Page 63 of Every Step She Takes
“Thank you, Sadie,” Vera says earnestly.
Stefano nods in agreement. “This is what I am always saying. Not now, Oliver,” he says to the British boy clamoring for his attention. “I am with my beautiful girls.”
“Some of us are very, very beautiful,” Ari purrs. Her eyes are fixed on Mal too.
Oliver is on his knees next to Stefano’s chair. “You are the most beautiful,” he gushes, and Stefano bops him on the nose.
“Wait, I’m confused,” Mal says, studying the interaction between Stefano and Oliver. “Y’all, is Stefano…hot?”
“Objectively, yes,” Vera immediately answers.
Ari nods. “A total daddy.”
“I cannot comment on that,” Inez says professionally, as she throws back half a glass of sangria in a single gulp, then hiccups again. “But also, yes. Yes, he is.”
“I am very hot, indeed,” Stefano clarifies for the group, and to demonstrate, he stands up and lifts his shirt to show off a comically defined set of washboard abs on his ageless body. He’s like a gay, Italian Rob Lowe.
This is apparently the final straw for our server, who comes over scolding us in Portuguese, and we finally clamor out of our seats, talking over each other. No one seems to care that I don’t know if I’m bisexual or asexual or gay. They’re too busy arguing over their favorite Chappell Roan songs.
I feel both dizzy and firmly planted, both nervous and hopeful, both drunk and completely sober.
Maybe this night won’t be an octopus, after all.
Mal grabs my hand to guide me through the labyrinth of patio tables and out to the sidewalk, and my drunk brain savors the feeling of her palm in mine. Mal doesn’t have the hands of a trust-fund kid. She has the hands of someone who knows how to use a garden hoe. They’re callused and strong. Capable. I imagine they’d feel good all over me.
Which isn’t something I’ve ever imagined before.
“You don’t have to do that, you know,” I say.
“I don’t have to hold your hand? I’m not sure that’s true, Freckles. You almost took out that server. This way.” She tugs me along as we follow the British boys to the bar.
“Pay,” I say, thinking this makes perfect sense, syntactically.
“What?”
“You don’t have to pay for everyone, just because you can.”
Her hand twitches in mine, and I crane my head to see her jaw clench for a few seconds before she relaxes into an easy smile. “I know I don’t have to. I like to do it. I don’t have expensive taste, really. I travel, I support causes that are important to me, and I take care of my friends when I can. Besides,” she says breezily, “it’s fun to blow my dad’s money on a bunch of bad-ass queers and think about how pissed that would make him.”
I squint at her in the setting sun. That last part, I suspect, is the closest I’ve gotten to the real Mal, to the person behind the easygoing nomad façade. The words are casual and teasing, but when she mentions her dad, there’s something beneath her flippant tone—bitterness and resentment, I think. But she makes me dig for the real feelings, scanning for clues in the subtle shifts in her eyebrows, her jaw, her stupidly pretty mouth.
I want to tell her that she doesn’t have to fight so hard to keep these uglier feelings hidden away, because she’ll be beautiful no matter what. But my sangria-soaked brain can’t focus on saying actual words. It can’t do anything but stare at her mouth.
Ahead of us, Ari has consented to a piggyback ride from Stefano, and he weaves around sidewalk signs and people, who glare at them both. Behind us, Vera and Inez are laughing wildly. But right here, it’s just me and Mal, and her hand is still in mine. Another thought pierces through the alcohol: I’m holding hands with a woman.
A tingle shoots up my arm from the place our skin touches. I’m walking down a public street, holding hands with a woman Iwantto hold hands with. And shit, it feelsgood.I feel giddy and nervous; I feel the way I suspect my middle school friends did the first time they held hands with a boy.
The first time I held hands with a boy in seventh grade, I felt sick with anxiety the entire time, and I practically ran to my bus, dragging him along as fast as I could, because all I wanted was for the moment to end.
I feel a little sick holding Mal’s hand right now, but it’s sick in agood way. It’s the nausea of reaching the top of a roller coaster before the drop, the thrill of standing on the edge of a rock on Lake Washington before plunging into the water below.
Mal leans over to whisper. “You don’t have to flirt with anyone at the bar, okay?”
I tilt into her and our shoulders collide. She feels like a sturdy wall keeping me upright.
“I don’t want to pressure you to do anything you’re not ready for. Let’s just have a fun night with friends,” she continues. “That’s an equally important part of adolescence.”
I don’t say anything in response, and it takes me a while to realize that maybe I should have.
