Page 62 of Every Step She Takes
I shake my head. “No, no, it’s not that. I-I can’t learn to flirt!”
Apparently, I’ve said this loud enough that Ari a few seats down responds. “You don’t know how to flirt?”
My cheeks feel hot from sangria and shame, and I pressmy cool hands to them as everyone looks at me again. At least the group has thinned a bit. After finishing two pitchers of sangria, Ro offered to walk Rebecca back to their room, though they were both so drunk, it was unclear who was helping whom. And Stefano has been flittering between our table and a group of twentysomething British dudes who are biking the Camino, so it’s only Inez, Ari, and Vera who are staring at me now.
And Mal. Always Mal. They all seem to expect me to say something, but I can’t remember what the question was. “Mal is going to teach me how to flirt,” I say, hoping that about covers it.
“Oh, is she now?” Inez asks. There are several empty seats between Inez and Mal, but the way she glares at her cuts through the dead space.
“Are you looking to flirt with handsome man?” Stefano asks as he bounces back to our table. “I am most excellent wingman. Arjun!” he calls over his shoulder, and a boyishly attractive man appears beside him. Stefano slings an arm around him. “Susie, this is Arjun. Arjun is a heterosexual. Arjun, this is Susie. She is also a heterosexual.”
“Her name is Sadie,” Vera slurs.
“Not Susie,” Stefano says to Arjun, “but still heterosexual.”
“Hey,” Arjun says with a grin that reminds me of the dead octopus still sitting on my plate.
And it must be 90-proof brandy in that sangria, because I start shouting at Stefano. “Not heterosexual! Not Susie, andnot heterosexual!”
Ari gasps. “Plot twist!”
“I am completely blindsided by this news,” Mal says, loudly and unconvincingly.
“No she isn’t,” I say, because I’ve clearly forgotten how to filter myself. “Mal knows, and she’s going to teach me how to flirt with women tonight.”
“Come, Arjun. I have miscalculated.” Stefano leads the confused man away from our table and leaves me with the wreckage of my drunken outburst.
Ari stares at me with her cool septum piercing and her cool hair and her cool smoky eye. “So are you bi, then?”
“I-I don’t really… know.”
Ari shrugs. “Oh, cool.” And then she takes another drink of sangria, as if it really is cool that I am clueless about this entire part of myself.
“I-I feel like I’ve lost so much time,” I hear myself drunkenly confess.
Stefano pops back over to us. “Lost it? Where did you put it?”
It’s unclear if Stefano is being profound or if there’s a language barrier at work.
“You cannot lose time, Shari, because none of us possess it.”
Profound, then. Sort of.
“We just fucking told you her name is Sadie, dude!” Ari screams.
“Scusi! Scusi! I have name blindness!”
“You seemed to remember Arjun’s name just fine.”
There’s more yelling, more arguing, as Mal discreetly hands over a credit card, and the British boys grow impatient, urging us away from our table and toward the bar. Arjun has seamlessly shifted his attention to Ari, and she basks in it like the goddess she is.
That’s when I finally realize how nice everyone looks tonight. Ari is wearing her usual hiking outfit, but she’s painted her lips deep red. Inez always looks fantastic, but her high-waisted linen pants and barely-even-a-shirt crop top flatter her lean, muscular body. Vera looks stunning in a tennis skirt and moisture-wicking polo, but Vera would look stunning in a burlap sack.
Stefano is wearing his usual too-tiny shorts, but based on the reactions he’s getting from Arjun’s friends, the shorts are working for him.
And then there’s Mal. She didn’t do anything different for going out tonight. She’s not wearing any makeup, and her mullet is its usual level of unstylishly tousled. Her clothes are neither nice nor clean, but for some reason, she’s still the most beautiful person I’ve ever seen.
“You’re all so beautiful,” I unintentionally say aloud, my eyes still turned to Mal. Stupid sangria.
