Page 43 of Every Step She Takes
“Rave review.”
To me, the sandwich tastes like summer afternoons reading the latest Meg Cabot in a corner booth. It tastes like a sidewalk café in Porto, like nights when my father was out of town on business and his house manager, Luzia, would feed me a home-cooked meal. It tastes like comfort and five different meats.
“This whole fucking up your hair thing…” Sadie points at me with her fork. “Is that why you have a mullet?”
“Are you implying that my mullet is fucked-up?”
“It’s blue.”
“My mullet iscool. Like Joan Jett. Or Kristen Stewart playing Joan Jett.”
“Or like my high school geometry teacher,” Sadie adds.
“Oh, was your geometry teacher a smoking-hot dyke?”
She snorts. “Definitely not.” But then she starts chewing on her top lip again as she reconsiders the sexuality of her former teacher, her whole face tightening like a fist.
“Sadie.”
She’s so lost in thought, it takes her a minute before her eyes come back into focus on my face. “Hmm?”
“I need you to admit that my mullet is sexy.”
Her pinched eyebrows smooth out, then crumble. She lets out a small laugh. “I’m afraid I can’t do that.”
“Yeah, we’ll see.”
Sadie’s face flushes the color of her Francesinha, and a heat spreads across the back of my neck, too.
“Ari, I need you to settle something for me.” I turn toward the pretty Portland barista and find she’s already looking at me with her smoky eyes. “I’m explaining to Sadie that fucking up your hair is a queer rite of passage.”
“Oh, totally.” Ari nods solemnly. “I got frosted tips in eighth grade.”
“Merde,” Stefano curses. He has conjured hand weights from somewhere and is doing bicep curls between bites of his halibut. “When I first thought I might be gay, I styled my hair like David Cassidy. I thought it was manly.”
Everyone at the table turns to stare at Stefano. “David Cassidy?” Rebecca repeats. “FromThe Partridge Family?”
“Wait. How oldare you?” Ari asks.
Stefano clutches an imaginary string of pearls. “A lady never owns her age.”
“What are we talking about?” Ro asks as they come lumbering back from the bathroom.
“Fucking up our hair in our queer youth,” Ari answers.
“I had the Weird Al,” Ro grunts. When Rebecca gasps, they shrug. “What? It was the eighties.”
“When I finally accepted that I’m aroace, I threw away my hair straightener, curling iron, and all my hair products,” Vera adds, gesturing to the natural wave of her curly bob. “I used to spendan houron my hair every morning, because my mamá told me it was the only way I’d ever find a husband.”
Sadie’s fingers tangle themselves into her ponytail again as everyone shares hair stories, until Rebecca sets down her glass of Vinho Verde with a pointed thunk. “I’m as gay as Dolly in ‘Jolene,’ but I’ll be damned if I ever fuck up my hair on purpose.” She pets her blond halo like a starlet in an old movie.
Everyone laughs, and Sadie finally releases her hair shackles.
“See?” I tell her gently. “A rite of passage.”
“Why would Sadie care about queer rites of passage?” Ro asks. “She’s straight.”
Ro has all the subtlety of an acme anvil falling on the roadrunner, and when I glance up at Sadie again, I expect to find her hair strangling her wrists. But she’s holding her fork instead as she saws off a piece of sandwich and dangles the bite in front of her mouth. I wait for the panic to return to her expression, wait for her to blush or fluster or slink away to the bathroom to hide.
