The Villa Serenity was a collection of private bungalows on a cliff in Bali, the kind of place where the staff called you by name and the sunsets looked like they were painted by a lover. I’d been flown there by my stepfather — Richard, generous to a fault, completely oblivious — for his mother’s eightieth birthday. A week of forced family fun. A will reading at the end. And my stepsister, Sloane, who I’d been avoiding since the Christmas party when she’d kissed me under the mistletoe and blamed the champagne.
Sloane was twenty-six. A travel blogger with a hundred thousand followers and a smile that made airlines upgrade her for free. She’d arrived at the villa with a tan, a white sundress, and a secret that she didn’t tell me until the second night.
“Grandmother thinks we’re dating,” she’d said at dinner, her voice light, completely casual, while our parents discussed the birthday menu and the staff poured wine. “I told her we were together to get her off my back about the arranged marriage she keeps suggesting. She believed me. She told the entire resort.”
I choked on my wine. “You what?”
“Relax. It’s just for the week. We hold hands at dinner. We kiss for the family photo. We share a room to save money. And at the will reading, she sees how happy I am and leaves me the beach house.”
“And if she finds out we’re lying?”
Sloane looked at me. Really looked. Her blue eyes dark in the candlelight, her sundress slipping off one shoulder, her expression saying everything that her words weren’t.
“Then we make sure she doesn’t find out,” she whispered.
That was how I ended up on the balcony on night three, wearing a matching white sundress, my heart hammering, the ocean stretching to infinity behind me.
“Your grandmother thinks we’re dating,” I said, leaning against the railing. “She told the entire resort. The staff. The guests. And our parents believe her. I saw my mother smiling at us at dinner like she was relieved I finally found someone.”
Sloane didn’t speak. She just stepped behind me, her hand finding the railing beside mine, her other hand sliding to my waist, pulling me back against her. She leaned in, her cheek brushing my shoulder, her breath warm against my neck.
“If we don’t pretend,” I breathed, my voice trembling as her hand slid lower, over my hip, under the hem of my sundress, “she’ll cut you out of the will. But if we do pretend — if we hold hands at dinner and kiss for the family photo and share a room — I don’t know where the acting ends and the real thing begins. I don’t know if I can kiss you and pretend it doesn’t mean anything. I don’t know if I can sleep in the same bed and not—”
She turned me around. Her mouth found mine. A kiss that tasted like coconut sunscreen and strategy and the exact moment when a lie becomes a truth you can’t take back. It was slow. Soft. Completely at odds with the public balcony and the family dinner below and the fact that our grandmother was currently telling the resort manager about our “beautiful love story.”
Our mother’s voice came from the room behind us. “Girls? We’re cutting the cake! Come down!”
Sloane didn’t pull away. She just pressed her palm over my mouth, her other hand sliding up my thigh, under my sundress, finding me wet and ready and completely lost in the lie we’d created.
“Quiet,” she whispered against my ear, her fingers pressing inside me with a confidence that made my knees buckle against the railing. “We’re practicing. For the photo. For the family. For grandmother.”
She made me come against the balcony railing, her fingers inside me, her mouth on my neck, the ocean below us and the family above us and the entire resort believing we were a couple in love. The orgasm was sharp, desperate, completely silent — swallowed by the waves, by the wind, by the hand she pressed over my mouth to catch my cry.
After, she fixed my dress. Kissed my forehead. And took my hand.
“Let’s go cut the cake,” she said, her voice perfectly casual. “And remember — we’re in love. Act like it.”
We cut the cake. We held hands. We smiled for photos. And that night, in the shared room that was supposed to be a pretense, Sloane showed me exactly what real felt like. She used her mouth on me until I couldn’t remember which parts were fake and which parts were true. She whispered things against my skin that sounded like promises. And when the will was read on the final day, grandmother left Sloane the beach house.
“For you and your lovely girlfriend,” grandmother said, squeezing our hands. “A place to build your future.”
We kept the beach house. We kept the lie. And three months later, when Sloane moved into my apartment in the city, we stopped pretending. The fake relationship had become real. The acting had become truth. And every time we visit the villa in Bali, we stand on that balcony and remember the moment when a lie became the only truth we needed.
