Page 2 of Every Step She Takes
I swallow hard and try to hide the stress hives breaking out along the backs of my hands. He’s not trying to trigger an existential identity crisis, but I’m nothing if not an overachiever.
“Who is Sadie Wells…?” I repeat as if I’m ruminating on my answer, not inwardly wishing I had a self-destruct button.
Because somewhere around date nine back in March, when a marine biologist who looked like Jonathan Bailey didn’t stir anything in me, I started to realize I don’t really know myself at all.
“Who am I?” I take a long drink of red wine to stall. It’s a Thursday night, and the bar on Queen Anne Hill is crowded with thirtysomething, working professionals. Confident, successful people who probably know how to answer basic questions about themselves without breaking out in stress hives.
“Yeah,” Grant continues to prod. “I want to know the real you.”
It’s a noble goal, to be sure, but sixteen dates in four months have taught me that even I don’t know who Sadie Wells is. I check the time again. Twenty-seven minutes .
“Your sister mentioned you’re a small-business owner,” he says after another stretch of awkward silence.
“Yes!” I blurt, desperate for this conversational lifeline. “I run an antiques store.”
He eyes me over his pint glass. “Aren’t you a little young to work with antiques? Isn’t that sort of…”
“For old people? Uh, yeah. Mostly.”
“So how did you end up running it?”
At least this is a question I can answer, no identity crisis required.
“My great-grandparents bought a Victorian house in Queen Anne when they came here from Ireland in the twenties, and my Nan inherited it. She was obsessed with preserving the original detailing of the house and hunting down antique furniture to match its history. When my grandad died when I was six, my Nan used his life insurance payout to convert the downstairs into an antique and recycled furniture store. And then when she died, she left both the house and the store to me.”
“Fascinating,” he says, and the handsome bastard seems to genuinely mean it. “Tell me more about the store.”
I’d rather not. “Uh, it’s not… very interesting.”
“I think everything about you is interesting,” he insists with a flirtatious grin. At least, I think his grin is of the flirtatious variety.
The problem is, I don’t know how to tell him more about the store without ripping my heart open for this stranger.
I can’t tell him that when I was a kid, back when Nan and Grandad were alive, that old house felt warm and welcoming, their laughter always loud enough to drown out my parents’ screaming matches.
But now that they’re both gone, it feels like living alongside ghosts, and no matter how many home renovation projects I do to my creaky house, nothing changes that.
But I can’t talk about this with an amalgamation of Chrises. Hell, I can’t even talk about it with my mom and sister.
“Tell me about your start-up?” I non sequitur, and Grant gets swept up in another passionate monologue about his work. I study his rugged stubble, his kind eyes, and I try, try, try to feel some level of attraction.
When that doesn’t work, I reach for my wineglass again.
“But I never want my job to be the only thing that defines me,” Grant is saying. “What are some of your hobbies?”
“Uh…” It’s another stumper. “I-I don’t really have time for hobbies.”
I used to have time for hobbies. I used to have interests and passions . Well, one passion.
I grew up breathing new life into old, well-loved items under Nan’s tutelage.
At seven, she had me polishing brass lamps she found at flea markets for resale, and by nine, I could reupholster a chair.
By eleven, I was converting old dressers into bathroom vanities and using a table saw unsupervised. I loved every minute of it.
It seemed like an act of magic, to take a discarded piece of furniture that no one wanted anymore and turn it into something beautiful. It was all I ever wanted to do with my life: give second chances to broken dressers or water-stained tables or ripped couches.
But when I was twelve, my dad took off, and my mom fell into a long, dark, depressive episode, so I had to take over her duties at the store too.
I scoured the Seattle Times obituaries to get leads on upcoming estate sales, haggling with next of kin.
I learned to use QuickBooks when other kids were using their Nintendo Game Boys, and when I got accepted to the University of Washington, there was no question about what I was going to study. I would major in business. To help Nan.
Only, before I even finished my undergrad degree, I lost my Nan too.
One day she was single-handedly hauling armoires up the stairs, and the next day she’d fainted behind the register after skipping breakfast. It turned out to be aggressive, stage-four breast cancer. She was gone within a month. And the house, the store, her entire legacy… She left it all to me.
I was only twenty-one when I inherited a business that was failing and a house that was falling apart.
There was a lot less time for furniture restoration projects after that. Less time for friends and dating and self-reflection. Less time for having any kind of life outside that dusty store.
Until this bet with Vi gave me sixteen hours of self-reflection while sitting across from men I didn’t want to kiss, and I started questioning absolutely everything.
“What about travel?” Grant prods. “I usually try to take two or three big trips every year. I think it’s important to travel abroad and to experience different viewpoints,” he pontificates. “I can’t believe how many Americans have never even left the country.”
Unfortunately, I am one of those Americans. “I would like to be able to travel,” I mumble. “Um, I’ve never really had time for that either. I’ve always been too busy running the store.”
I honestly can’t remember the last time I had a day off, let alone multiple days off in a row to take a vacation. I’ve had to settle for living vicariously through my sister’s adventures.
“Well, maybe I could convince you to take a trip someday,” Grant says. Forty minutes into our first date . A knot of anxiety forms in my stomach, and it gets worse when he reaches over to put his hand on top of mine. I flinch, and he definitely notices the hives.
“Uh, sorry, it’s a… a stress response,” I tell him before promptly reclaiming my hand and hiding it under the table.
Grant misconstrues this detail. “Are you nervous about this date? That’s so cute .”
He says it sweetly, but I feel infantilized all the same, and I want to correct him. I’m not nervous about this date; I’m petrified at the thought of going home and telling my mom and sister that yet another setup didn’t work out, when I don’t have the right words to explain why .
I still have nineteen minutes to go, but the words come out before I can stop them. “Actually, I’m so sorry, but I have an early-morning meeting and—”
“At your antiques store?” Grant frowns.
“Yes. It’s with my assistant manager, Jane. She’s a real person.” I probably shouldn’t have added that last part, but I plow on as I start gathering my purse and my coat. “I’m so sorry.”
“No, it’s okay,” he says. He pulls a few twenties out of his wallet and leaves them on the table, signaling to our waiter that we’re leaving.
“You can stay,” I tell him.
“No, I can walk you to your car.”
“I-I didn’t drive here.”
“Then I’ll walk you outside,” he says with measured politeness, and that’s how I end up standing awkwardly outside the bar with him forty-six minutes into our date, on an evening that has no business being this cold this far into spring. I shiver.
“So,” he says, sliding his hands into the pockets of his peacoat. “I really like you, Sadie. But I get the impression you’re maybe not into it.”
And damn this man with his emotional maturity and direct communication style. There’s a reason why I prefer to lie and ghost; because otherwise I’ll lie and people-please. “No!” I squeak. “I’m not not into it. It’s just… this meeting! I’m stressed about this meeting! Really!”
He locks his Chris Pine eyes onto mine. “Then, do you think… may I kiss you goodnight?”
And despite everything, I want to kiss Grant and feel the butterflies Vi’s always talking about. I want to kiss him and feel all the things they sing about in love songs. I want this kiss to save me from ever having to find the right words for my mom and sister.
I want this kiss to save me from having to find the right words for myself .
So, I nod.
Grant leans in. He smells like eucalyptus and emotional intelligence, and when his mouth presses against mine, I will myself to feel something, feel anything .
Instead, I feel as empty as my house of ghosts.
“What could you possibly have found wrong with this guy?” my sister demands when she finds me sneaking another glass of pinot from the fridge exactly fifty-nine minutes after my date started.
“There was nothing wrong with him,” I start.
“Then what happened?” My mom is hot on Vi’s trail, and she flies into the kitchen wearing her bathrobe and nothing else. I get an unseemly flash of her crotch before she plants herself on a barstool beside the island. And this is why most grown adults don’t live with their families.
Or allow their families to live with them, as the case may be.
“He looked so handsome in those Instagram photos,” my mom says dreamily.
“He was,” I grumble into my wine.
“He was the perfect fucking man,” Vi snaps.
“But he wasn’t the perfect man for me.” And after seventeen dates, I’m starting to think there really is no perfect man for me. Because I’m maybe not attracted to men at all.
But if that were the case, wouldn’t I already know this about myself? Why didn’t I figure this shit out in college like every other self-respecting millennial?