The Emma and Bobbie Stories

As Bobbie went up the escalator to the boarding lounges she looked back to see Emma standing below her, on the other side of the security gates. Usually it was her best friend and lover going up and away, on an assignment interstate, while she stayed behind and watched her go. She saw Emma wave, forlorn, by herself. It wasn't right. The long fall of Emma's hair caught a glint of sunlight from the high windows, almost a halo. Bobbie swallowed, shook her head, and with a final wave, she turned to walk into the wide open space of the upper concourse. Her eyes were misty, so she wiped them with one hand, pulling her wheeled bag with the other.

"It's always sad, isn't it, leaving someone behind." She heard a quiet voice beside her, and looked up to see an older man looking down, walking beside her. "I couldn't help notice. Are you sisters?"

People always thought that. They looked so similar with their long blonde hair and blue eyes, both little women with lithe, slim figures. Emma's anyway, Bobbie often being mistaken for a teenager. "Yah," she replied, falling into the deceit easily, not wanting to explain anything to anyone, why should she?

"I can see the love in your eyes. That's very sweet."

He was walking faster than she was, his own wheeled bag going click click on the tiled floor, and he moved on ahead. Bobbie followed him with her eyes, observing broad shoulders in a casual jacket. He walked with a smooth glide, with a hint of a slink, like a panther or some other big cat. Bobbie grinned. Whatever made her think of that? As she walked on, she began to curl fingers through her hair. Emma called her kitten, sometimes.

Bobbie smiled. You can dream on the plane, she said to herself, knowing she would, being lulled by the steady moan of the engines and the murmur of movement from the cabin crew. Work was paying, so she was flying business class, not down the back with the restless children and tired parents. She didn't like travelling much, always tried to sleep to make it go quicker.

She stopped at the boarding gate at the end of a queue, ready to scan her ticket. Her tall man was up ahead, half a dozen people in between them. The young woman at the gate suddenly smiled and looked spontaneously sexy. He must have said something to charm her. The queue moved forward, and Bobbie turned her fingers through her hair.

"Thank you ma'am," the woman said. "Down the ramp and go left, for business and first class." She looked at Bobbie, and wore too much makeup, but was attractive in that business-like way that aircraft crew have. Ma'am? Don't be ridiculous. You only said that coz you're programmed. Maybe the business class ticket gave Bobbie away, showing she was older than she looked.

"Thank you," she replied, and her mind suddenly flashed on the woman half naked, her body sprawled on a bed. She blushed, and the other woman saw it, because her eyes opened wider and the corners of her mouth moved up in a tiny, appreciative smile. Bobbie heard the drawl of Emma's voice in her head: if you think it, it shows on your face, you can't hide it. You're signalling, Bobbie, and she saw it.

Bobbie looked down and was suddenly busy with her phone, sliding it into her shoulder bag. "Turn your phone off for take-off," the woman said, to end the encounter or to begin it. Bobbie felt goosebumps down her arm, quick prickles of arousal, or something.

On the plane, she found her seat, Row 6B.

"Can I help you with that bag?" the man asked, getting up from his seat by the window, 6A. "These overhead lockers..." He left it unsaid, that she was a little woman, and even on her tippy toe tips, needed someone's help to stow her bag. Usually she had to ask, people were so oblivious.

"Yes, thank you. It's kind of you to ask."

"I try to be," he said, as he lifted the bag up into the locker. Next to his, Bobbie thought, catching a glimpse of a dark blue bag. "To be kind, I mean."

"I think you must be," she replied. "You made that girl's day, back there."

He smiled back at her. "She looked tired, so I asked, 'Busy day? Nearly over?' 'Yes, you're my last flight,' she replied."

"You gave her a little something, that's for sure." Bobbie blushed again, her own vision of the woman flashing forward into her mind's eye. By now, she was totally conscious she was playing with her hair, looping three coiled strands through her fingers. The man watched her do it, and did his pupils flare in response?

Bobbie sat in her designated seat, as did he. They both buckled their seat belts and stretched out their legs. Bobbie, being more leg than body, was very small next to him, her head only just at his shoulder. They could have been father and daughter, away on a trip to see...

She caught herself going into a dream-like trance, and to stop herself falling she said, "I don't really like flying. I just want to get there, not this bit in between."

"Me neither," he confessed. "I'm much happier back on the ground. When those wheels go 'clunk' and the engines roar. That's when I relax. Back on the ground."

"That's like dancing," Bobbie said. "Flying through the air is easy, it's the landing you gotta get right."

"You're a dancer?"

"Yes. Ballet. I teach now, but I've danced in performance. Still do, sometimes."

"Really?"

Yes, really, and Bobbie began to tell him, and the telling was easy, the story she told him, being told.

After take-off the cabin crew rolled trolleys down the aisle, serving tea, coffee and refreshments. The attendant from the gate stopped right by their row, and Bobbie admired her long thighs and a nicely curved bottom, the woman's skirt taut on her body, the cloth clinging to her ever so slightly rounded belly. The attendant looked down at Bobbie and the man sitting with her, and her eyes lit up with recognition - no doubt reminded of his gentle attention and Bobbie's give-away blush. Bobbie curled her fingers through her hair.

"Tea or coffee, sir?"

"Coffee please, a milk and sugars." Bobbie liked his low voice, with the trace of an Australian accent and somewhere else too, but she couldn't quite figure out where.

"Ma'am?"

Bobbie grinned inside, she could get used to this. "Same," she said, keen now to claim some ownership over him, even to suggest they were a couple, drinking the same drinks, knowing each other's taste. In a travelling sort of a way.

She noticed, or thought she did, that when the woman handed him the cup, there was a deliberate ever such a quick touch of her fingers to his. So quick another woman would notice, but an unobservant man might not.

After the woman and the trolley moved on down the aisle, Bobbie saw him touch his fingers to his cheek, as if to sense a tiny rise in temperature that lingered there.

"She likes you," Bobbie commented, as she stirred sugar into the coffee in her paper cup.

"She does," he replied, looking down at his inquisitor with a lovely crease of a smile in his eyes.

Bobbie suddenly knew, with a sudden intuition, a quick flash of her own witchery, that here was a man who liked women, who liked women very much. A man who was giving her his attention. A man with a confidence in himself to quietly acknowledge, "She does," as if that knowledge was something precious, not something taken for granted, but a truth that... just was.

Bobbie gave him her name, holding her hand out to shake his. "I'm Bobbie," she said, "Bobbie Brown."

"Adam," he gave her the gift back. "Adam Cain. It's lovely to meet you, Bobbie Brown."

When the crew came back up the aisle with the trolley and the black plastic bags for rubbish, the cabin attendant saw them each turned in towards the other, and they could have been lovers. She smiled down at them, and envied the little woman sitting in 6B.

Later, when the cabin lights were dimmed and most of the passengers were dozing, the attendant heard the ping of a call button. She went silently down to the sixth row. She saw the young woman with her head on his shoulder, her face completely hidden behind a fall of long blonde hair. She'd curled her legs up onto the seat and leaned into him. He was reading, the light from above like a tiny spotlight onto the page.

He smiled up at the woman in the aisle. "Could I have an orange juice, please?"

"Certainly sir. Anything else?"

"No, not tonight. Thank you."

She smiled down at him, and although she was tired, her face softened. Another night, then, she thought, with a shiver down her arms. "I'll just be a moment."

When she brought the juice back in a clear plastic cup, she lingered the longest moment she could, before handing him the drink. He took it, and looked up at her, a look straight into her eyes.

"Thank you. Not long now."

She knew he meant, until landing, but it would have been nice if he meant something else. She looked again at the sleeping girl and thought, she looks so tiny and small, curled up there with her head on his shoulder. He could have been her father, after all.

She went back up the aisle to her seat by the galley. "Are you okay, Lisa?" the crew chief asked, seeing a faint flush on her cheeks.

"I'm fine," she replied. No, I'm not. She had no idea what was happening.

When the 'Fasten Seatbelts' sign came on, half an hour before landing, there was a flurry of activity in the cabin, a last putting of books and devices in bags, tray tables up, a last run down the aisle with a bag for the rubbish. Lisa wanted to pause by Row 6, just to see them, but the flight path was bumpy, so she hurried back to her seat and strapped herself in. She realised her nipples were erect, but the cabin was warm, not cold at all. She closed her eyes and laid her head back, and enjoyed the lingering arousal. She was tired, it must have been that. Or the dreaming.

The solid thunk of the wheels descending broke her revery, and she returned to where she was. On the last flight of the night, nearly landing. She looked around, and saw the crew chief staring blankly ahead, like a zombie.

Despite the bumping as they came in, the touchdown was smooth. A delicate one-two touch of the wheels onto the tarmac, then the roar from the engines and the steady slowing down. Adam looked at Bobbie and said, "That's better, being on the ground."

"Yah, you gotta nail that landing! Both me and Emma, we got that ingrained."

During their conversation before Bobbie dropped off to sleep, she'd revealed that Emma was in fact her room-mate, had been a skater when she was younger, and hinted their relationship might have been something more. Adam didn't pry, didn't need to. He'd seen the brightness in Bobbie's eyes as she looked back down the escalator towards Emma, seen the softness of deep love on the girl's face. It was, after all, why he'd spoken to her.

"Let me get your bag down," he said. Bobbie shuffled sideways out of his way, then waited as he got his bag down too. "There, two bags, side by side."

"Nah," said Bobbie, "the aisle isn't wide enough to go side by side, and besides, we ain't getting married." She laughed, and her eyes sparkled with happiness. Talking with Adam had put her in such a good mood. "I mean, not yet, not now. Anyhow." She blushed. "My brain gets in the way! What am I saying?"

Adam laughed with her, cheerful at the idea of this slip of a girl in a wedding dress. "I think I'd be the one giving you away, to be honest."

She reached up and touched his arm with her hand. Just then, the queue in the aisle began to move, and they slowly went forward, Bobbie in front, his comment left behind.

When they got to the aircraft exit, Lisa said, "Goodnight, thank you for flying with us."

"Thank you for looking after us."

"My pleasure, sir, ma'am. Perhaps you'll fly with us again?"

She meant me, not us, but they were gone. She watched as they went up the walkway from the aircraft. The man on the left, pulling his bag with his left hand, the girl on his right. She saw the girl loop her left arm through his, and the way he looked down and smiled. Lisa smiled too, seeing them go. Surely they must have been travelling together, to have such a delightful intimacy?

Outside, at the taxi rank, Adam asked Bobbie, "Where are you staying?"

"At the Palisades, in town."

"That's near mine, I think. Perhaps we could share a cab?"

Bobbie looked up at him. She didn't need to make an appraisal. She'd already decided, some more time with him would be a delight. "Yah. I'll pay though. Otherwise work will wonder what I got up to, if there's no voucher into the city."

"Okay, I can live with that. Tell you what, I'll buy you breakfast in the morning." He paused, and chuckled. "That's not an invitation, by the way. It's far too late for dinner, and we're in different hotels, so I'll meet you. If you've got time in the morning."

"I do," Bobbie replied. "That's a lovely idea. I will. I'll look forward to it. I've got two days full of tax audit, so a breakfast with a gentleman, that'll be nice."

"You sharing, or what?" said the cab driver. He was already out of the car, opening the trunk for their bags.

The taxi dropped Adam off first, as his hotel was a block from Bobbie's, not a long walk in the morning. The driver had given Bobbie a speculative look when Adam said, "Drop me first, at The Fantastic. She's paying." He'd been watching them in the rear view mirror whenever he could, trying to figure out what was going on. At first he thought sugar daddy, but then, wasn't sure. Clearly they were affectionate, the glances she gave him, the bright chime of laughter when he said something. They were sitting, each leaning against their own three-quarter window, with the space of the seat in between them. Not touching, unless in their minds they were touching.

The cabby was pretty good with human dynamics, having seen endless dramas in the back seat, knowing when to open his mouth and when to shut it. He'd seen death, divorces and marriages, even two babies being born. Shoulda been a therapist or a mid-wife, me. But these two, he couldn't quite figure them out. The best he came up with, at the end of the run from the airport, was a father with a vagrant daughter. But even though she was tiny, she didn't seem like anyone's little girl, seemed older than that, with some wisdom. But when the guy got out first, the cabby shook his head. What do I know, anyway?

At the Palisades, Bobbie leaned over the back of the driver's seat to slide her credit card into the reader, and he smelled the fresh scent of apples in her hair. She brushed her hair back to stop it falling, as she poked in the PIN with her forefinger, four quick automatic taps then Enter. She suddenly turned and place a quick kiss on the cabby's cheek.

"I saw you watching. I can't figure it out, either."

Taken by surprise, the cabby got out to take her bag from the trunk. Usually he'd just pop the trunk, let them do it. He lifted the bag up over the lip, then pulled up the handle.

"Here you go, Miss. Have a good night."

"I reckon I'll sleep like a baby. There's the morning, though..." to look forward to.

He watched her as she disappeared into the big rotating doors, a little woman with long blonde hair pulling a travel bag after her. She was tiny, had no woman's shape to her, but oh wow!, he thought, she is sexy. He got back into the car and smelled apples.

* * * *

"Oh my god, Emma, this guy I met on the plane!"

After a long hot shower and wrapping herself in a hotel dressing gown so warm and fluffy that Bobbie looked like a tiny polar bear, she lay on the bed with a complimentary drink from the fridge, and rang Emma.

She told Emma the story, right from the first words he spoke, all the way through to the blown kiss back at her as he went inside the big revolving door at his hotel. She mentioned the tingle on her skin from the brief encounter with the woman at the boarding gate, her assessment of Adam when she said, "She likes you." The way she hooked her arm in his as they left the aircraft and walked up the exit ramp. Even the affectionate kiss on the cheek she gave the cab driver. The only thing she didn't mention, suddenly shy with Emma, was their brief conversation about a wedding dress and Bobbie in it, Adam giving her away.

Emma listened to the bubble and zing in her lover's voice, prompting her when... but no prompts were needed. Bobbie overflowed with excitement, Emma could hear it tumble and spill all the way through the ether.

"I mean, Emma, we even started talking about Argus and his eight eyes, watching everything!"

"What you're saying is, you threw your intelligence at him, and he saw it stick. Sapiosexual encounter, much?"

Bobbie blushed, "Yah. Maybe. But Emma..."

"So you're going to see him again? At breakfast, when he's buying?"

"Yah. What should I do?"

Emma was silent for a long moment. Then she said, "You know how I've still got that business card, with my cell number written on the back? How I lost my nerve that time?"

"Umm, yes..."

"Don't lose your nerve, Bobbie. You should go for it. Him, I mean. This Adam Cain. You can tell me more about him when you get home. But honey, how are you going to sleep? I can hear your mind buzzing from here."

"Yah... that's the second reason I rang you. I want you to, you know... talk to me..."

Bobbie didn't take very long, being tired and aroused, missing Emma. She didn't take very long at all.

* * * *

The next morning Bobbie went down to the hotel dining room and got herself a table by the window, overlooking the street. Outside, the morning rush was well underway, buses, trucks and cars a steady flow, a bustle of pedestrians on the sidewalk.

She felt far more civilised than the night before. After her long call with Emma, Bobbie had slept without dreaming, her body tingling from their sexual release, leaving her contented and sleepy. When she woke, she sent a quick text to Emma, < I'm awake. Goin down for breakfast in ten minutes >

< Gopher it :) > she got back in reply.

She looked across the room and saw Adam coming in from the atrium, seeing his long stride. She stood to catch his attention, and was greeted by a warm smile as he came towards her. She tippy toed up for a kiss, his lips warm on hers for a second.

"Hello, honey, how are you this morning? Slept well, I trust." Adam pulled her chair back, and she sat down, not used to that tiny courtesy. Being a dancer she held herself gracefully, and even though she was only a little woman, Bobbie had a presence, an aura, that made her seem taller. Her long, golden blonde hair was tied back in a simple ponytail, nearly down to her waist. Her eyes were sparkling bright, the clearest bright blue of a high summer sky.

"Like the proverbial baby," she replied, blushing as she remembered who he was, the unspoken invitation, and Emma's voice the night before. "Ready for a busy girl's breakfast." She reached out to touch his hand, the tip of her fingers against his fingertips. Her hand was much smaller than his.

"Hungry then? Let's eat." They got up and went over to the buffet, where they each piled up a plate. "My god, Bobbie, where are you going to put that lot?" Adam was astonished at the size of her helping: bacon, eggs, toast, mushrooms.

"I've got the fastest metabolism," she replied. "I turn food into heat. There's barely an ounce of fat on my body. I mean, I sink when I'm in water, I don't float." She looked down at herself, looked at Adam, and grinned. "Hope you like women with tiny tits!" She blushed. "Oops..."

"TMI?" He laughed, and tucked into his own plate with gusto. "I'm bloody hungry, too!"

How does he do that, Bobbie thought, letting me flirt and not make a fool of myself? He obviously heard what I said, but didn't even blink, gave nothing away. Emma would slap me!

"Like some coffee?" Adam caught the eye of a server, who came across with two cups and a glass jug full of coffee.