It was an accident. Really, it was. Putting my hand on her leg? I was just trying to adjust myself, make myself less uncomfortable in the back of the packed shuttle bus, squeezed in as I was between two strangers. And when her head snapped towards me, I grimaced, bracing myself to be called out as a creep, to be slapped in the face, to be punched in the gut.
But when she grabbed my wrist and pushed my hand back down, biting her lip and blushing, I had to pretend to cough to cover my gasp.
It was a cheap airport transfer, you know the kind. Twenty bucks for door-to-door service, a price that can’t be beat when you’re like me, trying to see the world on a shoestring. What they don’t tell you is that what would be a half-hour direct drive is really a four hour jaunt all across creation. I was near first aboard, and as more and more people piled onto the shuttle, the seats filled.
By the time the woman and her friend got on, and the rest of us passengers pretended to ignore their conversation about which seats to pick, they had no other option but to sit apart.