Page 26 of Every Step She Takes

Even in the dark I can see the shadowed hint of her blush. Sadie takes a long drink of water, and several deep breaths before regaining control of her respiratory system. “Tell me one true thing about yourself.”

“Fine. I think your face is pretty too.”

She shoves my water bottle aggressively back into my hands. The stainless-steel rim tastes like her spearmint ChapStick. “You know, these stairs are the fucking worst,” she barks.

“Don’t hate me, but I don’t even think we’re halfway there.”

“I might hate you,” she says, and we drag ourselves up another two dozen steps in silence. “How about this?” She punctuates each word with a gasp for air. “I get to ask you one personal question.”

A spike of fear shoots through me, but I try to sound flippant when I say, “Deal.”

Sadie considers her one question as we climb. I expect her to ask why I’m angry at the ocean or why this place makes me so fucking sad, and I don’t know how I’ll answer her with the honesty she deserves.

“What do you do for a living?” she finally asks, and the banality of the question catches me entirely off guard.

“What do I do for a living?” It’s such a commonplace question, and it should be easy to answer. But for me, it never is. “Uh, well… I don’t actually do… anything . At least at the moment.”

She quiets for a few more steps before she asks. “You mean, you’re unemployed?”

A logical assumption and far preferable to the truth. “Not unemployed so much as… not employed.”

Between puffs of breath, I can practically hear Sadie thinking about this. “You don’t work? Like, at all?”

“I’ve had a lot of jobs,” I rush to tell her, thinking about what Ruth said. That I’m a directionless, purposeless lump.

“I worked for Smith College in the housing department while I got my master’s there.

I worked at a queer youth center in Amsterdam, and for Planned Parenthood in Dallas, and for an NGO in Bangladesh, and for a DV shelter in Wyoming, and—” I cut off, because I realize my résumé doesn’t make me sound any less directionless or purposeless.

“In Seattle, I volunteered for a few different organizations, but I couldn’t seem to settle into any of them.

I’ve done a lot of different things in different places, but nothing that could be considered a career, I guess. ”

Sadie’s judgmental thoughts feel so loud on this hill. “What do you do for money, then?”

I focus on the dark in front of me so I don’t have to think about the expression on Sadie’s face as I say. “My grandfather started a business, like your Nan. Only, it ended up being quite successful.”

Quite . What an absurd understatement.

“It was very successful,” I amend. “And he left me a small fortune when he died. At twenty-five, I came into my trust, and I’ve been living off that for the past thirteen years.”

Another excruciating pause. “Wait, so you actually are wealthy?”

“Uh, considerably.”

“I guess Vera was right.”

I wheel around and blind her with the headlamp again. “What did Vera say about me?”

Sadie throws a hand up over her eyes. “Nothing. Just that you clearly come from money, even though you dress like someone who finds their clothes in a dumpster.”

She’s insulting me, quite cruelly, but I don’t think I’ve ever liked Sadie more than I do in this moment.

Because every time someone learns I have money—learns I’m Maelys Costa, of the Quinta Costa fortune—there’s a shift in how they treat me.

I can feel it in my bones like a change in barometric pressure.

But Sadie, bless her, after being awoken at an ungodly hour and forced to climb Satan’s staircase, is still cranky as hell with me, millionaire or not.

The horizon is turning pale purple behind the hills to our east, and I can make out those eponymous freckles in the predawn light.

“Come on. I want to make it to the top before sunrise.”

“I will go at whatever speed I want, thank you very much.”

I adopt an exaggerated Italian accent. “Climb on my back. I will carry you up the hill. I carry sandbags up Mont Blanc for fun.”

“Shove it, Stefano.” She pushes past me so she can lead for a while, setting her own slow, steady pace. “Do you enjoy not working?” she eventually asks.

“No,” I answer. It’s the most honest thing I’ve said to her all morning. Hell, it’s the most honest I’ve been with myself since my dad died.

“Why not?”

“I just…” Hate feeling unsettled. I hate feeling untethered. I hate that I’m floating and that I don’t know how to stop. I try to breathe around the swollen lump in my throat. “It’s just not how I thought my life would be.”

For the first eighteen years of my life, I was told I only had one possible future, one path: to inherit the family business, to take over the wineries, to be a Costa.

Then, when I came out to my dad, that future—the one I’d always quietly resented—was ripped away from me.

And even though I never wanted it, I didn’t know what to do without it.

But I don’t tell her any of this, and Sadie doesn’t push it. She doesn’t demand more information than what I’m willing to give. I almost wish she would.

I don’t want to talk about my dad, and I need to talk about my dad, and I have this strange feeling that Sadie, of all people, might understand.

Except I don’t know how to give away pieces of myself without prompting, the way she does. I don’t know how to relinquish anything real about myself without the other person forcing it out of me.

I’ve fallen in love dozens of times, on a half dozen continents, but I’ve never learned how to be honest in the way that matters, not without fear that people will reject me, the way my dad did.

But Sadie, who’s never been in love as far as I know, can be vulnerable in a way I’ve never experienced. Maybe because of what happened on the plane. Or maybe because she’s more honest about herself than she realizes.

Clearly, I’m the one who is truly in a state of arrested development.

“I guess I don’t really know what I’m doing with my life,” I finally tell the lavender sky, and it’s as vague as everything else I’ve offered her about myself. “And I’m almost forty. You think you’re behind…” I chuckle at myself, because it’s better than crying on this dumb hill.

“Don’t be ridiculous,” she grunts miserably. “You’re not behind, Mal. You’re— oh .”

We’ve reached the top of the steps, and the view spills out in front of us like a treasure map being unfurled across a table.

The pastel light makes the endless green look hazy, turns the sea a mysterious gray-green, and highlights the sky in pale oranges and pinks, like the colors of the lesbian flag.

“Oh God, it’s beautiful ,” Sadie exhales, dropping herself onto a bench so she can stare out at the world.

And this right here. This is my favorite part of traveling. I love getting to experience something new with another person, to witness the amazement on their face as the world becomes a little bit larger for them.

Maybe that’s why I’m so good at falling in love and so terrible at staying in it; why I’ve worked two dozen jobs but never stuck with anything. I live for the awe, but the awe never lasts. Eventually, the newness stops feeling quite so exquisite, and I have to move on to the next new thing.

But Sadie—seeing the world through Sadie’s eyes—almost feels like it could be exquisite forever.

I sit down on the bench beside her, passing her the water bottle. We both drink and stare into the distance as the sun comes up on this impossibly pretty day.

“I don’t think you’re behind,” Sadie says with her gaze still fixed toward the horizon. “I think you’re exactly where you’re meant to be.”

With that, she turns to face me, and her eyes are lit up like the pastel sky. “Because if you weren’t, I never would’ve had the chance to experience this.”

We sit shoulder to shoulder in silence for over an hour, breathing and watching, and even the silence is exquisite with her.

“I might have the tiniest bit of a crush.”

Inez smacks me in the arm with her water bottle.

“Okay, first of all, that hurt more than I think you realize,” I say, massaging the burgeoning bruise. “And second, hitting me was completely unnecessary. I’m already hitting myself. Figuratively speaking.”

“Good,” Inez hisses.

We’re standing outside the albergue, sharing a clandestine 8 a.m. cigarette while everyone else finishes breakfast. Smoking is the one bad habit in my life I’ve been able to break, but every now and then, usually in times of stress when I’m traveling in Europe, I get tempted to see what I’ve been missing since I quit.

The answer is: not a lot. In my mind, cigarettes were the magical cure-all of my youth.

A stress-reliever, an anxiety-preventer, a distraction from unwanted thoughts, something to do with my unsettled hands.

But the truth is, I don’t think the cigarettes had anything to do with it.

I was just better at repressing things when I was younger.

Still, when I caught Inez sneaking one outside, I joined her anyway.

“Don’t you worry,” I reassure her now, after I take a long, disgusting drag. “There’s plenty of self-flagellation happening in here.” I tap a finger to my left temple. “Dormant Catholic guilt has been reactivated.”

Inez narrows her eyes at me. “I don’t feel sorry for you.”

“You shouldn’t. But…” I tap out the ash from the end of my cigarette against the railing of the stoop, and then sort of hold it aloft, not smoking it but giving off the impression that I could simply be between puffs. “Is it really such a bad thing? That I have an innocent crush?”

“Sim,” she says, switching our conversation into Portuguese. “Because with you, there is no such thing as an innocent crush.”