Page 127 of Every Step She Takes

I have no idea what Inez or my intuition are trying to tell me right now. “Okay…”

“And if you can clearly communicate your needs, spiritual growth and transformation can occur.”

“Ineedmore wine.” I point to my empty glass. “Do you think I should communicate that to the server?”

Inez rolls her eyes. “Such a fuckingGemini.”

“Can you maybe give me the CliffsNotes version of what you’re trying to tell me right now?”

The server divines my needs and appears with the bottle of wine, and Inez waits until they’re gone again. “Why did you end things with Sadie in Caldas de Reis?”

“Because you told me to.”

“Mal…”

I squirm in my chair, wishing I could squirm myself right out of this conversation. Our friendship was so much easier when it stuck to the shallows. But it was also less meaningful. “I ended things with Sadie because she represented an unhealthy pattern of jumping into relationships too quickly.” I may or may not be quoting Sofia with that one. “And because you were right. We were in the honeymoon phase, and I was going to fall out of love with her eventually, like I always do.”

Inez folds her hands into prayer position and presses her fingertips to her mouth. “And did you?”

“Did Iwhat?”

“Fall out of love with her?”

I scramble for another defense, another justification, another joke. Did I fall out of love with Sadie? Is love constantly checking your phone because you always want to know what she hasto say? Is love thinking about her every time I see a sunrise, every time I catch a whiff of the flowers in my garden, every time I eat a pasteis de nata? Is love saving her the second Bueno bar, even though she’s five thousand miles away?

Is love wanting to tell her about what I ate for breakfast every morning, and what birds I see from my office window every afternoon? Is love wanting to hear about what she ate for dinner and what project she worked on that day? Is love wanting her opinion on every decision I make about the foundation? Is it hating the women she goes on dates with, even though I’ve never seen them? Is it buying a headboard she’d created out of a white picket fence and falling asleep in a bed that makes me think about having a home with her?

Of course it is. If anything, I am more in love with Sadie now than I was three months ago.

“I-I had to end things with Sadie before either of us got hurt,” I say to an expectant Inez.

“But didn’t you still get hurt?”

I sit in the silence of that question for a long time.

“That morning in Pontevedra.” Inez exhales a deep breath. “You asked me if I thought Sadie might be different. And I thought you were doing what you always do—thinking each new woman is the exception to your toxic patterns.”

I grimace. “Sheesh. Don’t hold back, N. Give it to me straight.”

She searches my face, and I’m not sure if she’s reading my aura or my eyebrows, if there’s something in my body language that tells her everything she needs to know. “But I think I should have realized that the fact that youwantedher to be different was the important part.”

“What do you mean?”

“Thisis the boring middle part.” She sweeps her hands wide, encompassing this table where we sit enjoying happy hour, this sidewalk in Porto. Sundays and 6 p.m. and September. “What Imean is, maybe you’ve found the person who makes the middles feel tolerable.”

I shake my head. “No, no. It’s… it’s too late, with Sadie. I missed my chance. She’s moved on, and she’s happy, and it’s… it’s too late.”

“Maëlys.” She reaches across the table and puts her hand over mine. “That’s the stupidest thing you’ve ever said to me.”

I snort a laugh.

“We’re all on different paths, all moving at our own paces,” she says in her best wise mystic voice. And God, how I love it. “There’s no such thing astoo late.We all get to where we’re going when we’re ready. Not before.”

She releases my hand and reaches into the beaded purse dangling off the back of her chair. She pulls out a crystal hanging from a gold chain and hands it to me.

“Rose quartz?” I ask, cupping the small, jagged stone in my palm.

Inez nods. “For love.”