I sigh and slouch in my seat. It’s been a long day and I’m dying to get home, take my shoes off, and sink deep into my couch while watching mindless television and eating a frozen dinner that will likely give me cancer in a decade or two. Instead, I’m stuck in my little Nissan Sentra on the Clinton City Loop along with thousands of other frustrated assholes in our stupid, road-blocking, exhaust idling vehicles, slowly inching our way back to where we’d come from at the start of the day.

I sit and contemplate what kind of catastrophe could be holding everything up, which idiot or idiots are to blame, and how can we, as a pissed off mob, hold them accountable? If and when I discover the cause of this gridlock as I break through the bottleneck, I know that anything less than flaming wreckage and multiple fatalities is going to feel anti-climactic. I prepare myself for an inevitable and infuriating disappointment, already beginning to feel irritable.

No, no. Everything is fine just as it is. You’re not in danger. You’re safe and sound. Just a little delayed is all. But there’s nothing important waiting for you. Just another boring night to yourself, predictably jerking off to porn. So, relax. Stay grounded. Don’t let your anger take over you. It won’t help, and you know it. You’re okay. Take a look around and see what you can appreciate in the here and now… Even the smallest detail...

I close my eyes and take three deep breaths like Dr. Farenthold taught me. You’re okay... You’re fine... Appreciate…

A horn blasts from behind me, startling me back to reality. A sudden burst of profanity fills the small space inside my car. I look ahead and notice that the car in front of me is crawling forward leaving a large distance between its back bumper and my front one. A car from the lane to the right quickly occupies the empty space. There’s more annoyed honking. I get it. I’m slow. Fuck me! I step quickly on the gas to close the remaining gap and prevent any other cars from cutting in line. Then I have to brake suddenly to avoid running straight into the back of the lane-cutter. The seat belt cuts uncomfortably hard into my chest due to the sudden change in momentum.

“Calm down!” I shout angrily at myself. “Calm. The fuck. Down.”

I yell inarticulately and slam my hand on the steering wheel in frustration. As it turns out, the blow hurts me much more than the steering wheel. I cry out in pain and desperately clutched my palm with the other hand, trying to soothe it. I hope it isn’t broken. Probably not, but the freshly blooming bruise might still put a dent in my single-handed sex life. I take a very deep breath, hold it until I’m nearly ready to pass out, and then slowly exhale, letting my stress flow out with it. It works. A little.

I try distracting myself, messing around with the air conditioning and trying to manually rebalance the sound of the stereo to my liking. REM’s Everybody Hurts comes on. Oh fuck! Not now! I skip ahead to the next song that isn’t going to leave me wet-cheeked and blubbering pathetically behind the wheel: Diet Pepsi by Addison Rae. Yeah, I know it’s kinda creepy for a forty-five year old man to groove along to a song about a girl “losing all my innocence in the back seat,” but the song is a fucking banger as the kids say! I roll down the window and crank up the volume. Soon, I’m bouncing around in my seat, throwing my hands in the air and bobbing my head to the beat. I feel some of my stress fading. Fuck, I love this song! I don’t give a damn how lame I look right now! I’m not ashamed of myself.

Until a car full of college girls with a ubiquitous CSU bumper sticker drifts slowly past. They’re aiming their phones at me, recording my moves, laughing and cheering. I stop what I’m doing and glare at them. They shout for me to continue. I tell them to fuck off. They pout and give me the finger. Bitches. I deliberately slow down even more, letting them creep ahead of me. When they’ve gone two cars past me, I merge into their lane to avoid pulling up to them again the next time the momentum of the lanes shifts. I feel like a complete dickhead. I wish I was James Bond and had a pair of rocket launchers installed under the hood. I forward the song again to whatever comes next in the randomized playlist.

You’re okay... You’re fine... Appreciate… What can I appreciate? I start to make a mental list.

You’re alive and in relatively good health for now. Okay, that’s a start. You’re stuck in your car, but at least you have a car… and a home to go to… and a job that helps you pay for everything. Alright. What else? It’s actually a pretty nice afternoon. The sun’s out, but it’s starting to go down. It’s giving that beautiful sort of sepia tone to the world right now. We’re getting maybe the last warm embrace of summer before colder nights prevail. It’s supposed to be that way all weekend. Maybe I’ll get out and just take a walk around the neighborhood. Haven’t done that in awhile…

I find myself calming. This traffic jam can’t last forever. But the lack of scenery on the Clinton City Loop sure makes it feel like it might. Bored, I begin peering into the windows of the vehicles around me, just like the college girls had done to me. At least I’ve got the courtesy not to film people in their private moments. Fucking Gen whatever fucking letter they want to call themselves. I sigh again. I continue watching the people around me soundlessly passing the time in their vehicles. A fat lady fixes her make up two cars over. A couple of kids are wrestling in the back seat of the SUV directly in front of me. An old guy bickers with his much younger wife or mistress or whatever as I pass their convertible sports car. Most people, though, look simply bored out of their minds. Many have their heads bent as if in prayer, but I’m certain that their god glows blue and requires a monthly data plan.

Examining my rear-view mirror reveals more of the same. At least the woman in the car behind me has an attractive face and nice tits. I watch her as she gazes out her driver’s side window, looking as helplessly bored as anyone else on this road. She’s driving an Acura. It’s silver. That’s about as much as I can say about the vehicle. I’m not a car guy. But I am admiring the driver: The way her auburn hair flashes with ripples of butterscotch as it brushes over her shoulders when she moves her head; the red lipstick that glistens wetly in the afternoon sun; the dusky shade of eye-shadow that perfectly compliments the brown color of her eyes without being overdone, enhancing rather than distracting from her natural beauty. Her eyes are gorgeous... Mysteriously piercing... Her eyes… She’s staring right at me! Fuck!

Panicked, I avert my gaze, looking to both sides of my car for something, anything to look at. Failing that, I stare off into the distance as far as I can see, which is really only a couple of cars ahead of me. Finally, I allow my vision to quickly flicker past the mirror. The brief sight of her eyes remaining fixed on my car registers alarm bells in my mind as I immediately redirect my own sight down to the speedometer. I haven’t broken fifteen miles an hour for the past hour, so I can’t be any more than a third of the way home. However, at the moment, the dial is pinned to zero and my foot lies heavy on the brake.

What are you? Some kind of timid school boy with his first crush? You’re a grown man, for fuck’s sake.

I determinedly lift my eyes back to the mirror hanging from the center of my windshield. She’s still there. Still watching me intently. I keep my gaze fixed on hers, returning her stare with my own. What does she want? Well, she’s got my attention, anyway. She smiles at me. I smile back, though I realize her perspective is limited by the frame of my rear-view mirror. Due to some weird quirk of synchronicity that makes me existentially suspect we’re all just characters in the mind of some talentless amateur hack writer, Billy Idol’s Eyes Without a Face is the next song up on my random playlist.

I watch the woman tuck a strand of hair behind her ear, showing off her long elegant neck in the process. I think how nice it would feel to nestle my face between it and her collarbone, planting quick little butterfly kisses there. She looks like she probably smells really good. As if reading my mind, her hand traces the contours of the neckline of her butter yellow t-shirt, while her eyes observantly remain locked on mine.

She begins to sway in her seat to the rhythm of a song I can’t hear, but it’s probably something slow and sexy and not Billy Idol judging by the way she moves. She closes her eyes for a moment, looking soulfully immersed in her music, embracing the moment, drawing in my gaze. Her fingers comb through her hair. Then she lets her hands drift over her body, over breasts. She opens her eyes again to find mine fixated on her. She smiles again at me and mouths something I can’t make out, but just the expression in her face causes a blush to begin creeping into my cheeks.

I turn in my seat to look out the back window directly at her. She’s there, just the same as she looked in my mirror. She catches my eye and gives me an impatient gesture ordering me to turn around and keep my eyes on the road. Alright... I turn around. Looking out the front windshield, I see that our lane has started moving again. I let the car roll forward all of maybe thirty feet before we come to a stop again.

When I return my eyes to the mirror, hers are already waiting for me. She raises her hand, one finger extended. She’s smiling, but there’s a glint of naughtiness in her eyes. Is she daring me to keep watching? Okay. I nod subtly. Yes, I’m watching. She looks around cautiously. There’s cars all around us, but no one seems all that interested in anything outside of their little personal bubble on wheels. Satisfied, she undoes her seat belt. There’s something tantalizingly rebellious about it that makes me feel excited and dangerous, though it’s unlikely that a deadly car crash is going to happen at this pace.

Keeping her sight trained on my face, she leans forward and reaches behind her. Then she pulls both her arms inside of her t-shirt. She seems to struggle as if in a straight jacket. Then a moment later her arms pop back out. In one hand she’s holding her bra. It’s tan and lacy and looks like it’s of a pretty high quality. Her chest sags a little as her breasts take their natural shape, but not as much as I expected. Her nipples show through her shirt not too subtly. They’re each a prominent little punctuation to cap each soft, full mound. She’s looking at me with a big proud smile. I can see her mouth ‘Ta-da!’ I want to applaud her. I turn half way in my seat and make a demonstration of clapping. My mirror is filled with the image of her laughing, pleased with the response.

I want to give her something back in return for the entertainment. I grab hold of my mirror, tilting it downwards. I hope it’s giving her a good look at my body - as much as possible, anyhow. I’ve been going to the gym a lot. It was one of Dr. Farenthold’s first recommendations when we started therapy: Get more physical exercise and burn off that angry energy. I tilt the mirror back up until I find the woman’s face again. She’s there, watching intently, seemingly greedy for more. Reassured that she hasn’t lost interest, I tilt the mirror back down as far as I can turn it. Then I begin to unbutton the buttons on my shirt. Slowly. One by one until my shirt hangs loosely from my shoulders. I let my hands run across my abs and over my bare chest, flexing my muscles and hoping she’s enjoying the show.

When I finally bring the mirror back to my face, I can see her behind me, watching with her pinky finger gently clamped between her teeth. It’s sexy. She looks fascinated by me. Maybe more. I waggle my eyebrows at her with a flirty challenging smile on my lips, which she can’t see, and in my eyes, which she can.

We seem to study each other for a minute. I conclude that she actually looks a bit like Addison Rae. Not exactly the same, but maybe like Addison’s older sister or a cousin or something. I decide that I’ll refer to her as Madison in my mind… No, Maddy! She looks like a Maddy. I mean, a woman flirting with random strangers in traffic just to pass the time has to be a little mad, don’t they? I grin to myself, a little too impressed with my stupid wordplay. Besides, what does that say about me? After all, it takes two to play this game, doesn’t it? But it’s certainly better than just sitting here being pissed off at everyone around me.

Maddy grins, letting her hand drift slowly caressing her skin from her earlobe down the length of her neck to her shoulder. It continues downward over her chest. Her little finger curves into a claw, catching on the neckline of her shirt. She pulls it down, showing more and more cleavage. At the same time she squeezes her shoulders inward, causing her breasts to press together and pop even further out of her shirt. After a few teasing seconds, the fabric reaches the limit of it’s stretchiness, and springs back to conceal her chest. I watch Maddy giggling behind the wheel.

Feeling like I have to top her. I grab hold of the rear-view mirror. I try to aim it towards my lips, as I suck on my fingers, sliding them seductively in and out of my mouth. After a minute, I hold them up close to the mirror so she can see how wet they are with my saliva. Then, I point the mirror to my chest, and begin damply circling my nipple with just my finger tips.

When I adjust the mirror again to catch sight of Maddy, she’s absolutely laughing her ass off, rocking back and forth in her seat and shaking her head. I can almost hear her shouting, ‘I can’t believe you just did that!’ But I have and now the ball is back in her court. I nod into my mirror at her. The challenge has been set. Will she reciprocate?

Our lane moves again. It almost seems like we’re finally going to start picking up momentum. I feel conflicted. I’m glad to be finally moving, but sad that my little game with my mysterious new friend is coming to an abrupt end. I look back and find her on my tail, almost riding my bumper. She doesn’t want our fun to end either. We accelerate all the way to twenty miles an hour. But then the brake lights come on ahead of me and we come to a stop again. I look back at Maddy and find I don’t completely resent the halt to our brief progress.

Maddy locks eyes with me again, and nods decisively. I can make out her lips mouthing ‘Okay.’ We almost lost each other. We still might at any moment. Even though time has slowed to a crawl on the highway, it’s still working against us. She confidently raises two fingers to her mouth, and sucks them. No, it’s more than that; She’s fucking fellating them! I watch as she moves her head, licking and sucking and kissing her fingers as if they were a cock. She takes them all the way inside her mouth right down to the first knuckles, then pulls them out slowly, completely covered and shiny with her spit. A silvery strand stretches from her bottom lip, breaks and falls against her chin. She smiles at me, brushing it away with the back of her hand.

Watching Maddy has me hard. Fully hard. I adjust my pants to give a little more room to the erection uncomfortably confined within them. I give myself a little squeeze while I’m at it. In my mirror, Maddy’s hand is once again tracing a path down to her breast. But instead of stopping at her nipple, it keeps descending, dropping down below the dashboard. What is she up to? She shifts a little in her seat, leaning forward, then pressing back as she seems focused on whatever she’s doing out of my sight. She slouches down a little, and I can only see her shoulders moving. She closes her eyes, seeming to lose herself in the moment. When she opens them again, she brings her hand up again, holding it up to the windshield for me to see. This time, her fingers are coated in something creamier looking than just her saliva.

“Oh fuck!” I whisper in awe to my empty car.

Maddy looks pleased with whatever response my eyes are showing her. She reaches down again. This time she pulls up the bottom of her shirt. She seems to love the tease, bringing it up to reveal only the beginning under swell of her breasts. My cock twitches, and I try to placate it by massaging it’s length through my pants. Maddy looks around her car again. Finding no eyes but mine on her, she pushes her shirt up a little more. And a little more. Until her nipples pop out from underneath the fabric. They, like me, are completely erect, pointing out from their dark areolae. I wish I could suck them between my lips and feel them warm and firm on my tongue. For that matter, I wish we could pull over to the side of the road and fuck like a pair of wild animals right there. I settle for unizipping my pants and taking out my cock.

I stroke myself slowly as she teases her nipples and fondles her bare breasts. The pain in my hand from slamming the steering wheel is not quite forgotten, but mixes in with the pleasurable sensations so it’s not so objectionable. I imagine she’s watching the motion of my arm and shoulder, that she knows how much she’s turning me on, and how I can’t help but fuck my fist right here in the middle of this fucking traffic jam as I observe her. Behind me, one of her hands also reaches down below her dash, playing somewhere out of sight between her thighs. Fuck! Yes, Maddy or whatever the fuck your name is! Touch yourself, you naughty girl. Just like that. Just for me.

A big eighteen wheeler pulls up gradually on the right. Maddy looks up at the truck. She smiles and lifts her shirt even higher, enjoying the admiration. Fuck ! What I wouldn’t do to switch places with that driver and see what he sees! He gives an appreciative blow of his horn and rolls on. I look back into my mirror to catch Maddy laughing hysterically. She loves it. She must be some kind of an exhibitionist or something. But who am I to criticize? Especially at a time like this?

When Maddy collects herself, she returns her focus to my eyes reflected in the rear-view mirror. Okay, babe. If you want an audience, I’ll be your fucking audience. Just look at me giving you this big fucking standing ovation. I squeeze my cock harder and stroke it rapidly. In her own car she’s taking care of her own needs. I see her arm and shoulder are moving faster, keeping pace with me. She squirms in her seat. Her chest rises and falls as her breath comes in gasps.

And fuck, this is so fucking hot! Fucking ourselves in the middle of everyone, where anyone could watch and see if they just bothered to pay attention. But we know they won’t, don’t we, Maddy? Our dirty little secret out here in the open. Oh yes, baby. Just you and me, and maybe that truck driver that just passed by here, but he didn’t stick around did he, babe? No. But you can still give yourself to me. I’ll watch you get off to my eyes. I bet you’d love to see just how they look when I get off, too? Wouldn’t you, babe? Yeah, watch me watching you. I’m so fucking hard for you, Maddy. I hope you’re really fucking wet for me. I bet you’re just dreaming of this big stiff cock plunging into your tight little wet pussy, filling you up. Oh God, it would be so fucking good, wouldn’t it, Maddy? So good. Come on, Maddy. Cum for me. Cum. I’m getting close, too, babe. Come on… Come on… I’m so close… I know you want it, too. Come on, Maddy! Cum-... I-... Oh fuck!… AHH!

Realizing I don’t have anything to catch my cum with, I blow my hot creamy load straight into my first. I can’t believe how much there is. It’s dripping off my hand, splashing on my shirt and down onto the car seat. I’m a complete fucking mess. At least I’m headed home where I can shower and wash my clothes. I’ll also need to scrub my cum out of the upholstery. Shit.

But I can’t help but fill my car with laughter. My stress is completely gone. I feel relaxed. Cumming felt so fucking good. I hold up my sticky hand for Maddy to view the aftermath. She smiles proudly at me, then holds up her own hand. It’s covered in her beautiful juices. I watch her chest rising and falling as she regains her breath. Then she sucks her fingers clean one by one. I bet they taste so sweet. It’s almost enough to get me hard all over again.

However, as the sun begins to scrape the tops of the trees, we slowly crest a gentle hill and look out over the next stretch of highway. The cars, they’re moving. What caused us to bunch up, and what is finally releasing us from our paved quagmire is totally unclear. It’s as if that useless cosmic author couldn’t even be bothered to come up with a good reason for anything that’s happened in the last hour and a half. I decide it doesn’t really matter anyway. We’re moving now.

As the traffic begins to accelerate and spread out, Maddy switches lanes, passing me on the right. As she passes, she honks, turns to face me one last time, and blows me a kiss. She briefly merges into my lane just in front of me. She has a bumper sticker that reads, If you want me off your ass, keep it out of my face. I smile, honk and blow a kiss back at her, forgetting that my hand is still covered in my semen until it comes in contact with my dry lips. I grimace at the sudden damp sensation, wiping in disgust at my mouth with the back of my arm. Goddammit! For fuck’s sake! I can’t see anything but Maddy’s eyes in her rear-view mirror, but they look like they’re laughing. Then her engine growls and she accelerates away into the early dusk. My randomized playlist selects Tom Cochrane’s Life is a Highway to soundtrack the moment. Weird. I watch her getting further and further away until I lose track of her tail lights beyond the next bend in the highway.