Page 58 of Every Step She Takes
“You shouldn’t. But…” I tap out the ash from the end of my cigarette against the railing of the stoop, and then sort of hold it aloft, not smoking it but giving off the impression that I could simply be between puffs. “Is it really such a bad thing? That I have an innocent crush?”
“Sim,” she says, switching our conversation into Portuguese. “Because with you, there is no such thing as an innocent crush.”
THIRTEENVILA PRAIA DE ÂNCORA
Mal
The silence without Sadie is a different story.
She spends the trek from Viana do Castelo to Vila Praia de Âncora dawdling behind the rest of the group with Vera, taking pictures and stopping to chat with every old man who wishes them abom caminho.
Vila Praia de Âncora is one of my favorite towns on the northern coast. It’s a quaint beach community with incredible surfing that’s still relatively unknown by non-Portuguese tourists. On the white sand beaches, you’re only likely to meet locals, pilgrims, and the occasional Portuguese traveler on holiday. We would vacation here sometimes, my dad and me.
When I was eleven, he purchased a vineyard north of here on the other side of the Spanish border, and we’d spend at least a few weeks at that vineyard outside Vigo each summer, training staff and testing grapes to see how they were progressing for the upcomingvindima,when people from all over would come to stay at my father’s vineyards and help with the harvest. He made the season into a spectacle, of course.
If the flavor of the grapes in Vigo pleased my father, sometimes we’d add a few extra days to our trip and come down to Âncora. And if the grapes were sweet and not bitter, my father sometimes even let us take his sailboat to make the journey. Just the two of us, my father barefoot as he taught me how toadjust the sails out on the ocean. He’d let me take over when we reached the Minho River between Portugal and Spain, and if the grapes had beenreallygood, he’d compliment me on my skills, call me a natural. Then we’d spend a long weekend swimming in the Atlantic, reading books on the sand, and eating oysters and ice cream until my stomach hurt.
So, I love Vila Praia de Âncora, but I also hate it, like I hate all the places that hold my happiest memories with my father.
I spend most of the eighteen-kilometer walk trying not to think about those memories. I share AirPods with Ari and listen to a podcast about the history of ketchup. I reminisce with Inez about our previous Caminos together, and I go for a jog with Stefano during morning tea, and I let Ro tell me more about their corgis than I ever wanted to know.
But no matter what I do, the silence of the walk is anything but exquisite.
It’s a comparatively short day, so we arrive in town a little before two and get lunch in the central square across from the city’s main church. Flowers of deep magenta are in bloom and ornament every available surface in the square. I eat pizza, and I don’t think about the way my father would sneak a single flower from these displays to tuck into my hair.
But I do think about it, and the golf ball in my throat swells to tennis ball–size.
And that’s when I decide I can’t handle any more silence. I need loud. I need busy and crowded. I need distractions.
I need a Sadie-size distraction.
“I think you’re ready,” I tell her after we’ve checked into our hostel on a narrow street that connects the central square to the beach. As soon as we arrived, Sadie fell into her post-Camino routine, checking for new blisters and tending to old ones before getting in the shower for twenty minutes to scrub the Camino off her smooth skin.
Now she’s cross-legged on the floor, going through her yoga stretches, but I can’t force myself to sit down. Stillness is just as bad as silence.
“Ready for what?” she asks, doing a sideways stretch for her lower back.
“Ready for flirting.”
Sadie snaps back into her forward-facing cross-legged seat and stares up at me. “I don’t think I am, actually.”
“Is that what you’re wearing to dinner?”
Sadie glances down at her outfit: a pair of yoga pants that stick to her curves like glue, a white crop top, and her black zip-up. “What’s wrong with my outfit?”
“It doesn’t exactly screamflirting with a random hottie at a bar.”
“Why would I want my outfit to say that, exactly?”
“Because that’s what we’re doing tonight. After dinner. I already got Ari and Stefano on board.”
She stretches her legs out in front of her and stares at her knees. “Tonight?”
I nod. “I know you’re harboring a crush on Inez, but since she’s off-limits, I think our best bet is to go to a bar and have you get your flirt on.” I do a shoulder shimmy to emphasize this point.
“Flirt…?” she repeats. “With a woman?”
“No, Sadie, with a man. Preferably one with a full beard and lots of muscles. A real Jason Momoa type.”
