Page 51 of Every Step She Takes
It’s not the hill or my humiliation that steals the air from my lungs this time. It’s the look on Mal’s face. She isn’t smirking orplayfully mocking me. She’s truly, sincerely,happyfor me, and happiness is painfully beautiful on her.
I turn away from all that beauty and continue following the coastline north. Mal quickly falls into step beside me, the clang of her Hydro Flask keeping time like a metronome. “What’s wrong?” she asks after a stretch of silence.
My eyes are anywhere but her face. “Nothing. It’s just… it’s awkward… that you know how I feel.”
“It shouldn’t be!” Mal jumps in front of me so I’m forced to look up at her. “Please don’t feel awkward! I’m your fairy god-dyke. It’s okay for me to know this stuff. We have princess–fairy god-dyke confidentiality.”
She walks backward for a few yards so we’re face-to-face, her eyes level with mine. It almost feels like we’re tied together with an invisible string, like she’s leading me somewhere I’m not ready to go.
“If I’m being completely honest,” she starts, looking me in the eye with zero regard for where she’s going, “Sometimes I feel the same way.”
Something strange happens in that instant. I take another step forward, but my foot never makes contact with the ground. I’m floating, suspended in air, suspended in time. “You… youdo?” I hear myself say. God, Isoundlike an adolescent.
“Totally. It’s hard not to have a crush on Inez. She’s sunshine personified.”
My feet are firmly back on solid ground. “Inez?”
“You have good taste, is all I’m saying. Inez is the fucking best.”
She still isn’t watching where she’s going, and she backs herself into a Camino trail marker, stumbling sideways.
Inez. Mal thinks I have a crush onInez.
Inez, who is off-limits because she’s our tour guide. Inez, a pretty girl who’s been nothing but nice to me.
Inez. IwishI had a crush on Inez.
Mal continues to stumble, and I almost reach out to steady her like she did for me, but she catches herself before she falls and effortlessly slides back into step beside me. “Whatever you’re feeling right now,” she says, as if she didn’t nearly land on her ass. “Let yourself feel it.”
I keep putting one foot in front of the other. I don’t look at her. Iwon’tlook at her right now, because I don’t want her to see the devastation that’s surely dashed across my face.
“I know we’ve only known each other for, what? Four days? But I get the impression that you’ve spent the last thirty-five years ignoring your body. Ignoring your gut, not listening to what it’s been trying to tell you.”
We take another step and I still don’t look at her.
“Sometimes, as scared queer kids, we cut ourselves off from our bodies entirely to survive,” Mal says. “So, whatever you’re feeling right now, whatever you feel when you look at Inez—if you blush or get sweaty palms or butterflies or whatever—let yourself feel it. Learn how to listen to what your body is telling you.”
I’m blushing and my palms are sweaty, but I don’t have butterflies. I have a stomach full of rocks.
I take another step, and another, and another, and Mal’s water bottle bangs out a death march. “Hey. Sadie.” Mal’s hand is on my elbow again, pulling me up short. “I’m sorry. That… that was presumptuous of me. You’re upset.”
“I’m not upset.”
“Then why won’t you look at me?”
I look at her. And fuck it.Thereare the butterflies. A thousand tiny wings are flapping inside me as they lift my stomach into my chest. “I’m not upset,” I say again, forcing myself to keep looking at her stupidly earnest, Beautiful/Handsome face.“It’s only that I’m not used to talking about these sorts of things,” I tell her, and it’s the truth.
It’spartof the truth.
“You can always practice talking about these sorts of things with me.” Her thumb gently swipes my arm in a gesture I think is meant to comfort me, but it sets my teeth on edge. “That’s what I’m here for.”
Thatis what she’s here for.
“Thank you,” I finally say. “I promise to talk to you about my crush… on Inez… when I’m ready.”
Mal’s hand falls away from my arm and she flashes me a strained smile. “I’ll be here,” she says, “whenever you’re ready.”
We catch up with the rest of the group in the postcard-perfect village of Carreço when we stop at a bright and airy bakery for morning tea. I order a cappuccino and two pasteis de nata, and then I manipulate things so I end up sitting next to Vera, as far away from Mal as possible.
