Page 19 of Every Step She Takes
“Inez Oliveira!” She brushes aside my hand and opts to take me by both shoulders, planting a kiss on each of my cheeks. She smells floral and sweet, and her skin is soft, and her lips are on my face, and I’m definitely blushing as she kisses my cheeks. “I’m your guide to the Camino and your own spiritual awakening for the next two weeks!”
My brain scrambles through the two frantic Duolingo lessons I attempted on the way to the airport. “Bom dia!”
Inez keeps smiling at me. “Bomdia,” she corrects, emphasizing the harddsound. I pronounced itbom gia, the way the green bird taught me. “Bomgia is the Brazilian pronunciation,” she explains. “I’m from Brazil originally, but here, people saybom dia. And technically, it’s almost three in the afternoon, so we say boa tarde.”
I learned the wrong version of Portuguese. Damn green bird. “Desculpe,” I apologize. At least I know that one.
“It’s nothing!” she says, reaching out for my shoulders again to give them a friendly squeeze. Inez has the energy of an eighties Jazzercize instructor, the voice of a televangelist, and the face of a Brazilian supermodel. She wears her hair in a long Afro that frames her face like a halo, her dark-brown skin shimmers withsome kind of glittery makeup, and her wrists jangle with chakra beads and crystal bracelets.
“We are waiting for one other pilgrim—” She cuts off mid-sentence, and her already glowing face somehow lights up even more. “Maëlys!” she shouts at someone behind me. It sounds like she’s sayingMileys, like there are two Miley Cyruses coming toward us.
But no. There are no Miley Cyruses.
I hear a raspy voice say, “Inez! Did I keep you waiting?”
And I recognize that voice.
She comes fully into view. Blue mullet and tattoos, her pack slung over one shoulder and her giant water bottle swinging like a bell. We must have been on the same connecting flight.
“Sadie!” Inez trills. “This is Maëlys Gonçalves Costa. She’ll be walking the Camino with us!”
Maëlys. Mal. As in a maelstrom. My face is positively on fire.
I didn’t just come out to a random stranger on a plane; I came out to someone on my Camino tour.
Someone I will be stuck with for the next two weeks.
Mal
“Freckles!”
The word flies out of my mouth before I can stop it. Out of the corner of my eye, I see Inez’s confusion, but my gaze is focused on the deep red blush spreading down Sadie’s neck.
The coincidence of it is almost too much. She’s standing there with her stiff trekking pack, looking at Inez for an explanation, becauseshe’s on the tour.
Michelle is trulyalwaysright.
Even jet-lagged, hungover, and exhausted, in the unflattering lighting of the Porto Airport, with a look of utter panic on herface at the sight of me, Sadie is the dangerous kind of pretty. The kind of pretty that makes me want to fly her to Greece so I can watch her watch the sunset on Santorini. The kind of pretty that makes me want to get a dog or a Costco membership or a RAV4. The kind of pretty I fall for every damn time.
If I’m going to focus on myself this trip, I need to be far away from Sadie and her freckles.
“Hello again,” I finally say. Very neutral, very detached, very not-Romeo-like.
Inez bobs her head between us. “Oh. Do you already know each other?” she asks in that thick Brazilian accent that reminds me of summer, good espresso, and the first time we met.
I was eighteen, heartbroken and angry as hell at the whole damn world. I had a pair of Vans and my old JanSport backpack, and I set out alone on the Camino Frances from St. Jean Pied de Port. Inez was twenty-two and trekking solo after finishing university in Barcelona.
At first, we just walked together casually, finding each other on the trail each day, sticking together when it was convenient and parting ways when it wasn’t. Then, one night, we ended up at the same albergue that turned out to have a horrific case of bedbugs that scarred us both emotionally. So the next night, we splurged and split the cost of a real hotel room, with no bugs and a bathtub where we could soak our aching bodies. We were inseparable after that, walking the rest of the way to Santiago side by side, staying in the same albergue or shared private room each night.
There was nothing romantic about our partnership; I was too young for her and still madly in love with Prithi, even if she had ripped my heart in half with her bare hands. Inez hadn’t transitioned yet, and she wasn’t in a good place mentally. Romance wasn’t even on her radar. But we became a Camino family, and there was something about that bond that feltbetterthan romance.
We’ve mostly stayed in contact through WhatsApp messages, and we’ve only seen each other in person a handful of times since that first trip, but when I felt the itch to escape Seattle, she was the first person I called. That’s how I ended up on her Portuguese Camino tour at the last minute.
“We don’t know each other,” I finally tell Inez as Sadie stews awkwardly beside us. “Not really. We were just on the same flight.”
“Oh yes, of course! I booked your tickets together!” Inez beams at us like our fateful meeting in this moment is the greatest joy of her life. “And now you are about to become partners on the road to self-discovery! Pluto has moved into Aquarius, which means it’s the perfect time for transformation, rebirth, and inner contemplation!”
God, how I’ve missed her mystic bullshit.
