The Straight Girl Tax: A Friends-to-Lovers Sapphic Romance

Ten years of unrequited love.Seventeen contractual safety clauses.Zero provisions for what happens when the straight girl kisses back.As fractional CFO, Aster Bly has two absolute rules: keep Carrow Coast Swim solvent, and keep her decade-long devotion to its founder strictly off the ledger. She calls it the straight girl tax-the invisible surcharge for being indispensable to a woman who will never want her. When a liquidity crunch and a predatory acquisition threaten to bankrupt the company, only one lifeline remains: an all-expenses-paid investor retreat on a private Caribbean island.The catch? The venture fund only backs founders with proven, long-term support partners.Fia Carrow has built her swimwear brand on creative instinct, architectural seaming, and the unwavering presence of her devastatingly competent best friend. Desperate to save thirty-two jobs, Fia does what she always does-she improvises. She enters Aster as her partner on the RSVP form without asking and assumes the operational details will sort themselves out.To survive seven days of couple's evaluations without detonating a decade of silence, Aster drafts an ironclad seventeen-clause safety contract. No unscripted touching. No romantic improvisation. No falling in love.Except one rehearsal kiss in a dark studio shatters the terms before the plane even takes off. The demilitarized pillow border in their villa collapses on night one. And between sun-drenched beaches, corporate sabotage, and moonlight in the resort pool, Fia begins to realize that straight was just an assumption she never tested-and the woman holding her together is the only one she wants taking her apart.When a ruthless investor tries to weaponize their relationship to steal the company, Aster and Fia must face the hardest audit of their lives: can a ten-year friendship survive the transition from invisible devotion to public truth?The Straight Girl Tax is a full-length contemporary sapphic romance featuring friends-to-lovers, fake dating, forced proximity (only one bed), a late-blooming bisexual awakening, and a fiercely competent heroine who finally gets claimed out in the open. Guaranteed HEA.