I’d been dating her brother for six months. I’d been fantasizing about her for five.
It started at the first family dinner. The one where Jake—my boyfriend, my safe choice, my “he’s nice and his parents like me”—brought me home to meet the family. His mother made lasagna. His father talked about golf. And his sister, Ava, sat across from me with a smile that felt like she could see through my dress, through my skin, through every lie I’d been telling myself about being happy.
“Pass the salt?” she’d asked, her foot brushing mine under the table.
I’d passed it. My hand shaking. Her fingers lingering on the shaker. On mine.
That was month one. By month three, she’d “accidentally” walked in on me changing at Jake’s apartment. By month four, she’d started texting me—innocent things at first, then less innocent, then a photo of her in a bikini that I stared at for twenty minutes before deleting.
By month five, I was breaking up with Jake in my head every time Ava walked into a room.
Tonight, Jake had gone to get pizza. Thirty minutes, he’d said. Maybe forty if the line was long. Ava and I were alone in his apartment, on his couch, in the lamplight that made everything feel like a confession waiting to happen.
She sat too close. Close enough that her thigh pressed against mine through my sweater, close enough that I could smell her shampoo—coconut, the same brand I used, a coincidence that felt like fate or design or something I didn’t have the strength to question.
“Your brother will be back any minute,” I whispered. My voice was hoarse. I’d been saying this for an hour. She’d been ignoring it for just as long, her hand creeping closer, her body angling toward mine like a magnet finding north.
She smirked. That same smirk from the dinner table, from the hallway, from every moment when Jake wasn’t looking and she was. She reached out. Tucked my hair behind my ear with a gentleness that made my stomach flip and my resolve crumble.
“Then we should be quick,” she mouthed.
She leaned in. Kissed my neck—soft, just below my ear, exactly where I’d told Jake I liked, exactly where he’d never quite gotten it right. Then higher. Then my jaw. Then my mouth.
Her lips were softer than her brother’s. Her tongue more confident. Her hand found my waist under my sweater, her fingers tracing the edge of my jeans, and I was lost. Completely. Irrevocably. The kind of lost that doesn’t come with a map.
The front door clicked.
We both heard it. The key in the lock. The handle turning. The sound of Jake’s voice calling out “The line was insane!” from the hallway.
Ava didn’t stop.
She pushed me back into the couch cushions, her body covering mine, her hand sliding inside my jeans with a confidence that made me gasp. She looked at me—really looked, her eyes dark and certain and completely unafraid—and then she looked toward the hallway where her brother was hanging up his keys.
“Let him watch,” she whispered.
Jake walked in. Two pizza boxes in his hands. A smile on his face that died the moment he saw us—his girlfriend, his sister, tangled together on his couch, Ava’s hand clearly inside my jeans, my lipstick on her throat.
The boxes hit the floor. Pepperoni scattered across the hardwood.
“What the fuck—” Jake started.
Ava sat up. Slowly. Deliberately. She didn’t remove her hand. She just turned to face her brother, her expression calm, her posture claiming territory that had never been his.
“You never deserved her,” Ava said. Her voice was steady. Certain. The voice of someone who had been waiting for this moment and was going to savor every second. “You treated her like an accessory. Like a checkmark on your life list. I’m just making it official.”
She looked at me. Smiled. “Aren’t I?”
I nodded. I couldn’t speak. Couldn’t process. Could only feel her hand still burning against me and the certainty that this was wrong in every way except the one that mattered.
Jake left. He didn’t yell. Didn’t cry. Just picked up his keys, walked out, and closed the door with a softness that was somehow louder than any slam.
Ava finally removed her hand. She stood up. Held out her hand to me.
“His bed?” she asked. “Or mine?”
We used his. The irony wasn’t lost on me. Neither was the way she looked at me in his sheets, her body moving over mine, her mouth finding every place he’d neglected, every spot he’d touched too hard or too soft or not at all.
After, lying in his bed, in his apartment, in the wreckage of a life I’d thought I wanted, Ava traced my collarbone with her fingertip.
“Regrets?” she asked.
I thought about Jake. About the lasagna. About the family photos on the wall that I’d have to stop appearing in. Then I looked at her—really looked—and I knew the answer.
“Only that I didn’t do this sooner,” I whispered.
She smiled. The kind of smile that started wars and ended them. “We have time,” she said. “All the time he never gave you.”
We’re still in his apartment. He never came back for his things. Ava wears his shirts to bed. I wear her smile.
Some forbidden fruit is worth the fall.
