Page 67 of Every Step She Takes
I’m even more petrified that she won’t.
I’ve only kissed men I didn’t want to be kissing, and I’m desperate to know what it’s like to kiss a woman. To kiss someone I actuallywantto kiss. To kiss Mal.
I think kissing Mal might answer questions I didn’t even know I had, so I lean closer too.
And Mal steps away. Her hand isn’t on my back. Her eyes aren’t on my mouth. She’s a solid two feet away from me. “And that’s flirting. That’s all there is to it,” Mal says plainly, lifting her hands in with a casual shrug to indicate that this—the last ten minutes, this entire night—were nothing more than a demonstration, a lesson on how to flirt.
Every touch, every lingering glance, every second of hercloseness was all for the sake of my queer adolescence. Mal was never actually going to kiss me.
I feel so silly for thinking she might, for briefly wondering if my crush wasn’t so absurd after all.
I feel fifteen and humiliated. I feel like crying on the dance floor.
I feel… surprisingly grateful, I realize. Because for the first time in my entire life, Iwantedsomeone to kiss me. And it felt so fucking good towant.
I grab Mal’s hand and, without explanation, I pull her away from the dance floor, past the black tables and the wood-paneled bar, dragging her down the boardwalk until our feet land in the sand. I keep going until the music becomes a faint sound over the waves, until the lights from the boardwalk bars fade, and it’s just the two of us on the twilight beach.
“Sadie, what’s going on?” Mal asks when I drop her hand and wheel around to face her. She’s standing there with her mouth half-open, her eyebrows crinkled, and I’m so damn furious that she has the audacity to be so beautifully handsome.
“I have a hypothesis to test,” I tell her.
This is a mistake. Something I will regret in the morning.
But I’ve never made a mistake like this before, and like Vi said, I’m long overdue.
I look up at her confused face in the moonlight. “I need you to kiss me.”
FIFTEENVILA PRAIA DE ÂNCORA
Mal
“You need me towhat?”
Sadie on sangria is something else. She’s looking me directly in the eye, bold and unflinching. “I need you to kiss me,” she says again. “For science.”
An unhinged laugh escapes my mouth, but Sadie doesn’t flinch.
“Please,” she adds. “Please kiss me, so I can test my hypothesis.”
“Wow. That might be the sexiest thing anyone has ever said to me.”
She folds her arms across her chest. “I’m not trying to be sexy. I’m trying to be… semantic.”
I almost laugh again, but then Sadie takes a step closer to me, and the sound dies in the back of my throat. Her eyes are burning in the dark like twin suns, and in the moonlight, I can still see the millions of stars spread across her cheeks.
“You’re the one who wanted to be my fairy god-dyke. Now I need you to Bippity-Boppity-kiss me so I can know, once and for all, if I’m gay.”
Those words settle over me like a sobering cloud. “Sadie,” I sigh. “You don’t have to kiss a woman to know if you’re a lesbian.”
“I know that,” she snaps impatiently. “But I want to. Ineedto know what it feels like.”
Her tone slips into the kind of sadness that makes me want to reach for her, but I suspect reaching for her is part of what’s led to our current beach standoff, so I hold back. “I-I can’t kiss you.”
“Why not?” The sadness is gone, and annoyance rises in her tone. “You didn’t have any problem flirting with me all night to prove a point.”
I scrub my face with my hand. She’s right. Sort of.
But I wasn’t flirting with her all night to prove a point. I was flirting with her because I couldn’t help myself. I held her hand because I wanted to, and I stood close to her all night because she smells like wildflowers and summertime, and I touched her because she feels so damn good. I flirted with her, and then half-heartedly tried to turn it into some sort of deranged flirting lesson when I realized I was about to fuck it all up and kiss her on that dance floor.
