A Risk Worth Taking

by Jessica Joyce

This recycling bin and I are going to rumble.

With a meditative inhale, I turn to the recycling bin and calmly flip its lid. It bounces against the brick wall behind it, then snaps shut. “I’m going to kill you,” I state, hands on my hips. “I wouldn’t,” a voice says behind me. “Recycling bin homicide carries a life sentence in Portland.”

“I’m sorry you escaped a hostage situation only to stumble into an active murder scene.” “This is a lot more pleasant,” he assures me. I laugh. “Your standards are extremely low.” “Only when it comes to crimes.”

I look down at the three clutched in my hands. “Unfair hand size advantage.” “I’ve never had any complaints,” he says silkily, standing.

I’ve spent the majority of my life in that mindset: is it worth it to change? To take that risk? There’s a reason my family nicknamed me Claireful. I stayed in safe jobs, walked the most reasonable path.

What are you missing out on, Claireful, if you don’t get out of a relationship you know isn’t working for you?”

“This invitation is going to sound redundant considering…uh, the entire night,” he says, “but I was hoping I could talk you into grabbing a drink with me. Or food. Or whatever.” He barks out a self-deprecating laugh, his cheeks flushing slightly. I bite back a smile. “Okay, I’m fucking this up, but I’d like to spend some time with you if you’re up for it. Preferably not in an alley with garbage.”

“Thanks for your completely normal care and concern, Kaia,” I say loudly, herding her forward. Connor’s laugh rumbles through me.

“I’d better show you a good night, then, so you miss Portland a little when you leave.” “That’s a lot of pressure.” He winks. “I’m willing to take it on for you.”

“I’m about to be intensely forward,” I warn him. Connor’s eyes light up. “The answer is yes.”

He releases my coat, turns his palm so that it kisses mine. Taking his hand feels like the riskiest thing I’ve done in years and somehow also the safest.

I’m transfixed by the curve of it, but Connor must think I’m hesitating. He steps closer, his expression careful. “Seriously. I have some really good alcohol or Sprite or, like, way too many flavors of Bubly. You can drink me out of house and home. Or if you changed your mind at some point during that fever dream of an Uber ride, it doesn’t even have to be that.”

“I don’t want a drink,” I say quietly. “Okay,” he says, voice dipped low, too. “Whatever you do want, maybe you should start it.”

We’re moving back from the entryway, Connor lifting me straight off the ground as he continues the kiss, deepening it like some sort of ultra-competent sexual multitasker.

“I don’t know, one-night stands are kind of fun.” His eyes crinkle with amusement as his hands shape my hips. “Are they?” “When they’re with you, yeah.” “This is my first one-night stand review, please say more,”

“To be fair, I have nothing to compare it to.” “No,” he groans, his hands dropping to my thighs. “We’re going in the wrong direction. Let’s talk prowess, kissing expertise, my ability to get rock hard as soon as I get my hands on you.”

“This is going to be a one-night stand on a technicality, just so you know. If you weren’t leaving tomorrow, I’d keep you until you got sick of me.”

I’m trapped. I love it. Maybe he’ll keep me a little longer.

He grins, leaning down to kiss the tip of my nose, and the softness of it startles me, then heats my blood. His expression straightens as his gaze roams over my face. “I could be so fucking reckless with this, but I want to be careful.” My heart drops. “No—” “No, I mean…” He shakes his head. “I want to be careful with the time we have. I don’t want to blaze through it just because I’m fucking desperate for you. I want to…” His body betrays him, hips pushing forward as he groans. “I want to take care, I guess. Of you, and this.”

I never thought of it the way Connor means right now: to literally be full of care. To be thoughtful and attentive. Diligent. When he says it, his eyes on fire, it’s a good thing, not something I have to fix.

“Will you show me how to do that, Claireful?” He has no idea how it stitches a little piece of me together, even as it makes me ache. Why’d I have to find him now, when it’s too late?

“I love looking at you but I hate seeing you so far away.”

“Show me how to be careful with this. I want it so fucking bad.”

Connor is silent, mesmerized, lips parted as I rise to my knees. He watches avidly while I unbuckle his belt and unzip his pants, an incredible feat given how tightly the material is straining. “I want you to,” he breathes. “Holy shit I want you to, but you don’t have to. It’s called a job for a reason.”

He pulls back, lips damp, his tongue touching that cupid’s bow. “I could do this for hours. You taste so fucking good, but you’re going to come, aren’t you?” “Be less good at it if you want me to last longer,” I gasp out,

“It’s okay,” he says in a soft, evil little croon. His lips stretch into a satisfied grin. “I’ll do it again. Just give it to me now, okay?”

If there’s anything I’ve learned in this short time with Connor, it’s that there’s no guile to him. He’s playful, thoughtful, and sweetly intense in equal measure; none of it is held back or artificial.

“Will you stay after this?” “Yeah,” I sigh out, pressing my thighs to his arching hips. His pace increases, but barely, an unbearable taste of what he can do. “You’ll let me keep you up all night?” “You’d fucking better.” “Wow, a threat has never made me so hard,” he says, grinning when I do,

“I want you to come again,” he pants out when we’ve been at it for minutes, our skin slick everywhere. “Will you touch yourself? I want to see what that looks like.”

“Why’d it take you so long to get to me, Claire Ashford?” he murmurs, pushing a strand of damp hair off my cheek. My heart soars into my throat. “I could ask you the same thing.”

“It’s rude of you to be moving tomorrow,” he says conversationally, his lips brushing against my forehead.

As it turns out, Connor really is a barnacle. I wake up twice in the night, the first time because his arm and thigh are dead weights over me, pinning me to the mattress, and the second time because he’s unconsciously helping himself to a handful of my boob.

It’s going to be hard to leave, even with more time. Maybe especially with it.

Once he’s donned a condom, he slides inside me like we’ve done this a thousand times before. I let myself imagine lazy mornings like this, sex bookended by easy conversation. I hold onto the wish as tightly as Connor grips my hips to set our pace.

He tells me he’ll take care of me and then does, fingers circling just above where he moves inside me. He whispers how much he wants this, how unreal it is, then feeds me his sounds as he comes.

I’m not a sexually insatiable person typically, but Connor is turning me into a walking erogenous zone. “The sex is…fucking awesome.” He lets out a breath, his gaze going hazy. He blinks back to me, grinning unabashedly when I laugh. “But that’s only part of it. You’re fascinating and beautiful and you give really good banter.”

“I like you, Claire. Probably more than I should, given the circumstances. I’d have taken two more hours with you. I’m sure as hell going to take two days.”

His eyes move over my face before he closes the scant distance between us, grazing his mouth over mine. It’s the quietest kiss I’ve ever had, just our mingled exhale, the scrape of my fingers over his stubble-roughened cheek.

“Okay, well…I have this dream job. Down in San Francisco, I mean. And I had it before I met you,

His wife’s a photographer who had a whole viral moment on TikTok back in the d—” He waves his hand in the air. “Anyway, he started a sustainable travel company and I’m fucking desperate to work for him.”

“Remember how you were going to tell me those other rules?” My blood heats. “Mmhmm.” “I’m cashing that in now. But you have to whisper them all in my ear.”

“And I’m sorry to tell you we have to actually do each one before we can move onto the next.” “There are rules for our rules?” “There are,” he says, molding his hands over my hips, my ass, already shifting restlessly beneath me. “So tell me the next one.” And I do, reveling in his shiver, laughing when he lays me out to get to work.

“I may be a button pusher, but you’re an egregious number inflater.” “You had no qualms when I inflated my orgasm count this morning,” I mumble around puffed lips. His eyes narrow as he releases me. “That’s because you said I’ve given you sixty-nine orgasms in the past thirty-six hours. Firstly, I’m never going to ignore a sixty-nine reference and secondly, I know that you meant in your heart you feel the quality of orgasms I’ve given you are equal to a quantity of sixty-nine.”

“This New Year’s Eve party is very important, ma’am. If our banner’s crooked, it’ll look like an amateur effort.” “It’s December fifteenth and we’re the only two people attending this party, sir,” I say, flicking one of his disco balls.

He’s wearing tuxedo pants and that’s it. “This is your black-tie?” I gape at him. “Jesus, you must be popular at parties.”

My hands are on him before my brain can catch up. I tweak his nipple and he yelps, his shoulder banging into the wall. “I said, you’re hot.” He cradles a hand over his pec, bemused. “That hurt and turned me on.” “Okay, put a pin in that.”

His smile stretches against my cheek. “Kinda feels like we’ve been doing this for a long time, Claireful.”

Trying to make a one-night—fine, three-night—stand into something more is even less realistic when distance is involved. I will miss him, though, impossibly. I can’t help saying it. I halfway hope he doesn’t hear me. But he does, of course. His palms smooth down my back and he presses a kiss to my temple. “I’ll miss you even after that,” he says and we dance, quiet now.

“I think this is probably the part where I say it was nice to meet you, but that seems like an understatement.” There’s the smile. It sends a flood of relief through me—and loss, too.

His lips part and then press together before he blurts out, “I hope it’s not weird for me to say I’m proud of you, because I am. You’re going to do amazing things in San Francisco.” His voice dips. “And holy shit am I glad I got to be the last few pages in your Portland chapter.”