Page 109 of Every Step She Takes

She comes out of her twist. “Would it help to have someone there with you?”

“What?”

“I could come to the funeral with you,” she tentatively offers. “If that would be helpful.”

I understand the words she’s saying, but I can’t wrap my brain around the enormity of what she’s offering me, the way she’s willing to show up for me. “You…what?”

Her eyes are on her bare feet. “When my Nan died, I think I would’ve liked to have somewhere there to hold my hand.”

Would it be helpful to have this woman hold my hand at my father’s funeral? It would be…everything.

“Or not,” Sadie quickly amends. “You probably don’t want a virtual stranger at your father’s funeral.”

I swallow and try to find the way to tell her exactly how much I do want that.

“Not sure how you’d explain the presence of your practice-girlfriend to your extended family.” She laughs, but there’s something beneath that laugh. Something that’s not funny at all.

“Practice,” I repeat. Hearing that word feels worse than looking at that photo on the front page. I touch my hand to my stomach and feel the jasper stone through the fabric of my fleece.The courage to do what’s right.“I think having you come to the funeral might… confuse things. Between us.”

Sadie contorts herself into another side body stretch, but this time, she’s not looking at me. “Totally. Of course. That… that makes sense.”

“It’s just… we’re going to be in Santiago in two days, and…” I take a long, deep breath through my nose. The room smells like dirty socks and hibiscus, like sweat and sunscreen, like Sadie’s summertime sweetness. But summer never lasts, even if you chase it across hemispheres.

“I’ve been thinking about that, actually,” Sadie blathers, “and since the trek is almost over, maybe it’s for the best if we end our arrangement now. The… the sex arrangement, I mean.” She cringes at herself, even as she keeps babbling. “I’ll always be so grateful for you, Mal. Thank you for helping me experience my queer adolescence. Thank you for helping me question and explore. Thank you for the practice and the… the sex.”

Sadie is thanking mefor sex. A creeping numbness floats down my body, easing the growing pain in my chest. “And I’ll always be grateful to you,” I say, “for helping me open up about… everything. For listening.”

“Of course.” Her voice jumps an octave. “And I’m so sorry I invited myself to your dad’s funeral. And I’m sorry if I got a bit… too attached. And I’m sorry that I—”

“Please stop apologizing.” The words come from the pain, not the numbness, and I can hear the edge in my voice. Sadie stills on the floor.

“I’m sorry,” she says again, apologizing for the apologizing. Then she pushes herself up off the floor. She sways on her feet, then catches herself against the edge of her own bed. “Friends, right?”

I meet her gaze.

“That was the deal,” Sadie says. She’s smiling, but there’s something underneath that too. “We promised we’d stay friends.”

I try to smile back. “Friends.”

Sadie sweeps across the room and pulls out her toiletries bag like she’s done every night for the past two weeks. “I’m going to get ready for bed,” she tells me in that same false, high-pitched voice, and then she disappears behind the bathroom door.

And this is all for the best. Ending things now before either of us gets too hurt. I have to break my patterns. I have to find a way to focus on myself.

Ending things now is the right thing to do. So why does it feel like such utter shit when I fall asleep in a twin bed that isn’t pushed together with hers?

C’est La Vi with Me

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Things I Will Take with Me from the Camino de Santiago

Sadie Wells

May 24, 2025 81 comments

A love of walking. It’s hard to believe that two weeks ago, I was terrified of the sheer volume of walking that awaited me, because now I can’t imagine not starting every day this way.

An even more intense love of Bueno bars.