Page 75 of Every Step She Takes
Vera throws her arm around me. “Aww, you think we’re going to be friends in ten years?”
I roll my eyes as the seven of us push our way into a tiny gelato shop. The usual group chaos ensues: the overlapping too-loud voices, the arguments about ice cream flavors, the excruciatingnumber of samples the Americans insist on trying before they commit to a flavor. Sadie has a full existential crisis about her choice before settling on strawberry in a cup, the same flavor I’ve watched her eat twice already on this trip. I order a scoop of pistachio in a waffle cone.
There’s more chaos as we all struggle to find a place to eat our gelato, and we end up in a single-file line along a retaining wall, our feet dangling above the bay. The water gently laps against the wall. Old Spanish men dot the pier in front of us with their fishing poles, the way they probably do every evening. I stare at the joint between the sky and sea, still blazing blue even though it’s almost seven. That was always my favorite part of trips to Spain in the summer. The time change meant impossibly long days, daylight until ten at night, extra hours to be outside.
“Do you want a taste?”
I turn to my right to see Sadie, her sky-sea eyes, and her strawberry gelato, which she holds out to me in offering. Her mouth is extra pink, and I absolutely do want a taste. I take the spoon from her cup. The gelato is sweet and creamy, and I picture Sadie’s tongue tasting the same way. I let myself imagine kissing the flavor off her mouth, before I tilt my cone in her direction.
She scowls at the greenish-brown color. “What kind did you get?”
“The only kind there is.”
She hesitates, then swipes her tongue along the edge of my cone with one slow, long lick that makes me shiver from the inside out. And damn, I have to find a way to kiss her again.
“Mmmm.” She moans the way she did with her first bite of nata, the way she did into my mouth. “That’s delicious.”
There’s a smudge of pistachio ice cream in the corner of her mouth, and she tongues it away, and I’m about two seconds from kissing her right fucking now, on this retaining wall, in frontof everyone. She notices the way I’m staring at her mouth, and when our gazes meet from a foot apart, she doesn’t look away.
“Wow!” I jump and tear my eyes away from Sadie’s as on my other side Ari releases a long, low whistle that rescues me from my foolish lust. “How was I so fucking oblivious?” she shouts at the ocean. I blink in confusion, trying to figure out what I missed while dreaming of Sadie’s sweetness.
Rebecca startles, too, nearly dropping her chocolate sugar cone into the water below. “What are you talking about, ladybug?”
Ari throws her head back and laughs manically while everyone eyes her with increasing concern. “Nothing!” She’s pinching her side as she struggles to breathe through her deranged, barking laughter. “Just realizing I’m always a Judy Greer, never a Sandra Bullock.”
“Um, what?”
“Has Ari lost her pretty mind?” Stefano wonders aloud.
Ari jumps up so she can punch him in the arm. “Hey! You got my name right!”
“Prego,” he says smugly.
“You don’t get a trophy for basic human decency.” She punches him again. “Come on. Let’s head back to the hotel for face masks and wallowing.”
Ari tugs Vera into standing and throws an arm around her shoulders. “At least I have you, best friend.”
“I’m not really your best friend, right? Because I’ve only known you for a week…”
The rest of the group gathers themselves with Ro helping Rebecca slowly rise from the retaining wall. Stefano, meanwhile, springs from his sitting position directly onto two feet like some kind of magical jack rabbit. “This is not gelato.” He disgustedly throws his entire dessert into the nearest trash can. “Come to Italy, all of you. I show you real gelato.”
“You’ve got a deal, Dollface,” Rebecca sings. I’m still in a dreamy, half-daze, barely listening to the surrounding conversation as I finally push myself up to standing. Sadie does the same, and we linger at the back of the group as everyone zigzags up the crooked streets back toward the hotel. Sadie and I don’t speak as we eat our respective gelatos, but it’s not an exquisite silence.
It’s a silence that feels thick with that interrupted moment when I watched her lick gelato out of the corner of her mouth and I almost lost all control of myself, almost licked her mouth too.
I lift my cone to my mouth again, but before it reaches my lips, Sadie’s hand jerks forward, grabs the cone, and pulls it to her own mouth. She licks my remaining gelato, then smiles pistachio green at me.
“Sorry,” she says, without sounding sorry at all. “It tastes too good. I couldn’t help myself.”
The last shred of my self-control melts like the strawberry gelato at the bottom of her cup, and I grab the wrist of the hand still wrapped around my cone—the same wrist where her new tattoo shines under the transparent bandage. Without thinking, I pull her off the main street and into a small alleyway next to the nondescript entrance of a shop. I’m pushing her up against the stone wall beside the entrance, crowding against her.
“Sorry!” Sadie repeats with a squeak, sounding like she absolutely means it. “But it was just gelato!”
“I don’t give a damn about the gelato.” The words come out in an embarrassing growl. The cone falls to the ground between us as I slide my hand around her waist, and then Sadie’s cup falls, too, followed by the clang of her plastic spoon. “I’m going to kiss you,” I tell her, but before I even can, Sadie’s already kissing me. Her cold, sticky fingers cradle the back of my neck while her mouth crashes against mine.
Andthis kiss—this strawberry- and pistachio-flavored kiss—is somehow even better than last night’s. There’s no pretense, nopreamble, no pretending. We don’t have to negotiate the details or cloak drunken desire in scientific curiosity. I’m kissing her because she tastes so fucking good, I just can’t help myself.
And Sadie is kissing me back like she wanted this too. Her hands travel from my neck to my shoulders, my shoulders to my collarbone, my collarbone to the sides of my breasts beneath my tank top. Then she grabs a handful of that tank top and pulls me even harder against her. Our first kiss was drunk and sloppy and self-conscious, my whole body focused on easing Sadie’s nerves, on helping her relax until she became pliable in my arms, like Play-Doh I could mold. But oursecond kiss.
