A Girl on the Bus Pt. 07

"Adam," Delilah's voice on the phone was in my ear, the memory of her naked beauty in my head: the little gold cross between her breasts lying on a tiny bed of freckles. I'd counted each one, there were twelve. "I can't do this. I'd never thought I could do without people."

I never thought I could do without you.

"Can we go shopping?" she asked. "I need some groceries and I'm sure you do too."

I did: milk and bread, fruit and vegetables. A small basket of groceries, not much. Luckily, I had plenty of toilet roll as I had a habit from my mother to always pay attention to specials, and had bought two big packs a month earlier, before the run on the shelves. Another jar of honey too, would be nice.

I remembered the taste of Delilah. Her honey was darker, bees landing on red velvet roses, her lips a dark pink. In the morning light two months ago I'd finally seen the colour of her nipples, big dark-brown circles on her breasts with a small darker nub at each centre, when she lay back and looked at me. God, those eyes. The way she looked at me like she did that first time, on the bus. Her slightly crooked teeth, her smile. Perhaps I loved her. I didn't know. I knew longing, that's for sure. Maybe I even knew lust, or couldn't tell the difference in the warm light of morning.

Take me again, Adam, love me twice. She didn't love me, Delilah, but she'd taken me into her house, she'd welcomed me into her body, she'd let me sleep by her side. We still met from time to time on the bus, each with our own timetables; but late meetings at work meant we didn't see each other every day, or even every week. We weren't committing to each other, nor committed, but we were still commuting, on and off, into each other's lives. It was all very gentle and slow, two people becoming more intimate, becoming quieter together.

We weren't rushing. Because of that, our sex was the same, slow and gentle, neither of us in a hurry. We both got to know each other's body very well, and slowly we were finding what was inside us, what made our bodies work with the other. She'd discovered that place, just inside my hip, where a touch on my skin made me tremble; and I discovered a smooth place in the hollow of her thigh where she nearly died. That's what she sighed, anyway. Adam, I'm dying. Do that again.

We were both insular, both alone with ourselves, and when we invited each other in, our love was gentle and slow. Perhaps she did love me. I didn't know.

"I'll meet you in the car park, outside Coles, about three."

The car park was a quarter full, cars parked with a space in between, as if they too might be contagious. I turned the engine of my car off, the tick, tick, tick of the cooling block quite loud in the empty space. I stood on a small pathway waiting, and after a few minutes I saw Delilah's little car, dark blue, move slowly up an adjacent bay. I raised my arm in greeting and the car's indicator flicked, on off, on off. Delilah was such a careful driver, it was automatic. Some habits never changed.

She pulled up on the other side of the roadway, turned off the engine and got out. Her striped blue and white skirt rippled beautifully as she turned and I knew she'd worn it just for me, the skirt she'd worn the day it rained and the lights went out. Like a late summer breeze she walked towards me and stopped, the requisite distance away. Some habits had to change.

I couldn't reach out, not until we'd taken more care. It didn't matter - I was used to seeing her from a distance, travelling apart on the bus. She was still very beautiful, even in a suburban car park on a late summer day, standing a metre and a half away. Distance didn't dull her.

"Adam," she said in her low husky voice. "How have you been? Working from home these very changed days? I thought I could do it, but sometimes I get so very sad, by myself."

"Me too," I said. "I make myself follow a routine. Even shopping, I write myself a list so I can be quick."

"Yes, I do that. I go anti-clockwise around the aisles so I know where everything is, and save the fresh things till last."

"Oh no. I go clockwise. We'd meet in the middle."

"No," said Delilah, "that won't do. I'll read my list from the bottom, so I can walk ahead of you." She smiled, looking at me with her candid appraisal. "I know you like the sight of my bottom."

She turned, and on the pathway ahead of me I watched her delectable sway as she walked towards the shopping mall. Ten metres up the path, Delilah looked over her shoulder to make sure I was looking, a cheeky smile on her face. As she walked, she deliberately bunched up one side of the skirt in her hand to show me the top of her stocking, the pale skin at the top of her thigh.

She let her skirt drop as she went into the mall, the automatic doors sliding open long enough for me to follow, without them closing first. Delilah always did wear beautiful clothes, and the memory of her swaying breasts under a soft woollen jumper jumped into my head, as she came down the stairs in her house.

Ahead of me, she took a paper towel from her bag and picked up a red plastic basket, the paper between the handle and her fingers. She pushed against the gate with her hip and entered the super-market. Delilah turned left to go clockwise.

On the floor of each aisle, isolation zones were marked with red lines, a pair of feet painted right in the centre of the square. At the entry to each aisle and each open space, red words on white signs asked shoppers to keep their distance, 'Please be patient and respect everyone's space.'

Delilah walked ahead of me and stopped in front of the garlic and onions, brown and white, and a single tray of red onions with their flamboyant purple and red patterns for twice the price. She stood looking, as if she couldn't make up her mind. She made a play of looking at her list, glancing at me as if I was a stranger, and she slowly placed a hand inside her collar as if it was a subconscious thing she might do when thinking. She adjusted her bra-strap as any woman might when she was uncomfortable, to pull the strap up and slide it sideways, to adjust the weight of her breasts. The thin strap was pale blue, the colour of the late summer sky outside.

I didn't really need onions, so I watched her do it, saw how the curve of her breast rose slightly up. The deliberate way she did it, ignoring me now, just a stranger... my cock felt heavy in my pants. With an exploratory squeeze of my core muscles, I made myself pulse twice. I waited, and squeezed two times more.

Delilah eventually chose three red onions, her fingers still on her neck having got my attention. She moved to where vegetables were kept cooler so they didn't perish. I stepped into her space and chose two brown onions, dropping them into my basket, even though I didn't really need them. She was by the mushrooms now and crouched down to see them on the bottom shelf, and I knew under her spread skirt her sex would be opening, the rounded bulbous head of the mushrooms quite obvious.

Standing up, Delilah took two steps to the right to inspect the zucchinis. They were long, some narrow ended, others quite rounded, many different sizes like a handful of penises, only green. She looked back at me, down the aisle to the left, and at first held my eyes then slowly drifted her look down my body to my groin. She held her eyes there for a moment, then nodded twice as if confirming her memory was true. She selected a single zucchini, the length and thickness of my erect prick, only green.

Delilah's eyes sparkled with glee as she looked across to see me watching. She stroked the vegetable, just the once, her long fingers sliding off the end. She dropped it into her basket. Good god, am I jealous of a vegetable? Or was it a promise?

She moved up the aisle to the fruit - pomegranates, peaches and apples: fruit which, when split open, looked like cunts. She grinned to herself and smiled wickedly back at me, and dropped a hand of baby bananas, five fingers, into her basket. Delilah was preparing a feast. I pretended to look at apples and chose a glossy red one whose juice would drip from my lip when I bit it. Delilah's skirt flared as she turned quickly to the meat counter, where she selected two small medallions, perfect little circles of meat. I dropped spring onions into my basket, together with some snow peas.

Turning in to the jams and spreads aisle, where the bread was, further down, Delilah went to the second zone marked on the floor. She put her basket down, then turned around to face me. I stood in the centre of my square, she stood in hers, and we looked at each other. Down at the farthest end of the aisle, an old woman was staring at bread.

With one hand Delilah pulled up the hem of the skirt, just as she'd done earlier, showing me her long slender legs. With her other hand she deftly and quickly undid the clips on her garter straps, unclipping the stocking. She did the same on the other side, then let the skirt drop, smoothing it over her bottom with her hand. Sweet fuck, I wanted her to keep doing what she was doing, teasing and tormenting me. I'd watch her through windows, if she wanted me to.

She put a jar of marmalade into her basket. Delilah had said, one day, that she didn't like marmalade. I'd replied that I did, especially a dark, thick cut. Her jar was the deepest, darkest, thickest orange, almost brown, and would be perfect with sour-dough toast in the morning.

When I got down to the bread section, the sour-dough had sold out, so I bought a loaf of thick café toast instead. It would be delicious with thick, melted butter and Delilah's orange marmalade, with coffee on a Sunday morning, looking out over a small garden.

By this time, Delilah had gone up the next aisle, and when I turned into it, she was already three zones up. She put a single finger to her lip, ssshh, stop there. Once again her basket was down on the floor. She looked at me with her still, steady appraisal, the corners of her eyes creased with a smile. This time, she put both hands up under her skirt, crossed over and I could see them high up. She shimmied, and brought her hands down. She delicately stepped out of a lacy froth of cloth, leaving her knickers on the floor.

"Would you pick those up for me, as you go by," she said, bending to pick up her basket. She stepped into the next zone, and I stooped where she'd been standing and brought the scanty cloth up to my face like a mask. I breathed the scent of her in, and by now my cock felt heavy and thick.

Ahead of me, Delilah put a foot on the bottom step of a small set of steps left by a packer, and reached up high to get two tins from the top shelf. Her skirt clung to the shape of her bottom, her thighs, and when she stepped down with the two tins, I could see how the cloth clung with static to the contours of her mound and belly when she faced me. "I needed tomatoes," she said, "but they weren't on my list." They weren't on mine, either.

In the next aisle, by the soups, Delilah turned again to face me. She methodically placed her basket on the floor and stood with her feet a foot or so apart, ignoring the marking on the floor which showed two painted footprints close together. I knew the gap between her legs - standing like that it would be wider. Wide enough that I could cup her sex in my palm, if she were naked, and if I were closer to her.

Delilah undid two buttons on her blouse, and somehow, as only women know how to do, reached around behind her back, up under her blouse, and unclipped the strap of her bra. Then, and I have no idea how women do it but they do, she extracted one arm from inside the loop, then the other, pulling the flimsy cups down inside her sleeve. Like her panties, she dropped the garment to the floor for me to collect.

As she straightened herself, I could see the dark shadows of Delilah's big nipples behind her blouse, those tight nubs pressing up against the fabric. My cock was thick now, pushing its shape against my jeans. Anyone looking would have seen my semi hard-on and seen the sway of her breasts and her tight nipples. They'd wonder if we were fucking, because in this aisle, we almost were. I wondered if she'd come by the time we got to the frozen veg, on the other side of the store.

"I should be wet," she said. I wasn't sure if she meant her blouse, like the night in the rain and clinging to her breasts, or within herself right before me.

"I should be inside you," I replied.

"I'd like that," said Delilah. "Should we do it?"

"Not here," I said, and Delilah burst into laughter.

"In aisle four?"

She looked at me with a conspiracy of glances. "I must finish my shopping first. I need milk."

"I want butter."

Delilah turned back to look at me. "Do you, Adam? What for?" Her look was one of quiet contemplation, as if a new idea had just entered her head. She smoothed her hand down the cloth of her skirt, over the swell of her backside. She'd never hinted at that before.

At the cash register Delilah went on ahead, placing her groceries on the little conveyor belt. I stood waiting behind her, back behind another red line on the floor. All I wanted to do was lift her hair away from her neck and kiss her there, my lips warm on her skin. Six weeks ago, she'd have taken my hand and turned to me, but now, she spoke to the check-out girl who scanned and weighed her groceries, wearing purple gloves. Delilah packed her own bag.

"Follow me home," she said. "Park out the front."

I placed my basket on the conveyor belt, and the girl methodically took each item and scanned it or weighed it and placed it into my bag. She looked down at the last items, Delilah's underwear, which I'd placed at the bottom of the basket. The girl looked at me, and whilst I could see she was tired, I could also see she was intrigued.

"I don't think we sell those here."

"I don't think you do, either. They're the lady's, she left them behind." I nodded in Delilah's direction as she turned towards the exit. The girl stepped away from her cash register and took a long look at Delilah leaving.

"Is that what you do, when you get older? God, who'd have thought that, even these days." She looked down at the lingerie, wistfully. "I don't have any knickers like that. Or a bra. You'd better take them, give them back."

"I will. And honey, when all this is over, spoil yourself. Buy some gorgeous lingerie, like she does. Nobody need know but you."

"God no, I couldn't do that."

"You could. Wear them to work under your uniform. Your secret. Nobody knows!" I tapped the side of my nose with a finger. "Now, how much is all that?"

The girl blushed, but punched up the total, and I pay-waved it.

"What were you doing?" asked Delilah, when I caught up with her.

"Flirting with the checkout girl. Your lingerie. She didn't charge it."

Delilah laughed. "I can imagine. She'd have been charmed, just like I was. But Adam, she's far too young. You mustn't do it again. I might get jealous of the young, pretty girls."

"Anyway," I added, quickly absorbing what Delilah had said, however lightly she'd said it, "she couldn't have charged it. There's barely enough cloth for a scan code label. And yes, she was far too young."

"Don't be sad, Adam. You don't need a pretty little thing." She turned to her car, her soft breasts shifting as she moved, making it quite clear that her woman's figure was so much better than a pretty young girl's. "You must follow me home, Adam, and I will cook. We can do that, just you and me, these days?"

"We can, yes. How long have you been indoors, away from people?"

"Except for times like this, going shopping? Since three weeks, nearly, the last time I was in the city, in my office. A long time, anyway. And you?"

"About the same. We went to two shifts a month ago, two teams of staff. And now, all but a few, we're all working from home."

We looked at each other, realising what we were both saying.

"If we wash all over with soap, very thoroughly, and..." Delilah concluded, for herself.

"... and we hold our breath and don't cough," I jokingly finished, my part of the bargain that would take us over the red line marked on the floor.

"We don't use condoms either," she mused. "We're adults and take risks, and we trust. Is there a difference?"

"The difference is everybody else. If we've kept our distance from people..." We were standing two metres apart, in the car park, "... if we've both got it, or one of us, we'd be sick by now. If we even knew."

"I'm not sure," Delilah said, "but I can still cook us dinner. And we can be together, even if we're apart. Would you like that?"

"I would. I'll follow you, Delilah. I'm sure we'll think of something."

In our convoy of two cars we drove to Delilah's little apartment. She disappeared around the back where she'd said there was a private parking space, and I parked my car on the rumbling patterned bricks out the front. By the time I got to the door of Delilah's place it was open, and she welcomed me inside.

By the door, she had a small bottle of hand-wash and a box of tissues. "It's to wipe the door handle down, just in case. But you're the first person to come inside, and if you don't touch it, the door handle... it's just me, to worry about."

"I had an idea, driving over. We can play, but not touch. I've thought how we can do it."

"Like you knowing I'm naked under these clothes, naughtiness like that?"

"Yes, naughtiness like that. I've figured out what we can do, to touch, to watch."

"Yes. Watching. We've done that a lot already, haven't we?" Delilah looked at me steadily, and I responded with a thickening cock. She was naked under her clothes and we both knew that. She came into my space, but didn't touch my face. Instead, she reached her hand down to my groin and pressed her hand against my hard cock, her palm cupping the heat.

"I like it, you getting hard for me." She let me go, and pointed to the stairs. "Let me get my gown. You can have the first shower and put my scent all around you, with my gown." She smiled at me. "As you did our first time, after the storm."

"You won't have anything of mine, to smell me."

"I won't need cloth, Adam, to smell your sex. I think we will be okay, making pleasure this new way. Even talking about it..."

She was right, just talking about it was turning me on. A lot. Delilah naked under her clothes? That was worth undressing for. And to watch her undress.

We made our way upstairs to the bathroom, and Delilah got a clean towel out from a cupboard. In the bathroom, she stood by the door and watched me undress. Her gaze was steady; she wasn't ashamed of her desire, nor her interest in my body.

"I like that about you, Adam, the way you undress, the way you place yourself before me. It's honest. Your cock, it's honest too." She looked down at my centre, my cock hanging heavy against my thigh. "Soft and hard. It's a, what do you say? A moody thing? I am much steadier, I think." Her gaze indeed was steady, and I was exposed before it. "But you don't hide, Adam. Your desire, it's... very fierce. Is that right? Strong."

"I'm not sure about strong. Hopeless, maybe."

She laughed with delight. "I don't think hopeless is right. I think you are a strong, quiet man, Adam. But in my room? I am... But go, have your shower. I'll get you my gown."

I turned on the taps and held my hand under the shower head until the water ran hot. I stepped under the shower and proceeded to lather myself with a faint scented soap. Delilah came back into the bathroom with the gown which she draped over a rail. She stood again by the door, watching me.

As she watched she placed a hand inside her blouse and caressed a nipple into hardness, pulling the nub up between a finger and thumb. She came forward and pressed her hand against the glass door between us, splaying her fingers wide. I placed my fingertips on the glass, echoing hers for a moment, then turned away to rinse the soap from my skin.