The resort was an all-inclusive nightmare of piña coladas and forced family fun. Our parents—her mother, my father—had booked it to celebrate their first anniversary, dragging Sloane and me along for “memories.”
I was twenty-four. Sloane was twenty-six. We’d been avoiding each other since the Christmas party, since the moment she’d kissed me under the mistletoe and then blamed the eggnog.
But the hammock didn’t care about our avoidance. It was strung between two palm trees at the edge of the resort beach, swaying in the ocean breeze, hidden from the main pool by a cluster of hibiscus. Sloane had found it yesterday. She’d texted me a photo: Sunset. Tonight. Don’t wear much.
I wore a white bikini. She wore a black one-piece that should have been illegal. And our parents were on a beach towel twenty feet away, drinking margaritas and watching the sun bleed into the water.
“Your mother is on the towel twenty feet away,” I whispered, lying back in the woven fabric, the hammock swaying with every shift of my weight. “And this hammock is swaying. If the rope snaps, we both fall. If she looks over, she sees us. If anyone from the resort walks by—”
Sloane didn’t speak. She just leaned over me from the side, her hand gripping the hammock rope above my head, her other hand resting on my stomach, her thumb tracing circles on my skin that were completely at odds with the family-friendly atmosphere.
“If she looks over,” I breathed, my voice trembling as her hand slid lower, under the edge of my bikini bottom, finding me wet and ready and completely exposed to the ocean air, “she’ll see her daughter on top of me in a swimsuit. She’ll see your hand on me. She’ll see your mouth on my breast and your fingers inside me while the sun goes down and—”
She turned my face toward her with a finger under my chin. Her mouth found mine. A kiss that tasted like salt and coconut and the exact moment when a family vacation becomes a private paradise. Her tongue slid against mine, her fingers pressing deeper, moving with a rhythm that matched the swaying of the hammock.
“Girls!” My mother’s voice. Carried by the wind, cheerful, completely unaware. “Come watch the sunset! It’s beautiful!”
Sloane didn’t remove her hand. She just pressed her thumb harder against my clit, her fingers curling inside me, her mouth moving to my neck, biting hard enough to leave a mark that the bikini strap wouldn’t hide.
“One minute, Mom!” she called out, her voice light, casual, completely at odds with the fingers that were currently making me arch off the hammock. “Just getting comfortable!”
“Okay, but hurry! The green flash is coming!”
Sloane looked at me. The sunset turned her face gold, then orange, then red. She was beautiful in a way that hurt—like looking directly at the sun.
“Hold on to the rope,” she whispered. “And don’t scream when you come. The sound carries over water.”
She made me come as the sun touched the horizon. Her fingers inside me, her mouth on my breast, the hammock swaying so hard I thought we’d both fall onto the sand. I came with my hand gripping the rope, my cry swallowed by the ocean, my body shaking with a force that made the palm trees tremble.
After, she lay beside me in the hammock, our bodies pressed together, the fabric barely wide enough for two.
“Tomorrow,” she whispered, “I’m cutting the rope.”
“What?”
“So we have to share the other hammock. The smaller one. The one that’s hidden behind the rocks.”
She did. The maintenance staff found the cut rope the next morning. Sloane blamed “salty air.” And we spent the rest of the vacation in a hammock built for one, pressed so close together that there was no space for secrets.
My mother still talks about that sunset. She says it was the most beautiful she’s ever seen. She has no idea that while she watched the green flash, her daughter was making me come in a hammock twenty feet away.
