Page 25 of Every Step She Takes

Mal

“Sadie. Sadie! Wake up!”

There’s a sharp snort followed by an unattractive throat clearing as Sadie jerks up in bed, blinking into the low light of our room. It’s dark beyond our Viana do Castelo albergue, but I clicked on the bedside lamp when I decided to chase this impulsive urge.

“Why would there be a fire?”

“I don’t know!” She rubs the sleep out of her eyes. “Why would you be waking me up for anything less?”

“Come on.”

She closes one eye and squints at me with the other. “What?”

“Come on,” I say again. “We’re going for a little walk.”

“This whole trip is a walk.”

I shove my feet inside my hiking sandals and toss my Hokas on the floor beside her bed. “This is an extra walk.”

“ Why are we doing extra walking in the middle of the night?”

“As part of your queer adolescence, obviously. We’re going to hike up to Santa Luzia hill and watch the sunrise.”

Sadie doesn’t move from her nest of sheets and blankets. “No,” she says, and then she flops onto her back.

I’m confused.

This seemed like such a marvelous idea as I tossed and turned until three in the morning, listening to the soundtrack of Sadie’s snores.

The views from Santa Luzia hill are incredible, with a sweeping panoramic of the city and the sea and the River Lima that connects the two.

It seems wrong to be here, in this town, and miss the chance to see it.

I don’t want to miss the chance to share it with her.

Even if we were up until midnight talking about everything and nothing and watching Property Brothers .

And damn. She appears to be back to sleep already.

“Come on,” I try again, moving close to nudge her shoulder with more enthusiasm. “Sneaking out in the middle of the night is a quintessential teen experience!”

Sadie pulls the duvet up over her head. “It’s not even sneaking out,” she grumbles. “We’re allowed to leave our rooms whenever we want. Because we’re not teens.”

“Yes, well, it’s the essence of the thing. Besides, we have curfew. We’re all supposed to be in our rooms from midnight to six a.m. for safety.”

“Well, if it’s for safety, we should probably abide by the rules.”

“Said like a rule-follower who’s never defied her parents.”

My taunting still isn’t enough to rouse her, so I switch to physical coercion.

I latch on to the duvet still covering her face and attempt to yank it off.

The problem is, awake Sadie might be as stubborn as a bull, but sleepy Sadie is as stubborn as every fucking bull in all of Pamplona combined.

I pull on the duvet, and she pulls right back twice as hard.

“I thought you wanted quintessential adolescent experiences!” I screech as I struggle to outmuscle her.

“Adolescents need sleep!” she screeches back with one more vicious yank of the duvet. I lose my footing, and she ends up pulling me along with the blanket. Our little game of tug-of-war ends suddenly when I fall on top of the duvet and her.

Sadie yelps. “What are you doing? Get off me!”

My brain scrambles for a way to play this off as intentional, but it’s four in the morning, and my elbow just collided with what I hope was her stomach.

She quickly disabuses me of my hope. “Ouch! That was my boob, you boob!”

“This is the natural consequence of your actions,” I tell her with all the casualness I can muster while my face is buried in blanket.

She flails beneath me, and I flail on top of her, and somehow that’s the moment I register our bodies are only separated by the thin fabric of this duvet.

I wonder if she realizes it too, because she goes still beneath me. I roll off her and wedge myself between her body and the wall on this tiny twin bed. Neither of us moves for the length of three labored breaths, and then I pull the blanket down from over her face.

She looks pissed. Her hair is mussed, with her bangs sticking straight out like an awning over the rest of her face, and her eyes are furious but awake. She looks—

Off-limits.

“Was this strictly necessary?” she whispers. Our faces aren’t even a foot apart on her pillow.

“Depends,” I whisper back. “Did I change your mind?”

“Let me make sure I understand. You want me to get up at…” She checks the time on her phone. “… four in the morning, so I can walk more ?”

“Yes.”

“And sleep less?”

“That would be correct.”

She unleashes a string of ingenious curses, and I sit up beside her, folding my hands beneath my chin. “Please?”

“I’m already getting up,” she harrumphs, throwing the blanket off herself and onto me. As she rises from the bed, her sleep shorts bunch together, giving me a view of the dimpled flesh of her upper thighs.

Sadie adjusts her shorts, then turns to glare at me. I do a thoroughly good job pretending I wasn’t staring at her arse. “Let’s go,” I say very calmly, very indifferently, very not aroused. “I’ll race you to the stairs.”

“Stairs? You didn’t say anything about stairs.”

I insist that we tiptoe past the door to Inez’s room like the rebellious teens we’re pretending to be, and Sadie reluctantly humors me.

The lobby of our private albergue is dark except for the faint glow of the front desk and the blue computer light reflecting off the glasses of the clerk.

We creep past them too, and stealthily slip into the predawn.

Viana do Castelo is eerily vacant at this hour.

It’s not a big enough city to have a nightlife, and no one in Portugal wakes up before six.

As we wander toward Santa Luzia hill, it’s as if we’re the only two people in the world.

I usually hate this kind of silence, this quietly meditative time of day, but with Sadie clinging to my side, it’s slightly more tolerable.

Of course, she’s only clinging to me because the headlamp I’m wearing is our primary source of light.

“About these stairs…?” she starts.

“How did you think we were going to get up the hill?”

“Not via fucking stairs,” she grumbles, tripping over cobblestones in the dark and swearing again.

“During the day, you can take a funicular to the top,” I tell her, pointing ahead to the tracks that run up the side of the hill rising above Viana do Castelo.

“Great. Let’s do that.”

“It doesn’t open until ten a.m.”

“Sounds like we should turn around, then.”

I tighten my grip on her arm, which she has threaded through mine. “After hours, you have to climb these stairs they’ve built into the hill. There’s only, like, seven hundred or something.”

“Seven hundred stairs?”

“You’ve already walked forty miles. What’s seven hundred steps?”

She harrumphs again. Sleepy Sadie is irritable in a surprisingly refreshing way. She’s usually so concerned with pleasing others, but she seems to have no interest in pleasing me this morning. Maybe the queer adolescence is working; selfishness is the most critical cornerstone of youth.

“Tell me more about reupholstery,” I say, trying to distract her from the physical strain that awaits us.

“Uh-uh.” She huffs. “It’s your turn to share things.”

“What do you mean?”

“I’ve already told you a thousand embarrassing things about myself,” she says as she reluctantly trudges up the first few steps. “I got drunk on red wine and told you I’m a clueless virgin who didn’t realize she’s queer even though she used to masturbate to Eliza Dushku in Bring It On .”

“Um, you did not tell me that last part, actually.”

“I didn’t? Well, the point stands. I want to hear some of your humiliating secrets.”

“Okay…” The stone stairs narrow after the first switchback, and our arms detach so we can walk single file up the steps. It’s cold without her pressed against my side, and I zip my fleece. “I’ve also masturbated while thinking about Eliza Dushku.”

“I’m serious, Mal!” she squawks from behind me.

“So am I! Those leather pants she wore in Buffy ? That’s formative queer awakening stuff right there.”

“Come on ,” she whines into the dark. “Tell me something true about yourself.”

Something true. There are a million true things I could share with Sadie as we climb these stairs.

I could tell her about my own inheritance; I could tell her about my own shit-head dad; I could tell her about Ruth, or about all the other women I used as distractions; I could tell her that I want her to be my favorite distraction of all but that I’m trying to change.

Her footsteps stop, and I turn to see her resting a few steps below. She throws up her hand to shield herself from my headlamp, and I swivel it to the side. “This is me,” I say with a half-hearted flourish, unable to give her anything else. “I don’t have secrets. You get what you get.”

She huffs again and forces herself to keep climbing. “I don’t believe you.”

“Why not?”

“Because sometimes you look at the ocean like you’re angry at it.”

I trip over a step and stop again. “What?”

She collides with my back, and we pause only one step apart.

“Sometimes, it seems like you love this place, and other times, you get this look on your face like you want to fight every damn tree. Your jaw tightens right here.” Her index finger brushes the hinge of my jaw where I didn’t even realize I was clenching my teeth.

Her skin is cool, and when she touches me in the dark, I become aware of every treasonous atom in my body.

“And sometimes,” Sadie whispers, “you look so profoundly sad.”

I angle my face so her hand falls away. “I’m not.” Then I angle my whole body away from her and continue up the stairs.

“Hmmm…” she says to my back.

“What’s that noise? What does hmmm mean?”

“It means that everyone has a little bit of sad in them all the time, and it’s interesting that you’re denying yours.”

I swallow around a golf ball that seems lodged in my throat. “I’m not that complex, Freckles.”

“I think you are,” she says, before she starts coughing from trying to talk and climb these hell stairs simultaneously. I pass her my Hydro Flask. “But you seem hell-bent on making me think you’re just a pretty face.”

I swivel fully around. “You think my face is pretty?”