My Stepsister Moved Into the Guest Room at Thirty novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: The Towel
Flora moves in after a fire and the first night ends in the hallway with Robin holding a towel; Flora tells her she can look.
My stepsister arrived at nine at night with two duffel bags and a potted fern.
She stood in my doorway smelling like smoke, and she was smiling anyway.
"Hi, Robin," Flora Hallam said. "I promise I'll be gone in a few weeks."
I had met her exactly four times in two years.
The first was the wedding, where my mother married her father in a Lincoln Park garden.
I was twenty-nine, Flora was twenty-five, and we shook hands.
We are stepsisters by marriage only.
We share no blood and no childhood, and we were both full adults when our parents met.
I took the fern from her and said, "The guest room's made up."
Her apartment in Logan Square had flooded after the fire upstairs.
Her insurance would take six weeks, and my mother had called me three times that day.
"You have the room," Mom had said. "Don't be difficult, Robin."
I am thirty-one, an ER nurse, and the family fixer.
So I said yes, and now Flora was in my hallway taking off her boots.
She was shorter than I remembered, with long strawberry-blond hair and freckles across her nose.
Her overalls had paint on one knee and dirt under every nail.
She looked at my spotless kitchen and laughed.
"Do you label the spices?"
"Alphabetically," I said.
"Of course you do."
She said it warmly, and something low in my stomach tightened.
I showed her the bathroom, the towels, and the Wi-Fi password.
I told her I worked nights, Monday, Tuesday and Thursday, seven to seven.
"So I get the place to myself," she said.
"You get the place to yourself."
She grinned, and I went to bed early because I did not know what else to do with my face.
At eleven I woke to the sound of the shower.
I lay in the dark listening to water hit the tile.
I told myself I was thirsty, got up, and walked down the hallway for a glass of water.
The bathroom door was open a hand's width, and steam rolled out into the cold hall.
I did not look through the gap.
I filled my glass at the kitchen sink and drank half of it standing very still.
Then I remembered that I had put out only one towel.
It was the thin gray one, because the good ones were in the dryer.
I took the good ones out of the dryer, still warm, and carried the biggest one back down the hall.
I told myself that was what a decent host did.
The water shut off just as I reached the door.
I stopped where I was, with the towel held against my chest.
The door swung inward.
Flora stepped out into the hallway, wet, pink from the heat, and completely naked.
Water ran off her hair and down between her breasts.
Her breasts were full and freckled, her stomach soft, her thighs wide and strong from years of hauling soil.
Water slid down her hip and I followed it with my eyes.
I did not mean to.
I could not stop.
Flora did not cover herself.
She did not reach for anything.
She looked at the towel in my arms, and then at my face.
"Is that for me?"
"I thought you'd want a better one," I said.
My voice came out lower than I meant.
"Thank you."
She took one step forward.
I held the towel out and she did not take it.
Instead she took my wrist.
Her fingers were hot and wet, and they closed over my pulse.
She pulled my hand and the towel toward her, slowly, until the cotton brushed her belly.
The backs of my fingers touched her skin.
It was soft and slick and warm, and a rush went through me from my palm to the base of my spine.
Her stomach moved under my knuckles as she breathed in.
"Robin," she said.
"Yes."
"Your pulse is going crazy."
"I just came off a double," I said, though I had not worked in two days.
Flora smiled, slowly, as if she knew exactly how bad that lie was.
She let go of my wrist and took the towel from me.
She did not wrap it around herself.
She held it at her side and let me look.
"We're stepsisters," she said quietly. "It's not like it's against the law."
My mouth was dry.
"Flora."
"You've been looking since I got here, Robin."
The hallway light buzzed above us.
I should have said no.
I should have said goodnight and gone to bed and spent six weeks being politely terrible at this.
Instead I stood there with my hands empty and my whole body listening to her.
Flora stepped past me, close enough that her bare shoulder brushed my arm.
At the door of the guest room she turned around, still naked, still holding the towel in one hand.
"You can look," she said. "I don't mind."
Then she went inside, and she left the door open.
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