RISK & REWARD ✔️

100 | 𝘸𝘩𝘢𝘵 𝘸𝘢𝘴 𝘩𝘪𝘴 𝘯𝘢𝘮𝘦?

WOOHOO BUCKLE UP BUCKLE UP BUCKLE UP HERE WE GO

THE NEXT FEW DAYS pass in a blur. Neither of us are on the floor; we're just packing and cleaning up, mainly, considering all of the furniture is Sasha's. Sasha is taking care of party planning; the idea is that it'll just be like a normal night, except she'll reserve one of the big private rooms where we can come and go as we please. It's not that I'm not looking forward to it; I am. It's just a little bittersweet.

I've been making calls back home about my apartment. It's still there. I'm wildly behind on rent but I'm within a grace period. I'd like to kiss my building manager square on the mouth. Everything is just how I left it. It's just waiting for us; Chicago is waiting to welcome us with open arms. I'm thrilled.

Billie and I have tossed around the idea of taking a vacation first. She's always wanted to see California, apparently; I don't mind. We could swing by California first, make a big U-turn and drive across the country back home.

Oh, that's the other thing. Billie wants to try driving all the way back. Both of us. On Jethawk. For, like, a handful-of-thousands miles. The general response is to be appalled but I honestly don't mind. I look back on our drive fondly; yeah, this is like, eight times longer, but that's okay. Just me, Billie, a motorcycle, and a general destination but no deadline. That's what we do best. Besides gay sex. We do that pretty good, too.

Billie's feeling sappy; besides our escapade onto the top of the parking garage for a scene straight out of Fifty Shades, we've been fucking around elsewhere like kids. We walked the Vegas Strip. Like tourists. We visited a handful of fancy restaurants and rated the food and half of it was ass. We've made a game out of walking into hotels and seeing what pools we can get into, and seeing how long we can linger before they realize we aren't guests. We've never lost that game; we just get tired and leave on our own accord. Most recently, Billie set up a little date night for us on the top floor of some fancy high-rise with a restaurant (thank you, Sasha), and we got a little tipsy on fancy wine and the Vegas skyline. It's there that I think something between us changed; I felt a sort of buzz in my chest, and maybe it was just the alcohol but I think it was something more. Something I don't dare tell Billie, because I think I'd scare her.

That night, she sort of echoes what I want to say, only in a lot more words that are a lot less direct. We're both in bed, bare, no strap or leather or restraints or anything of the sort. It's just two of us; two bodies, sort of wrapped up together. It's not fucking that night, it's sex; slow and intimate and the damn epitome of what it means to be together. Between long, slow kisses and rolling hips and kneading hands, Billie tells me how nothing has ever felt like this for her. Nothing. Maybe it's the wine talking, but she whispers like it's sacred when she says she's always been alone; it's always been her against the world, except now it's her and I. It's both of us now, and she's forgotten what it felt like before that.

She's shaking when she kisses me, legs folded partway under mine and shape of her body lit blue by the light from outside, holds my face in her hands and asks me — no, begs me, voice that breathless little whisper, achingly honest — to stay with her, because she's forgotten how to live without me.

We wake up at the same time the following morning in a tangle of limbs and sheets. Billie is apparently flaming hot, because she basically rips the sheet out from between us, and then it's just two bodies melting together on the mattress.

That morning, Sasha texts us and tells us our party will be starting at nine (at night) on the dot.

We'd been so good that day.

We'd gotten up slow, taken a nice bath together complete with bubbles and grapes that we giggled and ate off of the vine like we were royals eating off expensive plants in old Italy and not like we were just two girls eating from a basic ass vine of red grapes we had borrowed-slash-stolen from a nearby Whole Foods. We'd had to answer a few extra questions from Sasha, like what color do you want the balloons? and do you guys want scheduled dancers or whatever dancers? and do you mind if patrons come? and on and on and on. We are not picky. We'd told Sasha she can have whatever balloons she wants and she can have whatever dancers she wants (not Dahlia, but we don't say that) and hell, if anyone wants to come they can come. Because why not?