Page 105 of Every Step She Takes

“The only thing I can smell is my own body odor,” I tell her after sniffing the air. There’s something especially potent about the mixture of sweat and wet clothes.

Sadie shakes her head. “No, not that. You don’t smell it?”

She takes a long, deep breath through her nose, and I do the same. “I smell your wildflower shampoo,” I tell her.

“Wildflower shampoo?” she touches her rain-soaked hair. “Oh, it’s hibiscus. No, not that.”

“And I can smell whatever cleaning products they used in this room.”

“Not that either,” she says, and she keeps taking long, deep inhales through her nose, like she’s desperate to name the phantom smell, and I keep taking those long, deep breaths with her, until my ribs start to expand with each inhalation, until the pain in my lungs begins to subside, andoh. Duh.

There is no smell.

“Where did you learn that little trick?” I ask when I’m able to take several deep breaths in a row without asphyxiating.

Sadie offers me a small smile. “You pick up a few things growing up with a mom who has severe anxiety.”

“I don’t have anxiety.”

“Okay,” she says again. “How can I help with this non-anxiety, non–panic attack?”

I keep taking deep breaths, keep breathing in that hibiscus scent. “You’ve already helped.”

She lifts her right hand and hesitates a second before she uses it to take mine. Our fingers stitch together. Her touch no longer feels suffocating. It feels like a slow, deep breath.

“Have… has this ever happened to you before?”

“No,” I answer. But then I think about every paralyzing memory of my father’s anger and disappointment. The way I freeze every time I remember the night I came out to him. The numbness and lightheadedness, the way it feels like there’s a boulder on my chest sometimes. The racing thoughts and the fear of the quiet. The way I can’t settle into anything, can’t sit still, can’t let myself stay in love.

“Sometimes,” I quietly confess, “when I think about my dad, I get this… this tightness.” I rub the heel of my palm over my sternum, over the place where the worst memories live, right behind my compass tattoo. “When I remember the night he rejected me, I get this sort of… I don’t know.”

I can’t find the words to describe this kind of pain.

Sadie holds my hand in silence for a long time. “Do you think you might have some PTSD from all of that?”

“No,” I say too quickly. “Or… maybe? I don’t know.”

Sadie doesn’t press the issue. “What do you think triggered these feelings today?”

“There… there was this…article,” and fuck. Now I’mcrying for the millionth time. The tears are sticky and hot, but Sadie quickly brushes them away with the tips of her cool fingers.

I don’t want her to see me like this, but Sadie always sees so much of me.Too much.

I brush away my own tears, brush away everything I want to keep hiding. “I’m not sure what part of your queer adolescence this is,” I joke.

“Are you kidding?” Sadie squeezes my hand. “What could be more queer than comforting the woman you’re having casual sex with through a mental health crisis?”

“Party girl?” Inez throws aside the newspaper in disgust. “I’ve only seen you truly drunk twice, and you wouldn’t even do mushrooms with me when we trekked the West Highland Way.”

She snorts, then takes a long drag of her cigarette.

“That’s hardly the worst part,” I tell her with my legs dangling off the balcony in her room. The rain stopped at some point in the night, and now Pontevedra smells damp and earthy. I keep breathing it in through my nose, keep finding calm in the early morning smells of an ancient city. “And I’d rather be a party girl than someone people depend on for their livelihood.”

She studies me before leaning over to flick her cigarette against the edge of an ashtray. “Is that why you woke me up at four in the morning?”

I honestly don’t know why I did it. After Sadie drew me a warm bath and went out to get us sandwiches from the supermercado down the street so I wouldn’t have to face everyone at dinner, we snuggled in the two twin beds we’d pushed together until I fell into a hard, deep sleep wrapped in her arms.

But at three in the morning, I startled awake in a cold sweat and couldn’t quiet my brain.