Page 71 of Every Step She Takes
“I’m listening…”
“We kissed,” she says with a shrug. “It’s not a big deal.”
“Totally not a big deal,” I lie.
“It’s like you said,” Mal continues as she wrangles her greasy hair into a half ponytail. “I’m your fairy god-dyke, and last night was like turning a pumpkin into a carriage, or… something.”
“Totally.” I can be as casual and flippant as her. Watch me nod my head with complete indifference. “Though I don’t recall the part ofCinderellawhere she makes out with her fairy godmother.”
A grin flickers on her face. There’s toothpaste in the corner of her smile. “That’s because Disney is always straight washing that shit. In the original Grimm Fairy Tale, they totally had a Holland Taylor–Sarah Paulson thing going on.”
“Ah, of course.” I nod, and Mal nods, and we’re standing two feet apart in a tiny European bathroom, nodding like a couple unhinged bobbleheads, and it’sstillweird. I can’t stop staring at her mouth. At the curve of it, at the toothpaste smile, at the perfectvof her upper lip. I licked that spot last night. I took thecurve of her mouth between my teeth and tried to find the right equation to measure its parabolic arch.
“I’m sorry I forced you to kiss me,” I blurt in an attempt to silence my mouth and math-related fantasies.
“No, you didn’t.” Mal takes a step toward me, then two steps backward and bumps into the shower door. “I-I chose to kiss you. You know, for science.”
“Right. For science.”
We’re both still nodding, and I’m starting to worry we’ll never be able tostopnodding at each other. We’re going to be stuck in an awkward nodding loop until the shame from last night finally fades.Ifit ever fades.
“And the experiment was successful,” Mal adds. “It… it helped, right?”
I nod and nod and nod. “Totally. Very helpful. I-I think I just needed to… you know…”
“Kiss a woman,” she fills in, and those words are enough to conjure a visceral memory of her hot hands and her wet mouth and the pulsatingachein my lower stomach.
“Ehm, yes. That.”
She nods, and God, she even makes nodding sexy. I try to look anywherebuther mouth, but it’s a small bathroom, and she takes up the entire space with her long limbs and her perfect hair, her tattoos and her nipples beneath the thin fabric of her shirt. There’s literally nowhere safe to fix my gaze, and when I glance back up at her face, I find she’s looking at me too.
There’s another violent knock on the door, and we both jump. “I swear to the goddess, I will break down this door!”
“It’s only nine miles,” Inez says from behind the giant pair of sunglasses she’s wearing indoors when we make it downstairseleven minutes later. “A Guarda is nine miles away. We can make it nine miles.”
Ari groan-burps in protest as she pours Liquid I.V. into a water bottle.
“That shit doesn’t actually do anything,” Ro points out.
“Leave me to my delusions, Hashmi!” Ari screams in a very proportional response.
“No loud noises,” Vera mumbles, rubbing her temples in slow circles.
“What did y’all get up to last night?” Rebecca asks innocently, as if she doesn’t knowexactlywhat the sangria did to all of us. Then she starts passing out hangover kits she put together in paper bags before the rest of us woke up this morning. Inside, I find a water bottle, paracetamol, and several carb-heavy items from the breakfast buffet. Lastly, she hands me a paper cup of black coffee.
And thank goddess for Rebecca.
Inez turns to me, and I can see my wrecked face in the reflection of her glasses. “Would you mind, um,notwriting about last night? You know, for the blog?”
Writing about last night is thelastthing I want to do. “I promise,” I reassure her, and her hungover grimace softens a bit.
“We can totally do this,” Inez says again, and no one believes her. “Wait…” She looks around the hostel lobby, scanning the faces of her ill charges. “Where’s Stefano?”
There’s a chorus of confused grumbles. “Maybe he went home with Oliver?” Ari suggests before the door to the hostel opens. Stefano struts inside wearing his tiny shorts, sipping water from the CamelBak straw attached to his pack. “Buongiorno!” He greets cheerfully. “Sorry I am late. It was a beautiful morning for a sunrise 10k.”
Everyone glares at him before Ari says what we’re all thinking. “I really fucking hate you.”
I should feel like shit. Between waking up at four yesterday to hike Santa Luzia and staying out all night drinking, walking the Camino should be the hardest thing in the world.
