The loneliness of the long distance bus driver

Frankie grimaced from the passenger seat of the cab as he saw the express whoosh by on the other side of the street. The driver may have offered to chase after it, he wasnt sure, but he did know he couldnt afford more than taxi fare to the depot and no quarter would be given. He had utilized the services of this particular company for a few days running now, after a chance meeting one anxious and transportless lunch break earlier in the week. He had swallowed his nerve, and neglected to mention his last name.
The driver apologized, but as Frankie accepted the expence reciept and opened the door to leave he remebered himself and apologized back. "I didnt expect to get it anyway, a little cheeky of me to think it really. Anyway thanks for trying". He closed the door and felt a little better about himself, that he deserved the half hour wait due to his own temporal oversight and lack of organizational aptitude.
He instinctively lit up. Looking around him at all those unfamiliar faces, the uniformed ones skipping home from school, the students of music or art or beauty school, appropriately dressed for their respective eventual professions, the elderly clutching to ragged bus passes like they were false passports freeing them from oppression, Frankie felt a little ill. Public places always screwed with him, the element of chaos scuppering his carefully constructed security bubble, he rasied his hood and turned the music up.
An arduous twentysomething minutes later, edged off the bench by a chattering couple, the initial burst of energy he felt at leaving work, brought on no doubt by the gradual build up of caffiene as much as the melodramatic sense of freedom, started to wane in a hurry. He stepped onto the bus and found and appropriate seat, not too close to the top, not too close to the bottom, separated from the obviously anxious and the obviously mischievious. He was both but hadnt the energy. The bus driver had questioned him with raised tone and raised eyebrows when he had insisted he wasnt a student, not wanting the discount out of pride. The same driver asked the same question everyday and Frankie knew that he probably needed to, so let him and smiled.
About ten minutes of scenery gawking later and Frankie was asleep, the shuffling music shuffling his dreams with equal frequency. He had felt his eyes get weighty, as the girl in front of him muttered some inane insult to the two cackling hens sitting opposite her. They laughed in reply and he drifted.
His journey dreams always started the same. He would look out the window and see himself running along side the vehicle. Except it wasnt running exactly, his alternate self seemed weightless, boneless, blowing with the breeze and bending under the force of increased speed, yet ever present outside that window. He danced his way through trees and over road signs. Unencumbered by gravity, moving as though magical he sped along hedgerows and hard shoulders with equal grace, ever smiling, ever alive.
Frankie awoke with a start, but eyes still heavy he couldnt make out where he was. He felt a wierd sensation between his legs then looked up and focused to see the questioning bus driver, hitting him gently with his own bag. The tapping or rubbing or whatever it was stopped, if not a little too slowly, and out of a mixture of embarassment and shock he apologized to the older man. He vaguely heard what the driver had said about not knowing someone was on the bus till another passenger had pointed it out, but Frank just hung his head and darted off, feeling dirty. As he made his way out of the station, as fast as his numb legs could carry him, he glanced back to see the driver staring out at him still. That ugly look of loneliness in his weathered eyes.