Chapter 1: Introduction
The train car was a sea of shoulders, a symphony of exhaled breaths, and a forest of elbows and bags. Ghina stood wedged between a man in a suit who was deeply engrossed in his phone and a woman with a toddler on her hip, both of them oblivious to the world beyond their personal bubbles. She held onto the pole with one hand, her phone wedged between her ear and shoulder.
The suit-clad man to her left was engrossed in a game on his phone, his thumb flicking the screen with a speed that made Ghina's head spin. The woman to her right was murmuring soothingly to her toddler, who was sucking on a pacifier with a vigor that suggested he'd been at it since birth.
The train lurched, and Ghina was thrown slightly off balance, her body brushing against someone behind her. She muttered an apology, but the person behind her didn't respond.
"Oh my god, Nadia," Ghina said into her phone, "you won't believe what happened today." She shifted her weight, trying to find a more comfortable position. The train was packed, and the air was thick with the scent of sweat and the faint tang of someone's lunch leaking out of a takeout container.
"What?" Nadia asked, her voice a bright contrast to the muted tones of the train car.
"I was running a meeting, right? And Lucas, that fucking idiot, thought it was appropriate to suggest that my ideas were 'cute'." Ghina snorted, rolling her eyes even though Nadia couldn't see her. "Cute. Like I'm some fucking kitten he can pat on the head."
The train jerked again, and Ghina felt a hand land on her ass. She stiffened, her heart suddenly pounding in her chest. It was a firm, deliberate grip, not the accidental brush of a hurried commuter. The hand squeezed, fingers spreading wide, and Ghina's breath hitched.
She tried to tell herself it was an accident, just someone losing their balance, but the deliberate way the hand gripped her, the slow, circular motion of the thumb... it was no accident.
"Ghina? Ghina, are you there?" Nadia's voice was muffled by the sudden pounding in Ghina's ears. She swallowed hard, trying to keep her voice steady.
"Yeah, I'm here," she managed to choke out, her eyes darting around, looking for the source of the hand. But the crowd was too dense, the bodies too tightly packed.
Ghina couldn't turn around without jostling someone else, couldn't move away without drawing unwanted attention. She felt the hand slide up her spine, fingers splayed wide, tracing the curve of her back. She could feel the heat of the person behind her, the rough fabric of their clothes against her skin.
"Nadia, I gotta go," she whispered into the phone, her voice barely audible over the train's rumble. She hung up before Nadia could respond, her heart pounding in her throat.
The hand was relentless, moving up to cup her breast, squeezing gently through her blouse.