapped in and took a seat by the window, this time remembering not to put my head against it. The city carried on around me exactly as it had before. Traffic. People finishing work. Somebody arguing quietly on a phone. A teenager eating chips from a paper tray. Nothing had changed except I no longer wanted to strangle the next person who asked me to clarify something already written in twelve-point font.

My body felt pleasantly loose beneath my work clothes. My headache had retreated to something manageable. I became aware that I was hungry.

There we are.

Civilisation restored.

I checked what I had in the flat. Eggs. Bread. Half a bag of salad that had reached the stage where eating it would count as an act of optimism. Cheese. Probably enough for an omelette if I could be bothered, toast if I couldn’t.

Dani messaged again.

Milk???

Three question marks. Apparently the crisis had escalated.

I told her to go in when she got home. She had a spare key because I had learned very quickly that living two doors from Dani Brooke meant privacy was less a locked door than a negotiated settlement.

She replied with a heart and then, because she was Dani, asked why I was still not home.

Bus.

Technically true.

I put my phone away before she could begin an investigation.

Outside, the light still had that long summer-evening quality that made six forty feel earlier than it was. I sat more carefully than I had on the first bus, aware of a pleasant tenderness between my legs and the faint pull in my thighs when I shifted. My bra still annoyed me, my feet still hurt, but my jaw had unclenched somewhere behind the pub and stayed that way.

We rolled through familiar streets towards Bootle while shops, takeaways, side roads and bus stops passed the window. My thoughts wandered back once to the blue shirt, the ring and the look on his face when I’d got off behind him.

Not his name.

I still couldn’t remember his name.

That was probably for the best. Names came with the dangerous suggestion that you ought to do something with them. Remember birthdays. Search Facebook. Ask what they did at weekends.

Blue Stained Shirt required nothing from me except accurate filing.

By the time I reached my stop, the day had shrunk back into proportion. It had been irritating, not tragic. My job would still be there tomorrow. The people who ignored their emails would continue ignoring their emails, and somebody would almost certainly tell me they had been a customer for twelve years as though tenure granted access to a secret legal system.

I had an omelette to make, a shower to have and a neighbour currently committing dairy theft in my kitchen.

I got off the bus, adjusted the strap of my bag and started towards the flats.

My phone buzzed before I reached the entrance.

Gabi.

Well?

I smiled.

Tomorrow, I typed.

Then I went home.