Page 33 of Every Step She Takes
But do I really wish I was back in Seattle, equally exhausted after a day of work? Alone in my room rewatchingHouse Huntersbecause I’m so burnt-out, I can’t do anything but dissociate?
Part of me does. Part of me wants to tell Vi I can’t do this, part of me wants to book the next flight home, burn my pack and hiking boots in effigy.
But there’s another part of me—quiet but getting louder by the minute—that sort of wants to see where this road might take me.
“I think I made a huge mistake in coming here,” I whisper into the phone.
“Good,” Vi says. “It’s time for you to start making some mistakes.”
There’s more free bread at breakfast.
I distracted myself from my empty stomach all morning by revising my first blog for Vi and posting to her Instagram. I wrangled my tangled hair into a single French braid, did my makeup, and tried slapping Band-Aids over the blisters forming on my feet.
By the time Mal woke up, I was already heading out the door with all my stuff in search of food.
At the hostel’s continental breakfast, I load my plate with bread, weird cheese slices, and ham that seems to be of the lunch meat instead of breakfast variety. I’m not sure if I’m supposed tomake a sandwich with it at eight in the morning, but I watch the woman with the camera—Vera, I think her name is—eat them separately at her table with Ari, so I intend to do the same.
I find some fresh fruit, grab a pack of Muesli to shove in my pocket for the next time I’m stuck without food, and find the coffee carafe off to the side of the banquet table. Then I awkwardly hover with my heap of food as I try to navigate the social situation of choosing where to sit. The lobby is full of people wearing hiking clothes and eating together in small groups. Ari and Vera are at one table. Inez is at another with Ro and Rebecca, listening politely as Ro complains about the difference between American and Portuguese continental breakfast. Stefano is wearing another pair of shorts that are basically a Speedo and doing squats next to the table while he eats yogurt. And then there’s an empty table tucked into the corner…
As soon as I make moves toward my own slice of quiet paradise, Septum-Piercing Ari calls out my name. “Hey, Sadie!” she waves. “Come sit with us!” I begrudgingly oblige.
“How did you sleep?” Vera asks just as I take a giant bite of my bread.
I chew quickly and when that fails, I cover my mouth with my hand. “Hard,” I answer.
“Same.”
“More importantly,” Ari interrupts, using a rolled-up piece of ham to point at me. “How could you sleep at all with your fine-ass roommate five feet away?”
“Oh, uh… Jet lag?”
Vera tsks. “You do realize that not everyone experiences sexual attraction, right? And Sadie said she’s straight.”
I didn’t, actually. Everyone else has said it for me.
“Mal’s hotness transcends sexuality,” Ari declares, brandishing her ham slice scepter. She swivels back to me. “Don’t you agree, Straight Sadie?”
“Is Mal hot?” I ask, as if the thought hasn’t occurred to me.
“She is.”
“Shereallyis,” Vera agrees. “Even I can appreciate her aesthetic beauty.”
“Sì, sì,” Stefano adds, appearing at our table like a jack-in-the-box with zero-percent body fat.
Ari shakes out her hair in a distinctly sultry fashion. The platinum streaks in her black hair conjure hipster Cruella de Vil vibes, but her overall aesthetic is cooky high school art teacher from the nineties. But the art teacher you secretly had a massive crush on. “Sadie, as the token straight of this tour,” Ari says, “figure out what Mal’s deal is for me.”
“Her… deal?”
“Yeah. Like, is she seeing someone? Are they monogamous? Would she be down for something casual? How does she feel about butt stuff?”
Vera smacks Ari’s arm. “Don’t make her ask that!”
“I will ask her about butt stuff for you,” Stefano volunteers as he sinks into another squat.
My face is hot, and I’m sure the hives are springing up on my cheeks in red splotches. It’s how I react every time people talk about sex around me.
I’ve always had a small group of female friends, but sometime in my mid-twenties, it became anxiety-inducing to meet up with the girls from business school for happy hour, because all they talked about was sex. They’d exchange horror stories about awkward one-night stands and ask for advice about boyfriends that never went down on them, and I would sit in petrified silence the whole time, praying no one would ask me any direct questions about my sex life.
