Page 94 of Every Step She Takes
“Yeah, but I think you might be my favorite mistake so far.”
We sit on the bed in the aftermath of that confession. Of all my confessions.
Eventually, Sadie lets go of my hands. “We need to talk about the last remaining elephant in the room.” She reaches over to my dresser and picks up my elephant Beanie Baby. “What happened here?”
I snatch him out of her hands. “That’s Peanut, and he does not appreciate your mockery.”
“You must’ve missed him terribly these past twenty years.”
“He promised to write.” I hold up Peanut and force him to wave at her with one hoof. “Oh, the nights I wasted sitting by the window, waiting for his letters.”
“This room is…” She scans the walls, and I want to gouge her eyes out before she notices all my Red Hot Chili Peppers CDs. Thehumiliation. “It’s a little bit creepy,” Sadie decides.
“It’s a lot creepy.”
“Based on everything you said about Valentim, I’m surprised he didn’t take all this stuff down. Turn your room into a home gym or something.”
I would’ve assumed the same about my old childhood bedrooms. I never expected to find this one exactly how I left it twenty years ago. “I guess that’s what happens when you ownmultiple mansions. You forget about weird, abandoned rooms like this one.”
Sadie climbs off the bed and traces her hand along bottles of black nail polish, my CD player, my collection of cucumber melon body spray. “I love all of it,” she declares. My chest swells in an unfamiliar way.
Her eyes are on a jewelry box, her fingers sifting through necklaces I never wore, earrings I tried to lose. “Do you miss any of this stuff? Is there anything you want to take with you?”
Sadie is the only thing in this room I want, but I already know I can’t keep her. From the bed, I watch her wander, open drawers without asking, touch things without thinking. I don’t stop her. There’s nothing left for me to hide.
Except a red, lacy thong I bought when I was thirteen and which I hid from my father in the back of my sock drawer. She pulls the cheap lingerie out and shakes it in my direction. “Ooh la la!” she teases in a horrible French accent. “Did you bring lots of girls to this room?”
“Only one.” I intend to sound teasing too, but the words come out in that embarrassing growl from last night. Sadie quiets for a moment, the thong falling to her side.
“Technically,” she says, “I broughtmyselfhere. After forcing Inez to tell me which room is yours under threat of writing a negative review.”
“I should’ve known you had it in you to be devious.”
She curtsies.
“You know, there isone thingI would like to take from this room.” I scoot to the edge of the bed.
“And what’s that?” She slinks toward me like she already knows.
“A memory,” I say, as she steps between my opened legs. “Of you, in this room.” I run a hand from her thigh up along herwide hip, the soft curve of her waist. “A memory of your skin, and your freckles, and those little sounds you make…”
Sadie turns to the dresser, picks up Peanut, and then faces his black, beady eyes away from the bed and toward the far wall. I laugh, and she flashes me another devious smile.
“Maybe this time, you could practice taking your shirt off in front of me?” I try. “You know, for sexual confidence reasons.”
She squints one eye and taps her chin. “Only if you agree to wear this.” She tosses the red thong so it lands on top of my head, and we both laugh.
We laugh as Sadie does a very shy striptease, sliding out of her bra and then using several Beanie Babies to conceal her large, pale breasts.
We continue laughing when we discover that I can no longer fit in my thirteen-year-old underwear, and I loudly curse every unholy thong that walks this earth as I inelegantly kick it off my leg. And then we’re both naked in my dimly lit childhood bedroom, and we’re not laughing at all when I fill my hands with her flesh, when my lips kiss her firm nipple, and then down, down, over her decadent curves, all the way down to the tangle of red hair between her legs. I crouch before her like a pilgrim before a religious icon, and I fully intend to worship her.
When I lick Sadie for the first time, she gasps and grabs onto my shoulders. Her nails dig into my skin as I tease out all those lovely little sounds. She’s extremely sensitive, and I tread carefully with each lick, each suck, each kiss, even though everything about this moment makes it hard for me to hold back. Her earthy smell and the taste of her as she becomes wet; her fingernails and her moans; the way she trembles and heaves and lets me love her body without an ounce of self-consciousness.
I fuck her here, in my childhood bedroom, against a dresser lined with Beanie Babies, but there’s nothing funny about it at all. It feelssacred.
Sadie comes hard and fast, thrusting herself against my face before she crumples into a boneless pile on the floor beside me. I’m not sure what I’m teaching her as I slide my fingers between her legs and coax out a few more tremors, what we’re practicing as she kisses me after each little gasp.
And when I make her come again, tangled up in my black sheets, I don’t know how either of us will be able to pretend this is for scientific purposes.
