“Let’s go,” she said.
She downed her coffee and I downed mine. I was a lightweight and the caffeine made me feel like I was going to start jumping up and down as waited in the boarding line to check our passes. Sheila walked along behind me even as we boarded the plane, and gave me the window seat. After I tucked my bag into the overhead compartment she did the same and I had to endure being inches away from her bust as she stretched over me to reach the compartment. When she stretched her sweatshirt pulled tight around all her curves and my heart raced even more. Once she dropped into her seat and our arms were rubbing she turned away from the other student sitting in the aisle seat and looked at me. She turned more, until her legs were pressed against mine. It was about five in the morning when the plane finally took off.
I’d never flown before. As the plane leaned too far back and I felt the acceleration in my stomach, she took my trembling hand.
Her voice was soft and sweet as honey. “Hey,” she said. “It’s okay. We’re fine.”
I grabbed her hand with both of mine and squeezed and pressed my eyes shut for the whole ascent, until the plane finally leveled out.
“The first time is always scary, she murmured.”
The woman must have had an obscene tolerance for caffeine. An hour into the flight she was asleep, her head on my shoulder. I kept nodding off, and my head came to rest on hers. I wanted to cry, knowing it was just the cramped quarters that put us together this way and not real affection. I let myself indulge the feeling of her silken hair pressed against my cheek anyway. She didn’t wake up until it was time for the in-flight meal, a breakfast. Shifting to face forward, she sat up as we folded out trays down and ate from the little tray. The eggs were an abomination and the sausage was like rubber. Sheila poached a piece of sausage from my tray and I thought she meant to eat it herself until she held it before my lips. My heart pounding, I ate off her fork. I watched her throat bobbing as she downed a carton of milk and gently dabbed the corners of her mouth with a napkin.
When the food was away she turned to me.
“Breakfast makes me sleepy. I usually skip it.”
We had another nine hours on the plane, so she had time for her rest. Again she turned, twisted in the seat and curled against me and put her head on my shoulder. She reached over me and pulled the window shade down and went to sleep, breathing softly against my neck. I was so tense I could barely move, until finally the gentle motion of the airplane and the constant roar of the engines lulled me back to sleep.
We both woke a few more times during the trip, and chatted. There wasn’t much to talk about. As much as I idolized her, I didn’t want to talk shop. She took out a book and I put on my headphones. I couldn’t keep my eyes off her and I could feel her looking at me when I wasn’t looking at her, like she was trying to catch me. She smiled a secret smile and turned the pages of the bodice ripper she brought to read on the plane, and I couldn’t tell if she was really reading it or not.
After the flight and the grueling passage through customs, factoring in the time change it came out to almost twenty hours. It certainly felt like it. Sheila made all the arrangements in advance, booking a swarm of taxis to take us to the hotel. Of course, I shared with Sheila herself. It was close quarters and we both had to carry a bag on our laps, but she was more at ease than I’d ever seen her. Checking into the hotel consisted of the students milling about while the Sheila did the talking at the counter, chatting with the attendant in fluent, breezy Italian. Then she came over and handed out room assignments. Most of us were four to a room, two per bed, but as it worked out there was an odd number of female students and an odd number of female professors. My heart clenched like a fist in my chest when she looked at me and said,
“You’re with me.”
The hotel was beautiful, but the rooms were smaller than I expected. I dragged my things to the bed by the window and spread the curtains to look out. Rome was amazing, like no city I’d ever seen before. Everything was graceful and alive.
“We should get something to eat.”
I turned around to find Sheila in her underwear, humming to herself as she unpacked her things into the small dresser. While her outfit this morning was all about comfort and coziness on the plane, what she wore under it was pretty much the opposite of that. A lacy black thong so sheer it was almost transparent, deeply scooped in the front so it barely covered anything at all and made it clear that she’d shaved just before we left. The high waistband yanked the thong up so it disappeared between her perky, rounded cheeks. Her bra matched, so sheer I could see the outline of her wide nipples through it, and it was cut for show, not support, deeply cleaved in the middle. Then she stood up, and with only a whisper of a glance towards me, undid the clasp in the front and shrugged out of it. I looked away sharply, but not before I saw a full display of her heavy, gravity-defying breasts swaying as she moved. Then she was stepping out of her underwear.