The campground was a glamping resort in the Catskills, the kind with canvas tents, wooden floors, and zippered flaps that connected “family suites.” Our parents — her mother, my father — had booked it for a “bonding weekend,” a last-ditch effort to make us like each other before the holidays.
I was twenty-three. Sloane was twenty-five. We’d been stepsisters for a year, and in that time, we’d perfected the art of avoiding each other — until the storm.
It hit at midnight. Thunder. Lightning. Rain that sounded like fingers tapping on the canvas. I’d been lying in my cot, alone, terrified of the storm, when the flap between our tents unzipped and Sloane crawled through.
She didn’t speak. She just climbed onto my cot, her black tank top damp from the humidity, her hair wet from the rain that had leaked through the canvas. She knelt beside me. She put her hand on my face.
“Our parents are in the tent next door,” I whispered, my voice barely audible over the rain pounding the canvas like a drum. “The rain is so loud they can’t hear us. The lantern is the only light. And your hand is on my face instead of your own sleeping bag. You’re supposed to be in your cot. Not in mine. Not touching me. Not sliding your thumb over my lip. Not—”
Sloane didn’t speak. She just leaned down, her cheek brushing my wet hair, her hand sliding from my face to my neck, then to my collarbone, then under the strap of my tank top.
“If they unzip the connecting flap,” I breathed, my voice trembling as her fingers found my breast, “they’ll see their daughters on the same cot in the dark. They’ll see your tank top pushed up and your mouth on my neck and the lantern casting shadows on the canvas and the rain drowning every sound and they’ll know that the family camping trip became something else entirely. They’ll know that while they slept in their king-sized cot, their daughters were—”
She turned my face toward her with a hand under my jaw. Her mouth found mine. A kiss that tasted like canvas and thunder and the exact moment when a storm becomes a shelter. Her tongue slid against mine, her hand sliding down my stomach, into my sleep shorts, finding me wet and ready and completely at the mercy of the rain.
The zipper moved.
The connecting flap. Her mother’s voice — Linda, sleepy, confused, completely unaware.
“Girls? Is that you? The storm is so loud I can’t sleep!”
Sloane didn’t pull away. She just pressed her other hand over my mouth, her fingers still moving inside me, her eyes locked on mine in the lantern light.
“Let her look,” she whispered against my ear, her thumb circling my clit, her fingers pressing deeper as the thunder cracked above us. “Let the rain drown her voice. Let her unzip that flap and see exactly what her daughter does to you. I’m not stopping until the storm breaks. Not until you come. Not until the canvas is shaking from both of us.”
I came with Linda in the doorway. Sloane’s fingers inside me, her mouth on my breast, the rain pounding the canvas like a war drum. I came with her hand over my mouth, my cry swallowed by the thunder, my body shaking so hard the cot creaked.
“Everything okay?” Linda asked, the flap half-open.
“Just scared of the storm, Mom!” Sloane called out, her voice perfectly steady. “I’m keeping her company!”
“Okay! But go to sleep soon!”
The flap closed. The rain continued. Sloane looked at me.
“Same storm tomorrow?” she asked.
I nodded. I couldn’t speak.
We still go camping every summer. Our parents still book the family suite. And every time it rains, Sloane unzips the flap and crawls into my cot. She says I’m her favorite storm. She says the thunder is just applause. She says the canvas is the only wall that matters.
She’s right. I don’t fear storms anymore. I wait for them. And when the rain starts, I unzip my side of the flap and let her in.
