reckless and sweet

Flour dusted patchily across both hands, Sydney passes dough through the sheeter. She’s running tests on two noodles today: fettuccini and tortellini. Different techniques, different shapes, obviously. She wants to see how practical it would be to switch between them, or if they should buy another machine. A sleeker, automatic model would do this faster, but there’s something about doing the whole thing manually, turning the crank steadily with one hand while the dough hangs draped over the back of the other. Sydney breathes evenly as she works the full length of the dough in one side and out the other. No cracks or tears, just a smooth, pale-yellow surface. She stares down at it, pleased. She kinda wants to press her entire hand into it like it’s wet cement. Instead, she wipes that hand across her forehead. It’s just after 8:30 in the morning. Sauce and filling are next.

Nobody’s bothering her today—not that anybody’s ever exactly bothering her, but today, everybody seems to be working on their own thing. Carmy went into the office with Nat a while ago, and Sydney hasn’t noticed him come out yet, so she assumes he’s in there still. That’s good. It lets her focus. She’s trying to make sure that focus is on the pasta, but…

Richie kissed her. Or she kissed him. Whatever, she’s not gonna be childish about it. They kissed, and coworkers kiss sometimes, probably, but not her, usually. And not just because her last job was a solo gig. Sydney… she, just, she’s smarter than that. Not that kissing is dumb, because thinking that would be childish, but it can be unprofessional. In her opinion. It’s, like, a thing, right? It’s a big thing, being in love or even just into somebody, and being employed is also a big thing. Not that she’s angling for a spot on the Forbes 30 Under 30 or anything, but she appreciates money in the sense that it’s the legal tender she exchanges to buy the shitty frozen pizzas she likes and to be able to live in an apartment in which her father does not also live. Put kindly, the Bear is fucking crazy. It wants her time, her energy, her sanity, and it’d probably like to have her salary back too. She can’t add a relationship to this. Not here. She has to compartmentalize. The kitchen and the dining room… those are not two different compartments, as much as they struggle to work together some nights. If she were in a relationship—which, by the way, she can’t even imagine right now—it would absolutely, definitely be with any other person on the planet than a member of the Bear staff.

Well, not anyone, but, basically. The point stands. She can’t do both. She certainly can’t do both here.

Because, what? They’d share little smiles all day long? She’d never be the one he raised his voice at anymore? She’d find herself always siding with him in arguments against other people? He’d hold her coat for her at the end of the day, helping her slip her arms into the sleeves, then shoulder her bag for her and drive her home?

That actually sounds really fucking nice.

With a groan, Sydney realizes she’s pushed her sheet of dough back into a lump, then started kneading that lump on the countertop. She sighs. Alright, test batch, ’cause these motherfuckers are gonna be tough.

As she’s hunting up a rolling pin so she doesn’t have to spend extra time easing this dough back through the sheeter, Nat and Carmy emerge from the office. Sydney’s gaze flicks up to them in interest.

“I didn’t tell him to do that,” Carmy’s saying. “He shouldn’t even be handling this. It should all go through you—”

“I know,” Nat answers, smile bright and irritated and sarcastic, and Sydney can immediately tell she’s repeating herself, losing her patience the more Carmy oversteps. “I know that, Carm, and I will talk to him.”

“Well, good, because I don’t know what the fuck—”

“I know, sweetie.”

“Two cards—”

“Yep, I’m aware.” The cheer in Nat’s eyes is frightening, so intense it threatens to inflict pain, like a magnifying glass held between an anthill and the sun.

“Thinks he’s the fuckin’ king of the dining room—”

“Could you shut the fuck up now?” Nat requests manically. Sydney, eyes wide, turns slowly to put her back to this conversation. “Please, Carm, for the love of fuck, shut the fuck up. I will speak to Richie.”

Sydney does not look over at Carmy as he comes to work near her, pulling out pans to place on the cold stove. After giving him a minute to set up his station, she steals a couple of glances over at him. She establishes that he’s calmer now, having shaken off whatever that was.

“What’d Richie do?” she ventures, grabbing a pot to cook her noodles in.

“Just…” Carmy sighs. “Fucking around with bill payments.”

“Oh shit. Are we fucked? By which I mean, more fucked.”

“No, it’s paid, it’s just, he used two different credit cards for some reason.”

“To cover something?” Sydney guesses. “I didn’t know the dining room had any big expenses coming.”

She turns with Carmy as he puts his back to the stoves. He leans forward on the counter with both hands, and she thinks he’s about to divulge some secret purchase that she’s gonna have to be mad about being kept out of the loop on, but then he just says, “I need shallots,” and heads to the walk-in while she rolls her eyes.

Quickly retracing his steps, Carmy clarifies, “No, we don’t. It’s just flowers.”

“Richie paid for the flowers?”

“Yeah.”

“On two credit cards?”

“Yeah,” Carmy says again, pinching his bottom lip between his fingers and looking thoughtful.

“The fuck’s that about?”

“That’s what I’m saying.”

He goes to the walk-in.

So, Sydney’s maybe a little more interested than she normally would be, thanks to Richie, but it’s still just one bill, one weird little blip. She has pasta to make. She has things to do. Any thoughts she could be (and is definitely not) having about Richie are easy to sideline. They aren’t much in each other’s way; he organizes the dining room while she hustles in the kitchen. She sees him—they even say hey—but nothing out of the ordinary happens.

She forgets all about the thing with the flowers until later, after service. She’s trudging to the lockers when she picks up on the sound of Nat talking to Richie. Finally cornered him, Sydney guesses. She’s still not overly invested, and not exactly trying to eavesdrop, but she can’t help that she can hear them.

“I’m not running the expense through the restaurant, so what’s it matter?” Richie is asking.

“Because it shows up on my bill, Richie.”

“Oh, your bill?” Sydney can hear the laugh in Richie’s voice, and pictures the way his eyebrows will have risen.

“As long as I’m the one dealing with the paperwork, yeah, my goddamn bill.”

“Sorry, Nat. I wasn’t tryin’ to fuck with you. It just seemed most convenient.”

“So, it was just… a personal order? The extra item?”

“Yep.”

“You’re not gonna tell me who the flowers are for?” Nat’s voice is thick with disbelief.

By now, Sydney is kind of interested—not jealous interested, but interested. Her tired fingers work open the buttons on her white coat, and she steps out of her clogs. Before Richie can answer Nat, Sydney tugs her locker door open.

On the shelf inside is a single red rose.

The bloom is as big as she’s ever seen a rose get, each perfect, velvety petal saturated in a colour Sydney usually only sees here when she nicks her finger with a blade. Maybe that’s what it’s supposed to make her think of: a knife wound.

In place of a vase, it’s a wine bottle the rose protrudes from. From the tannic tang of her locker, Richie rinsed out the bottle hastily before repurposing it. It’s elegant, even if just in a Lady and the Tramp way, and Sydney is so surprised that it’s not until after she hears an “Oh!” from behind her that she shuts her locker.

She looks around nervously to see not only Luca, whose accent makes him easy to identify even while panicking, but Marcus too. And somewhere around the corner, Nat’s still teasing Richie about the recipient of his flower order, so when Marcus can’t suppress his smile, Sydney knows she’s fucked.

She decides to ignore everyone and everything, turning back to her locker, opening it, and changing into street clothes. She slams it shut and walks away from the lockers with her eyes down, even though Marcus and Luca have moved off a little ways.

She’s almost out the door when she thinks of whatever shitty mix of water and red wine that rose has to drink, and of its waxy emerald leaves drooping and softening without any sunlight. She marches back to retrieve it.

On her way out again, Richie’s there, right in her path. He smiles at her, then his gaze falls to the bottle clutched in her hand. She doesn’t ask, and he doesn’t confirm, because they read each other well enough to be already beyond that. Of course he left it for her. No question.

He has the grace to look graceless, like he’s not sure how to hold himself, even though he’s still wearing his suit. What now? Sydney wonders, as they stand at an impasse of awkwardness. Does she thank him? Does she say all that stuff she was thinking before, about reasons why she wouldn’t start anything with someone she works with?

Before she can figure it out, Richie sinks his hands in his pockets and disarmingly offers, “Tuesday surprise?”

Sydney lets out a laugh that’s amused and taken aback and a little bit wooed.

“This wasn’t subtle,” she says, raising the bottle just enough to indicate it.

“Yeah, I don’t really know how to do subtle, I don’t think.”

“Well…” Sydney doesn’t really have a good response to that. Like, he doesn’t know how to do subtle, and that’s fair, and leaving a rose in her locker is a gesture it’s too late to take back.

“I went to the flower shop in person, which I don’t normally do,” Richie says, launching into a story she didn’t ask to hear. “They’ve been doin’ a good job for us, and what do I know about flowers, right? I leave the arranging to the professionals. But I went in, and there’s that big walk-in fridge, you know? You’ve been in a flower shop before. And just these buckets overflowing with the most beautiful roses you’ve ever seen, Syd, I swear to god.” He gestures with both arms, demonstrating abundance.

“And you only bought one?” She’s not teasing him, just curious.

“Hey, more doesn’t mean better. I thought…” He stops to laugh at himself, then confesses, “It’s stupid.”

Now she has to know.

“What?” Sydney asks, careful with the bottle as she hitches her tote bag on her shoulder.

“I thought more would be overkill. Just one rose, and you can see how perfect it is, you know?”

“I’m gonna go before this gets any more symbolic,” she says awkwardly, twisting towards the door.

“Ok, yeah, that’s a good idea.”

She’s really almost out the door this time when Richie says, “Syd?”

She turns back.

“You got some flour,” he says, tracing a finger across his own forehead.

“Oh, for fuck,” Sydney mumbles, because it was probably there all through service, there since she made pasta this morning. Goddammit.

She gets outside at last. After a few steps, it’s herself that stops her this time. Sydney takes in the immediate darkness, the close quiet while, a street over, cars pass by. She lifts the bottle and presses her nose into the soft petals, inhaling until the whole night smells like roses.

—

“Soooo…” Marcus leads off. It might be the longest “so” Sydney’s ever heard leave his mouth, and she rolls her eyes.

“No,” she counters.

“No?” He chuckles. Actually stops to stand there and chuckle at her while she keeps moving, sorting into piles which herbs she’ll strip and finely chop for her sauce, and which she’ll leave whole for the roasting pan.

“No like don’t talk or no as an answer to the question you won’t let me ask?” Marcus checks.

Sydney spares him a sideways glance and decides, if he has time to bug her about this, he’s not busy enough. (Sure, he has a cake in the oven right now, and she envies him these long stretches when he’s prepped everything that can be prepped and gets to take a break while he waits for the next thing to happen. The digital numbers on the timer clipped to his apron strap tick over quietly.) Sydney slides him the thyme, gesturing to the knife rack with her chin for instruction, and starts in on the marjoram herself.

Side by side, they separate and cut. She ignores Marcus. She doesn’t think about Richie. There is only her and the herbs today.

Is she breathing through her nose more loudly than normal?

Her neck itches, and she tries to satisfy it by rubbing with the back of her wrist.

The silence between them starts to squeeze Sydney in from all sides and she breaks with a loud sigh.

“Ask,” she demands, turning swiftly towards Marcus in frustration at one of them—she’s not sure who.

Marcus doesn’t exactly match her mood; he smirks slowly without glancing up from the task she’s assigned him.

“Are you guys—”

“No.” She cuts in before she can summon the strength to resist the impulse. She looks to the ceiling and forces herself to take a deep breath. “No,” she says again, “we are not.”

Marcus keeps smiling down at the thyme.

“I’m not jealous, Syd. That’s history,” he promises her, easy and honest and impossible not to believe. Marcus glances at her. “I’m just bein’ fuckin’ nosy.”

“You are bein’ fuckin’ nosy,” Sydney agrees.

Marcus grins.

“So you get how I gotta wonder. The man left you… what was that, a rose? Sure looked like a rose.”

“It was a rose,” Sydney confirms, because, hey, he already fuckin’ saw it.

“A rose in your locker,” Marcus says in mock awe. But he doesn’t look like he’s mocking her when he says, “That shit’s real romantic.”

“I know,” Sydney responds despairingly.

“And you’re definitely not…?”

“No.”

“’Cause it seems like you’re havin’ sex.”

Sydney groans loudly, and the next thing she knows, Luca’s hovering there, looking concerned.

“I’m fine,” she assures him, gritting it out more than she means to. It’s not Luca’s fault Sydney’s annoyed at Marcus—or that she’s actually just annoyed at the situation, at not knowing what to do or how she feels or what Richie wants to do…

“Alright,” Luca says easily. He stands at ease, like a soldier, hands clasped behind his back. Is Sydney the only one with shit to do today?

“We were just talking,” Marcus shares.

“Uh huh,” Sydney confirms, delicately wiping marjoram off her knife blade.

“About Sydney and Richie.”

“What the fuck?” Sydney demands, glaring at Marcus.

“It’s just Luca,” Marcus says with a shrug. They both look to Luca, who also shrugs.

Sydney sighs and allows, “Whatever.”

Not ten seconds pass before Luca pipes up, “So, are the two of you—”

“No!”

“I see. What do you need next? Butter? I’ll go get the butter.”

—

She does the stupid thing.

“It looks nice,” Richie says, nodding at the rose in her windowsill. It’s lusher than ever, leaves tilted towards the sunlight. After she’s been in the apartment for a few hours in a row, she stops noticing the smell, but every night after work—each night this week, since he gave it to her—the scent hits Sydney when she comes through the door. This is starting to become the way the place smells, in her mind. She’s starting to associate the scent with home.

What she says though is, “Yeah, thanks. It seems pretty happy in that spot.”

“Sure does.”

It’s Sunday, which means the Bear’s shut, and which usually also means people from the Bear don’t see each other. Anyway, Sydney typically doesn’t. She buys groceries and grabs lunch with her dad and tries to be better about keeping up with what’s going on with TJ—seeing her, or at least calling her, or at least commenting on her Tiktoks (which TJ maybe hates). Sunday is Sydney’s day to have a life. Be a person: someone who has blood relatives, not just restaurant famiglia, who does laundry and other things to keep herself clean and alive, who eats a meal that’s a meal, not two dozen little spoonfuls as she tastes her way through iterations of whatever everybody’s cooking that day. Other people who are better at being people than she is also use their Sundays for couple things. But not Sydney. She doesn’t do that.

But she asked Richie if he’d maybe, possibly, like, want to come over and hang out, and he got there in fifteen minutes. Tops.

She doesn’t even have any recourse to be standoffish in contrast to his evident eagerness, since she’s the one who asked him over. She has to brave the situation now. She has to do like the pricey rose he bought her and turn her leaves to the light.

Sydney looks at Richie from the corner of her eye. She grew up in this windy city. There’s this internal rushing in her, breezing her heart around her insides like a high, persuadable cloud; it feels too light, too susceptible to the forces of nature.

“Richie, I’ve been thinking,” she says, hands out and stiff and serious as she prepares to position the matter before him.

Richie stares right back at her with a curious smile. His expression is fond already, and it makes her nervous.

“’Bout us kissing?”

Sydney blinks at him.

“I had a whole thing I was gonna say.”

“Please,” he encourages.

She opens her mouth and everything she’s been turning over—everything she thought out and edited and organized in her mind before she let herself pick up the phone and text Richie—evaporates from her mind. Richie raises his eyebrows expectantly. A little teasingly.

When nothing comes to her, he claps her swiftly on the shoulders, says, “Ok,” and walks past her.

Scoffing, Sydney turns her head after him.

“Where are you going?”

“Sweetheart, I swear ta god, it’s not the riddle of the Sphinx.” He disappears into her kitchen. She hears a cupboard door open and close, then the squeak of her crappy tap, followed by water hitting the sink. Just like last time, he’s getting himself a drink.

She goes after him.

“What is it about this apartment that makes you so thirsty?” she wonders.

Richie’s just raising his glass, but he turns to glance at her with a look on his face like he’s resisting a laugh. Oh.

“Interesting choice of words,” he remarks.

“Yeah, I hear it now,” she assures him, face scrunching.

“You know, since you texted me.”

She rolls her eyes as he takes a long drink from his glass. Her glass.

She sighs.

“I don’t really know what to say,” she admits to them both, loosely crossing her arms.

Richie sets the empty glass on the counter.

“I thought you had a speech or somethin’.”

“It wasn’t exactly a speech, but it was… too prepared, I guess.”

“Can you tell me which way it was gonna go at least?”

Sydney frowns at him. “What do you mean?”

Richie plucks at the collar of his sweatshirt, and Sydney watches the motion. His index finger and thumb working together. She wonders how he gets undressed, pictures a practiced grip behind the neck, tugging any top straight up and off. Windy, windy inside her, untethered heart whisked to and fro.

“Was this gonna be a speech where you let me down easy?” he clarifies. “Or maybe, I mean, you didn’t think that much of it, since we…” Richie scratches his temple with a finger. “…weren’t much. I mean, one spontaneous kiss and a flower. What’s that add up to?”

“You know what?” he adds, like he’s talking himself into something. He’s not looking at her, but not in an obvious way; he’s almost looking at her, like she won’t notice the difference. But she’d feel it, even if she couldn’t see it, and she can see it. Here in her small but treasured kitchen. “Sorry. Don’t listen to me. You got no obligation to do that or anythin’ else. We’re good, Syd.”

She stares back at him until he meets her eyes. Then, she says firmly, “We’re not good.”

Sydney steps forward on nimbus feet that hardly feel the floor (she’s so fucking nervous), and stands so close to Richie that he can’t misunderstand.

Quietly, he checks, “You don’t wanna show me your tits first?”

She groans in annoyance.

“Well, come on,” he argues jokingly. “I thought we were establishing a certain sequence of events, and if things were ever to be repeated between us—”

Sydney grabs Richie’s shoulder as she stretches up to plant her mouth on his. Maybe she floats up. Maybe she’s just water vapour and air.

Right away, he pulls her in like he’s going to pull her off her feet, but he doesn’t, just holds her against him, and she doesn’t have to think about balancing herself because he’s got her so tight. She can’t think about it anyway. Chest to chest. His thumb presses lightly, just behind her ear. She can’t think.

Her mouth opens under Richie’s, against Richie’s, into Richie’s, and he catches her lip between his teeth for a sharp second before angling his head to kiss her harder, deeper. She feels the pressure of the kiss in her whole body. She’s fully pressed against him and just the heat of him is hot, but it’s hotter when she catches her breath enough to groan, spurring a reaction from Richie. She’s too close not to feel. Hey, she thinks at the nudge against her abdomen, about time we met in person.

She could fuck him right here in this kitchen, but Richie’s not going to let her. But it’s her apartment.

He tries to pull her, to tug her towards the bedroom he’s never been inside but can obviously locate because this place isn’t exactly capacious. Sydney plants her sock feet well enough to let her hand slip through his urgent grip.

“Don’t you want…?” he asks, standing in her kitchen. Standing in her kitchen, hard.

“Yes,” she says, to the question and the erection, honestly.

“Come on,” he urges.

“No.”

“Why?”

And she can’t communicate the feeling, but it’s something far away from not wanting to. She wants to, and she wants to do it right? Somehow? The way Richie would want it to be—elegant, by some measure, which definitely means no thrusting her into her crooked wooden cabinets. But she also doesn’t feel done here. In this kitchen. Where they talk, and she flashes him, and he avails himself of the plumbing.

“Take my pants off,” Sydney blurts. She has to say something.

Richie gives her a long stare, and she watches the colour gather in his face, petal-red.

He clears his throat and goes to her, comes to her. His back straightens up. A twitch in his cheek as the back of his fingers skim her stomach through her t-shirt. Richie opens the button of her pants, and his whole face opens as he starts to lower the zipper. He’s smiling. It’s not that the people Sydney’s had sex with before haven’t been glad to do it, but she can’t remember anyone smiling at her like this. Not seductive, not sexy, just… happy. Her cloud-heart stuffs itself into a balloon and rises in her chest.

“That’s… that’s good,” she says, choked, when her pants drop to her ankles and Richie crouches, about to lift her feet free of the fabric.

“You said off,” he reminds her.

“Who gives a shit,” she breathes, gazing down at his flushed face and the bulge in his sweats and his hand on her ankle.

Richie’s expression says, Fair enough. Then, he stops looking at her face; he leans in to rest his mouth and nose against the front of her underwear. It’s the way he shuts his eyes that makes her head hang back, his hot breath through the fabric that makes her fingers curl around the edge of the counter. He licks the cotton and she’s wet. Already was.

His name scrapes out of her: “Richie.”

Tucking his fingers into the waistband of her underwear, he peels them down, leaving them clinging high on her thighs by their elastic. Then she feels his breath. Eyes up, Sydney shivers at the thought of Richie looking at her this close, of his mouth poised. She makes a sound at the light stroke of his thumb on her labia. She makes a sound and she jerks, and if she’s gonna react like that to being touched there, what happens when…?

All at once, Richie’s mouth, warm and open. And wet—that becomes the dominant feeling when his tongue brushes slickly over her clit. Sydney’s eyes flinch shut, and she parts her legs as much as she can with the resistance of the elastic, trying to invite Richie in, hoping for more. Not that Richie’s ever needed any encouragement to make himself at home.

He’s gentle with her, but that doesn’t mean he’s hesitant. He licks at her—broad passes, flat-tongued—like every motion is intentional. It’s like he’s thought about it, she realizes. That’s what it feels like: fucking premeditation. With one hand high to spread her with his thumb and the other hand kneading her thigh, Richie laps at her. Her pulse is already thumping in her clit when he puts his lips over it and sucks.

“Ohhh god,” Sydney wavers out, white-knuckling the counter as her knees start to give out and she slumps onto Richie’s welcoming mouth.

She tries to steady herself by forcing one hand off the counter and running her spread fingers up and down the back of Richie’s head. She wants him to touch her. Not her thigh, not the careful, helpful edge of his thumb on her labia. Her cunt is clenching, and she needs his fingers in there. All the attention on her clit is driving her crazy, as he can probably tell from her frantic touch.

Every time she tries to babble out a request, her moaning sweeps in to obscure it. He’s just… criminally good at this. Her fucking thighs are gonna be wet. As he switches from sucking back to licking, she gets the fine scratch of his scruff and cries out. It’s like the sudden cool puff of air he blows on her clit after the hot suffocation of his mouth is just to tease her. Leave it to fucking Richie to fucking flirt with her without words, after she’s already won over, when he’s kneeling on her kitchen floor, eating her out.

Mercifully, his tongue returns, which is great because, with him withholding his fingers, she needs something to ride. Sydney’s hips hitch, her fingers digging into the back of Richie’s neck. The more erratically she rocks, the more he groans, and that’s good, that’s good.

Air catches in her throat, then bursts out with an “Ah!” too soft for how hard she comes. She’d definitely be on the ground, collapsed, if not for Richie wrapping an arm around the back of her thighs as he quickly rises and hoists her up to sit on the counter. Her pants slip off at last, heaped on the floor. Richie’s quick to shove his hand between her thighs, fingers rubbing gently at her clit, dragging out the feeling. Sydney turns her heavy gaze on his, their faces close together. While she’s watching—knowing she’s watching—Richie lifts his forearm to his face and wipes his mouth on his sleeve. Her cunt throbs. It’s the look in his eyes; no part of him has been inside her, but his gaze is fucking her right now.

“I’d really like you to take me to your room, Syd.”

“Yeah.” It comes out horribly broken, sounding like five different yeahs. She clears her throat.

She hops off the counter (trying not to look surprised that her knees don’t give out) and pulls her underwear up. She doesn’t realize Richie intends to carry her to her bedroom until he starts to squat like he’s about to yank her up and wrap her legs around his hips.

“Woah!” she yelps, throwing a hand out. “No no no. I can walk.”

Richie shrugs awkwardly.

“I thought it’d be sexy, or whatever.”

“One thing at a time,” she urges. “I can walk.”

Which is obviously when she takes a single step and slips on her pants.

“Shut up,” she says.

“The fuck did I say?”

She laughs first because of how genuinely defensive he sounds, and then he laughs at her for the almost-wipeout, and then he kisses her, and then she pulls him closer, and then she feels him against her abdomen again, but fully hard this time. She remembers the chaos when she started at the Beef, and the shot Richie fired into the sky out front, and the sight of the gun against his lower back after he tucked it under his waistband. Sydney’s mad at her own brain for the comparison, but it’s what comes to her, mind reaching for a visual to match the rigid length she can’t see.

—

“This isn’t weird, right?” she checks as she pulls her top over her head.

Richie, under her, blinks and checks, “Weird?”

Sydney tsks thoughtfully and tries to explain.

“You know, like, we like each other.”

“I’m supposed to think that’s weird?” he demands, propped up on his elbows. “Respectfully, Syd, respectfully, what the fuck are you talkin’ about?”

She sighs and shifts on her knees, careful not to settle anywhere that’s gonna make him stop paying attention to her talking.

“Like, people know something’s going on, right? Or they guess. And, I don’t know, I feel like this isn’t going how it was supposed to go.”

“Are you disappointed?” Richie asks cautiously.

“That’s not—”

“No, tell me that first.”

Sydney realizes he’s checking that she’s ok, but not just checking that she’s ok; there’s a vulnerability to Richie on his back on her bedsheet that she hasn’t seen when he’s almost barfing on her shoes, or when Carmy yells at him, or when he’s just been stabbed (her eternal bad). He’s afraid she’s already over it, before he’s even been inside her. She’s making him worry that.

Quickly, Sydney assures him, “God, of course not,” her face scrunching up at the pain of the thought. “Shit, Richie, no.”

“Ok… then what?” His hands venture guardedly to her thighs, holding her just above her knees.

She purses and twists her mouth.

“It’s dumb to care what people think, right?”

“Fucking idiotic,” Richie emphasizes. “But we do.”

“Yeah,” she agrees. “So.” She tucks her braids behind her ear. “When I’m being a fucking idiot like that, I think about how maybe people would’ve gotten it if we’d hooked up after the wedding.”

“When you say ‘it,’ you mean—” Sydney waits for the word to land, the big, small word. “—us,” Richie says.

“Yeah.”

“Like that would’ve been ok and this isn’t?”

She feels bad for thinking it, but not for telling him, so she nods.

Giving her a serious look, Richie points out, “They would’ve thought you did it because you pitied me.” Sydney opens her mouth and starts to refute that, but Richie shakes his head. “No bullshit. I’m not saying you would’ve, obviously, but come on. Single at my ex-wife’s wedding.”

“That really isn’t what I mean though,” Sydney persists.

“Ok,” he says. “Tell me what you mean.”

“I just…” Absentmindedly, she reaches behind her back to unhook her bra. Wordlessly, Richie takes her hands and draws them away, then applies his own fingers to the hooks. The tension of the band around her ribcage gives. She inhales deeply. “I don’t think they’ll get it.”

Tenderly, Richie sweeps the thin straps from her shoulders, and Sydney tosses the bra over the side of her bed.

“Who has to get it but us?” he asks. When her gaze starts to slide away, he insists, “No, Syd, honestly. Who has to get it but us?”

“We’re just… we can be volatile, you and me.”

“Aw, not for ages,” Richie argues. “Besides, that ain’t anybody’s problem unless you stab me at work again.”

“Oh,” she says, laughing, “but not at work is fine.”

He gives her a look, then sighs and says, “Fuck them if they don’t get it, and really, I think they will.”

“Yeah?”

“Oh yeah. The first time they see the way you fuckin’ undress me with your eyes— Quit laughing.”

But he’s messing with her, and she doesn’t think it’s weird anymore, because he’s probably right: people might be surprised, but then they won’t be. She’s not giving them the kind of credit she should. She and Richie are a lot of things, do a lot of things, have a lot of things. There’s a lot of respect between them, for one thing. And a hell of a lot of trust. Chemistry? Well, their friends probably haven’t seen that, but Sydney has a feeling it might be difficult to hide after this—after Richie’s hands on her chest and her shifting backwards to sit on his cock, pinning it to his abdomen inside his boxers. She bends down to kiss him, and one of his hands moves to her bare back. Lightly, she starts rolling her hips.

“Yeah,” he murmurs, their lips slipping when her clit nudges the head of his dick and she releases a sharp pant.

“You should really…” she starts. “You should really be naked.”

Like she is, she means. For a minute, they breathe, Sydney looking into Richie’s heavy-lidded, too-close eyes as they gaze up into hers. His fingers hook into the clammy cranny behind her knees and tug her forward onto his stomach. She laughs as she sits up from being jostled. He lets her go, cracking a smile, shifting and bucking as he strips behind her back. Experimentally, Sydney runs a finger along the gold chain that cuts a shiny river across his firm chest.

He already produced a condom without pointless justification; it sits on her bedside table, on top of the digital clock that tells her when to get up every day but Sunday. Sleeping in today hasn’t stopped her from being distracted from the minute she woke up. Now, Richie asks for the condom. Calls her “sweetheart” when he does, and her eyes roll because of it. And because of the clear appreciation on his face when she has to partly lean over him to get it. His hand grazes up her stomach, palm in the middle of her chest as she shuffles backward to sit on his thighs. Richie must be feeling her heart when she drops her gaze to his cock. She flips the condom onto his chest. Sits tall. Sweeps her braids forward over her shoulder because of the racing heat up her spine: watching him get ready for her. Watching him already ready for her.

Sydney doesn’t tell Richie how long it’s been for her, but maybe her body does, her face, her breathing. He’s gripping his shaft as she takes him a little at a time, too hungry for it for the control she needs being on top; it lasts a second: wishing it were him, that he’d drive home all at once and save her these stops and starts. Adjusting. Wanting. Huffing, “Fuck,” when he’s only halfway in and her muscles work his head greedily.

When she looks from her hands braced on his chest to his face, his eyes are shut and his expression is angry. She’s just starting to say his name in question when Richie’s eyes open for her to read. Oh. It’s not anger—it’s restraint. Sydney sinks down fully and Richie groans, face still looking like he’s a second from scuffing his fingers under his chin to flip her off, Italian style. Honestly… it’s kinda doing it for her. Though their rapport at the restaurant has come a long fucking way, she remembers what it was like to be passionately pissed at him, to get in his face and have him come right back at her, puffing his chest, even when she had a knife in her hand. Insanely toxic work environment, she knows, but looking back from here, from now? Hot.

She rocks on his lap, and he touches her hips like he’ll smooth out her rhythm, but Sydney doesn’t let him, and Richie’s hands don’t fight. She pants and rides him until her legs ache (doesn’t take that long; funny how fast her body forgets how to do some things and remembers others), until she notices how aroused she is by leaning forward to rub her clit against the hair at Richie’s groin and finding it wet.

“Fuck, Syd,” he grunts in her ear, hand gripping her ass. She feels it when his fingers creep down to touch where they’re fucking, to feel her swallow him over and over.

All at once, she gives up, surrenders by gasping, “I can’t.”

“Beautiful job,” he mutters to her, helping her climb off him, laying her out on her back, crawling over her and just kissing everywhere he can reach.

He presses her thigh to the side, mouth buried against her neck as he eases back inside her. His warm weight pins her to the bed, and yes, this is what she needed. His dangling necklace skims across her throat as he starts thrusting. He moves like he’ll slip clean through. It’s so easy it almost doesn’t feel right, but Sydney reaches back to grab the top edge of her mattress and cocks her head at him—two signals. Richie nods, and the next thrust is an impact that makes her grab the mattress.

“Yeah, I see what you like,” he says, almost a laugh, but not at her; it’s a laugh that says, staggered, Fuck me, Syd. I get to do this? You’re gonna let me figure out how to get you off? Probably with some more swearing in there, she’d guess, but maybe that’s implied. The focus in his expression implies it. The focus makes her face hot, and her chest hot where his hand covers her breast, and it makes her clench around his dick, sometimes at the wrong times, messing him up when he’s trying to plunge deep. She writhes when he gives it to her hard, maybe too much for him to want to keep going like that, because he switches to something shallower, clutching her body close as his hips twitch, dragging her clit along. She grabs his jaw and forces her tongue into his mouth, locks her arm around the back of his neck. It’s not like it’s the middle of the night, but the sounds of this neighbourhood through her thin walls are dead to her—all Sydney hears is their breathing, the slick motion of their bodies lurching together and apart.

She notices she’s shaking without remembering when it started. Richie kisses her shoulder. He noticed, apparently. He keeps moving in a way that stimulates this tremor in her, head down and calmly steadfast, like he’s tending a garden.

“Um,” she pants. “Can you go faster?”

Her thighs tremble. She can’t keep them still.

“Sure thing,” he says, easy, ready, wanting to help her out. But before he does, he nips her earlobe and breathes right in her ear, “You gonna come for me if I do?”

After that, Sydney barely needs the speed. “Richie!” she gasps. “Ri-chie.” And then just an exhaled “Ruh,” the rest of his name unsaid in the air.

She comes quickly, with a feeling like fog burning off a field of wheat at dawn. Her fingers flinch on him, digging into his arms where she took hold when the feeling was building. He’s still moving in her as she catches her breath, but slower, just enough to extend that pleasant tingle, making it hard to find the edge of her orgasm, hard to say if it’s totally stopped.

Sydney watches Richie’s face, and she can feel his cock, still rigid inside her. There’s some strain around his eyes that he’s clearly making an effort to ease, thrusts continuing to gradually slow.

“What are you doing?” she asks, since he hasn’t come.

On the other side of her own climax, Sydney touches Richie more freely than she has yet. She glides her hands up his shoulders, kneads where the muscle is tense. She rolls her head to the side to kiss his arm.

“Can I say something lame?” he requests. It’s gonna be so lame, apparently, that he’s squinting in discomfort just asking the question.

“I mean, yeah.” He just made her feel like that. She’s gonna deny him this? Nah.

“I wanna make out with you,” Richie declares.

“…Ok. You know you could just, like, do that.”

“Well, it’s tough when we’re, you know.” Oh, she knows. “But I really like kissing you.”

Sydney starts smiling because, holy shit, Richie is in her, yet his confession is almost shy.

“And I don’t know where we go after this, right?” he goes on, holding himself over her. “There are things I want, and you want, but whatever conversation comes after this, it’s gonna be different. I just want to slow down for a sec. I don’t want it to be over yet.”

“That is,” Sydney says slowly, “incredibly lame. In a pretty sweet way,” she amends.

“‘Sweet,’” Richie echoes, like the word is not for him.

But she insists, “Sweet. If the shoe fits, man.”

He doesn’t argue; he’s staring at her lips. She tilts her chin up, offering, and Richie’s mouth comes down to meet hers.

Warm and comfortable, Sydney feels like she’s sinking deeper into the bed. She’s not really, but her body is heavy and fluid at the same time, palms pressed to Richie’s skin, legs limp on either side of his. The kissing’s like a portal: she can see other moments through it. She imagines them kissing like this at night on a street corner in winter, real snow in the air, bulky coats shushing each other as the fabric rubs together. Or in his car—she can picture them kissing in his car. A do-over of the night of the wedding, where he drives her home and she just doesn’t get out. Where she laughs awkwardly and tosses her head and fingers the lapel of his suit jacket until he puts his hand on her knee instead of the gearshift and leans over it towards her.

She feels sort of upended by it, honestly. By kissing Richie. She keeps listening for any of her old internal alarm bells to go off, but she doesn’t hear a sound. What if they just keep doing this? What if they go to work together during the day and then, sometimes, spend the night at each other’s place? She’s come to understand he’s dying to take care of people—at work, at the wedding—so what if she lets him take care of her? What if she just doesn’t have to be lonely anymore? What if, when he pats her shoulder in the kitchen, she leans back into his hand?

Unhurriedly, Richie’s hips begin to move again. Sydney welcomes the warmth, the friction, not trying to get off, but basking in the simmering pleasure. When Richie finally lets himself come, he makes this jagged sound, as if some part of him’s been torn off to be used as a bandage for some other part. She kisses his mouth like it’s the wound.

—

She’s just supposed to walk him to his car, but when they get there, they’re talking, and she convinces him to drive home. She’ll take the train back.

He wants to walk her to the train, and by the time he’s waited around with her on the platform, he wants to get on beside her when it comes. They laugh and sheepishly take their seats, looking down instead of at one another. Sydney bumps her knee into his.

“I gotta head back,” Richie says, only once he’s walked her to her apartment.

“This is stupid,” she says, cringing a little bit, because it’s gotta be embarrassing how they can’t stop now they’ve started, right? How they don’t know how to separate?

“Yeah,” he agrees, “so tell me to go.”