Page 46 of Every Step She Takes
Sadie sucks in a sharp breath and she looks at me expectantly, as if my answer will somehow rewrite the lesson she learned in that classroom all those years ago. “I think we all care a little bit,” I tell her. “Some of us are better at hiding it.”
Sadie bobs her head up and down as she considers this. I get the feeling she isn’t done, so I hold myself as still as I can until she finds her voice again.
“A few years ago I had this dream that I was engaged to Jack Antonoff.”
It’s not what I expected her to say next, and I nearly fall off my bed as I try to make sense of her non sequitur. “Jack Antonoff? The Bleachers guy?”
“And the guy who produces most of Taylor Swift’s music, yes.”
“Weird choice for a dream fiancé, but okay.”
“That was the thing,” she tries to explain in a classic Sadie-bluster, all flushed cheeks and frantic hand movements. Her blue-green eyes are glossy and terrified. “I didn’t want to marry Jack Antonoff. In the dream, I was on the New York subway for some reason, and I kept telling everyone that I didn’t want to marry him, but no one would listen, and I couldn’t escape the engagement. Or the subway. I was just… stuck.”
She takes another sharp breath and releases it instantly, a hissing noise escaping her lips. “The next day, I told my sister and my mom about the dream, like it was this funny anecdote. Like, isn’t it so random? I had a dream about Jack Antonoff! And we all just laughed about it.” She pauses for a second, her eyes locked on her own blistered bare feet against the floorboards. “But the dream wasn’t funny. I don’t remember all the details now, but I do remember feeling absolutely terrified that I was going to have to marry Jack Antonoff. I said itwasn’tfunny, Mal!”
I’m trying to stifle my laugh, but I’m finding it very difficult. No one has ever sounded quite so devastated at the thought of marrying Jack Antonoff. “Except it kind ofisfunny.”
“It was anightmare!”
“Okay. Okay.”
“It is funny, actually,” she admits, but there’s no humor in her voice. Her tone is hollow, far away, even though she’s right here, just five feet away on the other twin bed. “It’s funny that I’m only just now realizing that dream wasn’t about Jack Antonoff at all.”
I stop laughing. “No,” I say, my tone matching hers. “It doesn’t seem like it was.”
Sadie gathers up her now-short hair and tries to pull it into a ponytail, but bits keep sliding out. Eventually, she gives up, and lets it fall around her face again. “I felt like I was stuck on this path I didn’t want to be on, and I thought I could never get off it.”
“But now you are off it,” I remind her.
“Yeah, and I have no clue where I’m going.”
“You’re going to Santiago de Compostela.” That gets her to crack a smile, and she’s so heartbreakingly beautiful in this moment, I don’t know what to do with myself. She’s scrubbed clean from her shower, not a stitch of makeup on her face, with a million freckles and her hair adorably short. She’s almost unrecognizable from the woman I met on the plane a few days ago.
But she is the same woman. Still scared and unsure and so hard on herself for not having figured it all out sooner.
There’s another tug in my chest, like a cord yanking me toward Sadie. I follow the pull as I climb off my own bed. “Can I sit here?”
She nods, and I lower myself onto her bed. I press my shoulder against hers, and I hope the contact says everything I’m struggling to put into words.
“Why did I force myself to date men for so long?” she wonders aloud. The question seems rhetorical, so I spare her another lecture on compulsory heterosexuality. “Ialwayshated it. I went out with this one guy a few times in my early twenties, and hewould send me these thoughtful, romantic texts. Things like, ‘the moon is beautiful tonight, and it makes me think of you.’ And I felt sick every time I read those texts. The thought of a man thinking about me made mesick.”
“In your defense, that text is gross.”
She does some combination of a laugh and a sniffle, and without warning, drops her head to my shoulder. It’s such an innocent gesture, but it’s also an achingly intimate one. Something that only happens between close friends or lovers. Sadie and I aren’t either of those things, and I’m overwhelmed by the way she keeps trusting me with parts of herself.
I’m also overwhelmed by her wildflower smell, and her smooth hair against my cheek, and her soft body pressed against mine. I put an arm around her shoulders, and this gesture is also innocent, also intimate.
“Thank you,” Sadie whispers again as I squeeze her in a tight sideways hug. Then I put a hand on her leg, and she puts her hand over mine, and we’re sort of… holding hands. On her bed. In our pajamas.
I try to ignore the way her hard nipple keeps brushing my arm through her cotton T-shirt every time she takes a deep breath. I force myself not to enjoy the feeling of her smooth, plump thigh beneath our hands.
But then she takes another deep breath, every part of her pressing against every part of me, and all my noble intentions go straight to hell. Some kind of half-strangled noise inadvertently escapes my lips, and Sadie lifts her head to look up at me.
“Are you okay?” she whispers. She’sso close, I can taste her breath.
It tastes like the tuna sandwich she had for dinner, actually, and the fact that I’m still turned on really says something.
“I’m fine,” I finally tell her through a clenched jaw. I’m holding my body as still as possible. I’m in a prison of barely maintainedself-restraint, a prison of my own making. Her blue-green eyes flutter down to my mouth, and the anticipation makes every part of me tingle.
