“You’re taking a risk taking lifts off strangers,” he rolled his fingers round the steering wheel, glancing away from the road ahead to catch her reaction, “I could be a serial killer.”
She said nothing. Instead she lifted the corner of her lips to expose a row of neat white teeth that led George to ponder briefly on the smoothness of her cheek and the blueness of her eyes.
The road signs glanced by counting down the miles to cities on the route North. Wallowing in her presence, George couldn’t help stealing glances at the folds of her t-shirt hiding the rise of youthful mounds, the slender curve of her thighs, and the fold in continuity where they met encouraging dangerous thoughts. Just looking at her he could believe that the years had been stripped away. That he was an unblemished twenty something basking in innocence like she was, and not a tarnished forty something with a reflection he couldn’t look at without finding something new to hate. Watching her ease into her occupancy, stretching her legs into the passenger seat well and glancing back at him with enquiring eyes, he felt the warm surge again; a minor euphoric turbulence careering around his insides making him forget anything else.