Page 79 of Every Step She Takes
I should probably be offended by her distance after last night’s gelato kiss, but I’m toorelievedto care. I don’t want to be alone with her either.
Something strange is happening to my body, something that started taking shape when I first saw this tattoo on my skin. The arrow and scallop shell, representing this new path, the one where I keep moving forward, keep putting one foot in front of the other. The one where I keep taking steps into the unknown.
Right now, the tattoo is distorted beneath the sticky bandage that protects it from my sweat, but even so, it demands my attention. I keep peeling back my sleeve to see if the tattoo is still there. It feels like proof that I can change, proof that no part of me is set in stone. That I can keep discovering myself, keep creating myself, keepclaimingmyself.
The ink on my skin anchors me to my body in a way I’ve never experienced before.
I am physical. Visceral. Aware of my muscles, my bones, my breath. Aware of the feeling of my feet on the ground as we walk,aware of my blood pumping through my veins and the air in my lungs. And whenever I’m close to Mal, or whenever I look at her, or whenever I do so much asthinkabout her, I can feel her presence like my heartbeat against my rib cage. I can feel her hands in all the places they’ve been and in all the places they haven’t.
So, no. I don’t want to be alone with Mal any more than she wants to be alone with me, because I don’t trust myself not to make another catastrophic mistake.
Fortunately for me, it’s our longest day on the Camino so far—19 goddamn miles—and Mal avoids me the entire time.
Unfortunately for both of us, avoiding me has a natural expiration date. Our accommodation for the night is a quaint B&B in the coastal town of Baiona, Spain. It’s clear from the sheer number of heart-shaped doilies that the place usually caters to an older, more romantic crowd, but Inez appears to be best friends with the owner, in the same way she does with everyone we meet along the trek.
Mal and I don’t look at each other, not even when we make it upstairs to a bedroom with pink wallpaper and a giant soaking tub clearly meant for two. The only saving grace is that there are two beds, though it appears they were previously pushed together into a single king-size bed.
I collapse directly onto one of the beds with no regard for how sweaty I am. “I’m going to soak in this bath,” Mal announces as she pulls out her toiletries bag and refuses to look at me.
Without another word, she closes the bathroom door. A few minutes later, the sound of the filling tub echoes through the room. If I keep lying here, I’m going to start picturing Mal in that water, so I force myself to get up.
I half-heartedly perform my post-walking routine, moving through my stretches and blister care. It only takes fifteen minutes, and Mal is still soaking, so I take my iPad out to the narrow balcony attached to our room and start drafting the day’s blogpost. It’s full of adjectives and hyperbole, and it sounds like the melodramatic ramblings of a lovesick tween. I don’t post it, but I don’t know what else to do with myself.
When Mal still isn’t done with her bath, I begin pacing the balcony. I feel antsy, but I’m not sure what I’m antsyfor.
I don’t know how tobenow that we are alone in this bedroom, even if Mal is hiding behind the bathroom door. I don’t know where we stand. I don’t know how I’m supposed to resist kissing her again, and I’m not sure Iwantto resist it.
“You’ve got to have a soak in that tub!” Mal steps onto the balcony in her shorts and a tank top, her hair wet and slicked back, and her ostentatious nipples poking out through her thin fabric. The sight of her makes every inch of my body buzz with nerves and anxiety and desperatewant.
Her tone is friendly, but she’s still not looking directly at me. “There’s a Froiz a few blocks from here, and I’m going to do a supply run. Do you need anything?”
Ineedto find an outlet for this restless energy. “Uh, no. I’m all good.”
“Cool,” she says with a casual shrug. “I’ll be back in an hour. Enjoy your hot bath.”
Then she’s gone, and I wander to the bathroom in a strange daze. I fill the tub with the hottest water possible and ease myself into it. My muscles groan in gratitude as the water envelops my sore body. I try to get comfortable, but as nice as the water feels, I’m still an anxious, tightly wound mess.
The problem isn’t my body, not really.
It’s my head. My restless, distracted, oxytocin-laden brain. The brain that keeps thinking about Mal’s mouth, and her tongue against mine. Her hands on my hips, and her hard nipples brushing against my body. The brain that can’t stop replaying the way she pulled me into that alley, the way she shoved me against that wall, the way shegrowledat me.
In the tub, I glide my hands over the places Mal touched: along the column of my neck, up the length of my arms, down my soft stomach, around the curve of my hips. Then, I touch myself everywhere Malhasn’t.I cup my breasts, tracing my hardened nipple, and my body tightens, my toes curling under the hot water.
It’s far from relaxing, but at least it feels like my body and brain are working together, not against each other.
As I touch my large breasts, I think about Mal’s small ones. I imagine her dark areolas, and how it would feel to outline them with my fingertips.
My back arches off the bottom of the tub as the pulse of pleasure moves through me, and I chase the feeling, letting my hand slide between my legs under the water. The merest touch there makes my body clench together, and when I start moving my fingers, my back arches again into the pressure, and I let out the tiniest scream.
This isn’t relaxing at all. It’s feverish starvation. My fingers move harder and faster, but it’s not enough, it will somehow never be enough. I need more, more, more. The ache for release is so strong, my movements almost aggressive. My fingers aren’t fast enough. The pressure isn’t hard enough. I see Mal’s Cupid’s-bow mouth, and I imagine all the places she’d put it if I asked her to. I think about the places I want my mouth to be. On the star tattoos behind her ear, in the beautiful pools of her clavicle. My tongue on the lean muscles of her stomach; my tongue anywhere she wants it.
The need in me only grows, and my legs hurt from holding them taut against the sides of the tub. My wrist is miserably tired. “Tip over, dammit!” I grunt, but I can’t get there. And that’s when the shame creeps in—the shame that tells me I should know my own body well enough to make this work. The shame that tells me I shouldn’t be thinking about Mal like this.The shame that tells me I’m too late, too inexperienced, too far behind in every way.
Except two nights ago, a small voice cuts through the shame spiral. Except two nights ago, I kissed a woman for the first time, and it didn’t feel too late. It felt right on time.
My hand stills, then slides out from between my legs. All around me, the bathwater has turned tepid.
I still feel an aching need throughout my body, and I still haveso muchshame to work through, but as I sit in the cooling water, I decide exactly what I have to do about both.
