Our parents got married six months ago. We’d never met before the wedding. I was twenty-four, she was twenty-three, and we were suddenly sisters in the most technical, least meaningful sense of the word.
The first time I saw her was at the rehearsal dinner. She was wearing a peach dress that was probably supposed to look innocent, and she was standing by the bar with a drink she wasn’t touching, watching me watch her. Our eyes met. Held. And something passed between us that had nothing to do with becoming family.
Her name was Riley. She had blonde hair that she wore in a messy bun when she was studying, and she had a habit of biting her lower lip when she was thinking, and she had absolutely no business being as beautiful as she was. Not in my house. Not in my bathroom. Not leaning against my doorframe at midnight with her tank top strap slipped off her shoulder and her eyes dark with something that was definitely not sisterly.
“You’re in my bathroom,” I said, though we both knew the truth. It was the shared bathroom. The one between our rooms that our parents had thought was a clever design choice.
“I was waiting for you,” she said. Her voice was low, rough, completely unlike the polite tone she used at dinner.
“Why?”
She pushed off the doorframe. Walked toward me. Stopped close enough that I could see the freckle on her collarbone, the one I’d been staring at during every family meal for six months.
“Because I can’t sleep,” she whispered. “Because every time I close my eyes, I see you in that black dress at the wedding. Because I know you’re not wearing anything under that robe, and I need to know if I’m right.”
I should have laughed. Should have pushed past her, gone to my room, locked the door, and pretended this wasn’t happening. Instead, I reached for the tie of my robe and pulled it loose. The silk fell open, just slightly, just enough.
“Find out,” I challenged.
She did.
Her hands were warm as they slid under the fabric, finding my waist, my ribs, the curve of my breast. She made a sound—soft, broken, completely unlike the confident girl who’d been torturing me for months—and then her mouth was on my throat, her teeth grazing my pulse point, her fingers pinching my nipple with a precision that made my knees buckle.
I grabbed the edge of the sink for support. The marble was cold against my back, a shocking contrast to the heat of her body pressed against mine. She pushed the robe completely open, exposing me to the vanity lights, to the mirror, to her eyes that were darker than I’d ever seen them.
“You’re beautiful,” she whispered. “I’ve been telling myself you’re not. Every night. Every shower. Every time I hear you through the wall. I’ve been lying.”
The bathroom door didn’t lock. We’d discovered that on day one. The latch was broken, had been broken for years, and our parents kept saying they’d fix it but never did.
Riley didn’t care. She dropped to her knees. Right there on the tile, in front of the vanity where I did my makeup every morning, in the bathroom we shared with our parents sleeping twenty feet away. She pushed my hips back against the sink and put her mouth on me.
I bit my own fist to stay quiet. The mirror showed everything—her blonde head between my legs, my robe hanging off my shoulders, my face twisted in an expression that was part agony, part ecstasy. She was relentless. Her tongue found me with a confidence that spoke of practice, of fantasies, of months of imagining exactly this moment.
When I came, it was with her name muffled against my palm, my body shaking, my vision going white at the edges. She stood up, her lips glistening, her eyes triumphant.
“Now you know,” she whispered. “Now you know exactly what I think about when I’m in the shower. When I hear you through the wall. When I touch myself and pretend it’s you.”
The knock came at 12:30 AM. Our mother’s voice, sleepy and confused: “Girls? Is someone in the bathroom?”
Riley didn’t panic. She just pressed me harder against the sink, her mouth finding my breast, her hand sliding between my legs again. She whispered against my skin, so quiet I almost didn’t hear it:
“Let her hear. Let her hear what she’s missing.”
I came again, silently, with my mother’s voice on the other side of the door and my stepsister’s fingers inside me. It was the most dangerous, most exquisite thing I’d ever felt.
After, Riley fixed her tank top. I tied my robe. We opened the door together, faces flushed, and told our mother we’d been discussing wedding photos.
She believed us. Or pretended to.
Riley moved into my room three weeks later. Our parents thought it was “sisterly bonding.” They had no idea that every night, after they went to sleep, Riley climbed into my bed and showed me exactly what she’d been fantasizing about.
We’re still sisters. Technically. But we’re also something else. Something that doesn’t have a name in any family tree.
The bathroom door is still broken. We never asked them to fix it.
