What I Imagine When a Stranger Sits Down Beside Me

My name is Renata, and I have a habit I’ve never told anyone about. Every afternoon, when I finish up at the stationery shop where I work and get on the seven o’clock bus, I let my mind drift to somewhere I would never go with my body. It’s always the same scene, and I repeat it the way someone rereads a worn-out book.

The bus is packed at that hour. People are going home with dull eyes, earbuds in, their phones lighting up their faces. I sit by the window, rest my temple against the cold glass, and watch the city go by. And then it begins.

In my fantasy, someone sits down beside me. I never give him a completely clear face; he’s more the idea of a man than any specific man. I know he’s tall because he takes up more seat than he should, and that he smells good, of something clean and slightly bitter. He doesn’t look at me. He looks straight ahead, like everyone else. But there’s something about the way his thigh ends up a centimeter from mine that changes everything. In the fantasy, sooner or later, that thigh presses against mine, and an ownerless hand slips under my skirt and opens my cunt with two fingers while no one is looking.

I’ve never been with anyone. At twenty-eight, I’m still what they called, lowering their voices, a decent girl back home. Not out of conviction, but out of fear, clumsiness, and having let the moments pass me by. And maybe that’s why my imagination has become so precise: what I don’t experience, I invent with obsessive detail. In my bed, with the door closed, I touch myself thinking about cocks I’ve never seen, mouths that have never sucked my tits, other men’s come sliding down my belly.

That October afternoon, however, something went off script.

***

The bus pulled away with its usual jolt. I was in my seat, by the window, my coat folded across my knees and my mind already running on autopilot. I had begun imagining, almost by reflex, when someone dropped into the empty seat beside me.

I didn’t look. That’s the rule of the game: don’t look, let your imagination fill in the gaps. But I felt his weight, the brush of a sleeve against my arm, that clean, bitter scent I’d thought I’d invented. My heart gave an absurd thump, as if I’d been caught thinking out loud.

Out of the corner of my eye I saw a hand resting on his thigh. A large hand, with long fingers and a plain watch on the wrist. It did nothing. It stayed there, still, while the bus stopped at one stop and pulled away again. But I could no longer concentrate on the city passing outside the window.

Don’t be ridiculous, I told myself. He’s a tired man going home, just like you.

The problem was that my body hadn’t read that warning. I felt heat rising up my neck, my nipples hardening against my bra, a warm dampness soaking my panties without permission. The dull pressure between my legs had nothing to do with the reality of the bus and everything to do with the scene I’d been rehearsing for months. I slowly squeezed my thighs together, as if that could hide my cunt throbbing beneath my skirt.

And then he spoke. Very softly, without turning his head, looking straight ahead as the rules I thought I’d invented by myself required.

—You’ve been holding your breath for three stops —he said—. Are you all right?

I was left not knowing what to say. I felt my face burning. I could have said yes, that I was fine, put in my earbuds, and ended the matter. In real life, that was what I would always have done. But something about the coincidence between what I imagined and what was happening pushed me not to pull away.

—I’m fine —I murmured—. I was just distracted.

—Distracted —he repeated, and there was a small smile in the way he said it—. I get distracted on this bus too. You start looking out the window and end up anywhere.

I didn’t know whether he meant it suggestively or whether that was me, putting a double meaning on everything. I turned my head just slightly. He was around forty, with a short beard and calm brown eyes that didn’t fit with the turmoil I was feeling. He wasn’t the faceless man from my fantasy. He was someone real, with a crease between his brows and a badly knotted scarf, and that made it much worse.

***

The bus got bogged down in a traffic jam near the bridge. The lights of the stationary cars stained the interior red. Resigned to the wait, people settled in. And the hand that had been resting still on his thigh moved, just barely, until the back of it brushed the edge of my folded coat.

—If I’m bothering you, I’ll move —he said quietly—. Just say so.

There was my way out. The polite question that allowed me to become the decent girl from back home again, the one who didn’t look, the one who only imagined. I opened my mouth to thank him and ask him to move.

—You’re not bothering me —was what came out.

I said it looking straight ahead, just like him, both our eyes fixed on the back of the passenger in front. And I sensed, more than saw, his hand stop pretending it was there by chance. It settled on my knee, over the fabric, with a firmness that left my throat dry.

Nothing was happening that a stranger couldn’t apologize for as an accident. A hand on a knee, on a dark bus, in an endless traffic jam. But I felt each of his fingers as if they were marking me, and my cunt clenched on its own every time the tip of his thumb moved a millimeter over my stocking.

—What were you thinking about? —he asked—. Before, when you were holding your breath.

The truth was, I almost made something up. Said I was thinking about work, dinner, anything gray and safe. But the traffic jam, the dimness, and months of imagining in silence loosened my tongue.

—This —I said, and my own voice sounded strange to me—. I was thinking about someone sitting down beside me and guessing what I want without my having to say it.

I heard him let out his breath slowly. His hand moved up a little, just far enough to pass from the kneecap to the inner curve of my thigh, still over my skirt.

—And what do you want? —he said—. You tell me this time. I don’t want to guess and get it wrong.

***

No one had ever asked me what I wanted. In my head, the faceless man always knew everything, fucked me without questions, spared me the embarrassment of putting desire into words. The fact that this one, the man with the badly knotted scarf, left the decision to me made it harder and, at the same time, more mine.

I lowered my voice until it was almost only breath.

—I want you to keep going —I said—. Slowly. I want no one to notice. I want you to put your hand under my skirt and find out how wet I am.

I heard him swallow. His hand obeyed. It moved beneath the hem of my skirt, warm fingers against my skin, and stopped high on my thigh as if asking for another permission, which I granted by opening my knees just slightly. I kept my eyes forward, my breathing measured, pretending to the entire bus that I was just a tired woman waiting for the traffic jam to clear.

Inside, it was something else entirely. When his fingers reached the thin fabric of my panties and found them soaked, stuck to my cunt as if they’d been wetted with warm water, I heard him hold back a sound in his throat.

—Fuck —he whispered—. You’re dripping. All this from thinking about me?

—From thinking about someone —I replied, biting my lip—. Now it’s because of you.

He didn’t take off my panties. He stroked me through them, with a slowness that was almost cruel, pressing the soaked fabric against my cunt’s lips, drawing circles that forced me to dig my nails into my coat so I wouldn’t give myself away. Every time the bus moved a yard and braked again, the jolt pushed him against me and his middle finger sank a little farther between my folds through the cotton.

—Look at me —he said—. Just for a second.

I turned my head. And holding his gaze while his hand continued moving between my legs, on a bus full of people who saw nothing, was more intimate than anything I had ever imagined alone. In my fantasy there had never been eyes. Now there were, calm and brown, looking at me as if they knew exactly what my cunt was like at that moment: swollen, wet, throbbing beneath two foreign fingers.

—If you want me to stop, say so —he repeated, and his fingers stopped, suspended over my clitoris wrapped in fabric.

—Don’t stop —I said, feeling my voice tremble—. Please. Put it inside me. I want to feel you inside.

***

He pulled my panties aside with two fingers, drawing them to one side with a calm skill that made me think this wasn’t the first time he’d done something like it. The warm air of the bus touched my naked cunt for one second before his hand returned. The direct contact, skin against skin, made me press my lips together to keep from letting out a moan that had risen all the way to my palate.

His middle finger moved slowly over me, from bottom to top, parting my lips, sliding through my own wetness. It stopped on my clitoris and pressed it lightly with the fingertip, a touch so precise that my entire belly contracted. Then it moved down again, found the entrance to my cunt, and pushed in, an inch, two, until his entire finger sank inside me.

I bit the inside of my cheek. I was so tight, so closed up from years of it, that I felt his finger forcing its way between my walls as if he were breaking me in. He noticed. He stayed still for a moment, letting me breathe, then began to move it, in and out, slowly, with a rhythm that forced me to squeeze my thighs against his wrist.

—You’re so tight —he murmured against my ear—. As if it were your first time.

—It is —I said, and even I didn’t know why I was telling a stranger on a bus.

He stopped for a second. I felt his finger, still inside me, press against my walls with a new tenderness. Then he began moving again, more slowly, more carefully, pulling his finger out to the tip and sinking it back in to the knuckle.

—Then I’m going to make you come like this —he whispered—. Without fucking you. With my hand. Right here, in front of everyone, and no one will find out. Can you be a good girl and keep quiet?

I nodded, unable to speak. He added a second finger. The two of them opened me from inside, and I had to rest my forehead against the cold window and close my eyes so I wouldn’t scream. The city remained stuck outside, red and still, indifferent. Inside, his fingers searched for a spot on the roof of my cunt and found it with a dull insistence that made my legs tremble.

His thumb settled on my clitoris. Two fingers inside, moving in and out, his thumb drawing wet circles outside, and his mouth an inch from my ear, telling me things only I could hear.

—Squeeze —he murmured—. Squeeze your cunt around my fingers. That’s it. Now imagine it’s my cock. Imagine I’m thrusting it all the way inside you, right here, against the window, with this bus full of people in front of us.

I imagined it. All the fantasy of those months suddenly concentrated in two foreign fingers. My cunt clenched on its own, as if he really were thrusting it into me. He noticed and smiled against my hair.

—That’s it —he murmured—. Let go. No one knows. Only me. Come in my hand, Renata.

I didn’t even wonder how he knew my name. Maybe I’d told him without realizing it, or maybe I hadn’t. At that moment, it didn’t matter. His fingers struck the exact spot three or four more times, his thumb pressing my clitoris in the same rhythm, and I let go. The orgasm rose from my cunt in a long, silent wave that I had to swallow whole, biting my lip until I drew blood, my body rigid in the seat so no one would notice how my walls clenched around his fingers, again and again, soaking his hand.

It was far more intense than any ending I had invented for myself, precisely because I hadn’t invented it. It was happening. A stranger had two fingers buried deep in my cunt on a crowded bus, and I was coming, soaking his wrist, while I stared at a red streetlamp on the other side of the glass.

When the wave passed, his fingers stayed still inside me for one second longer, letting me feel the last tremors. Then they slid out slowly, with a wet sound muffled by the bus engine. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw him bring his glistening fingers to his lips and suck them one by one, never taking his eyes off the road ahead, as if it were the most natural thing in the world. He pulled my panties back into place, smoothed my skirt with almost tender care, and returned his hand to his own thigh, once again the innocent hand from the beginning.

The traffic jam began to clear. The bus moved forward. Reality returned as if nothing had happened.

—My stop is next —he said, no longer looking at me, his voice once again that of any ordinary stranger.

I didn’t know what to say. I had a thousand questions, and none of them fit on a bus. He stood, adjusted his badly knotted scarf, and, as he passed me on his way to the door, bent just enough for only me to hear him.

—I’ll be coming back at seven tomorrow too —he said—. In case someday you stop imagining it and want me to fuck you for real.

He got off. I watched him cross the street through the lights, put his hands in his pockets—the same hand that had been inside me, now inside an ordinary coat—and disappear around an ordinary corner. The bus pulled away again. I stayed there with my temple pressed to the glass, my cunt still throbbing beneath my soaked panties, knowing two things.

The first was that that afternoon, my months-old fantasy had finally become a memory.

The second was that the next day, at seven, I would be in the window seat again. And this time, perhaps, I wouldn’t settle for having his fingers inside me.