Page 97 of Every Step She Takes
Andthatfeels absolutely massive inside me, as if my ribs are cracking open to make room for it. I scoot even closer to her and drop my chin onto her shoulder. “For what it’s worth,” I whisper, “I think you’re really hot when you’re being vulnerable.”
Mal snorts. “You always think I’m hot.Wait!” She shifts so we’re facing each other, the profound sadness gone from her expression. “Ismybody like a poem?”
I slap a hand over my face and groan at the memory of that night at the bar, when I listed everything I like about this woman under the guise of having a crush on Inez.
“Ismymouth like a surprise in my face?” she needles.
“In my defense: sangria.”
“Do you like my hands?”
I uncover my face. “Yes,” I answer. “Yes to all of it.”
Mal’s smirk straightens into a thoughtful line. And then she’s touching me with those magnificent hands, kissing me with that surprisingly adorable mouth, holding me against her terse body. It’s a lazy, tangled-up-in-bed-sheets kind of kiss. Slow, like the first sip of coffee on a Sunday morning when you have nowhere to be. Her fingers slide up and down my back, then into my hair, twisting around individual strands as she plants kisses on my cheeks, my forehead, my neck.
None of it feels like practice. I can’t imagine what she’s trying to teach me with these indulgent kisses. Patience, maybe? Or foreplay?
Or how to accept affection without your heart exploding?
But as Mal holds me in her arms and kisses me sweetly, I start to wonder if maybe there isn’t a lesson here at all. Maybe Mal is kissing me because she wants to. And maybe I’m kissing her because I want her—not just for her mullet and her widow’s peak and her tattoos. I want the Mal who listens and sees people; the Mal who is generous and kind and always looking out for the people she cares about. The Mal who held my hand on the plane and rescued me at our first dinner. The Mal who gave me the shoes off her feet without a second thought.
The Mal who is hopeful and spontaneous, the Mal who gets up at four in the morning and climbs a million stairs just to show me the sunrise. The Mal who is careful with her heart because she has to be, because she’s been hurt by people who were careless with her.
She kisses me like we have all the time in the world, and I wonder if maybe it’s not just sexual attraction, not just an adolescent crush. If maybe the strain in my chest is something more than I can comprehend.
Three rasps on the bedroom door abruptly end the lazy kisses, and when they’re followed by the sound of a firm voice calling out, “Maëlys? It’s Luzia,” Mal defies gravity and flies to the opposite side of the bed in an instant.
“Hide,” she hisses.
I do not hide. “Excuse me?”
“I was hoping we could talk,” Luzia says through the door, and Mal tries to shove me under the blankets. As if that would fool anyone.
“I’m not going to hide,” I whisper, wrestling myself free of her neurotic grasp. “Mal, we’re not teenagers. You don’t need to sneak the girl in your bed down your balcony so you don’t get caught by your weird nanny.”
“The balcony! That’s a great idea!” Mal rolls off the bed and starts frantically putting on her pants. “Get dressed! We’ll sneak down the balcony.”
“Maëlys? I can hear you in there!” Luzia shouts. “Please don’t ignore me. We need to talk.”
Mal flashes me a desperate look, and as someone who’s done some fairly ridiculous things to avoid conversations with her mother, I humor her. I pull on my dirty yoga pants from yesterday and zip her coat over my sports bra.
“Maëlys!” Luzia calls out again, but at that point, Mal is already showing me how to climb down the balcony like she’s Romeo fleeing Juliet’s bedroom before the nurse can find them. There’s a conveniently located trellis that I suspect she used to sneak out numerous times. I’m not as elegant in my movements as she is, and I end up losing my foothold two feet from the ground. I tumble onto the grass, but Mal is already pulling me up.
Holding hands, we run through the gardens away from the house, laughing wildly as Luzia’s screams get louder. She’s on the balcony behind us, watching us flee toward the vineyard like a pair of rebellious teenagers as she shouts for Mal to come back. Neither of us is wearing shoes, and our destroyed Camino feet only carry us so far before we both fall onto the grass in a heap of limbs and laughter. Mal’s head is on my stomach and my legs are wrapped around her waist, and we’re both breathing too hard to do anything but gasp.
When we do catch our breath, Mal tilts her head sideways to look up at me. “I can’t believe you climbed down my trellis.”
“Be honest: how many girls have climbed down your trellis?”
She smiles at me in the grass. “Only one.”
THE CAMINO CREW
Today
Inez Oliveira
Tour of the vineyard in one hour! Meet Luzia on the veranda!11:03 a.m.
