Page 30 of Every Step She Takes

“I don’t want to pressure you to do anything you’re not ready for. Let’s just have a fun night with friends,” she continues. “That’s an equally important part of adolescence.”

I don’t say anything in response, and it takes me a while to realize that maybe I should have.

“You okay, Freckles?” Mal asks even closer, the words tickling the shell of my ear.

“I think I might be really drunk, actually.”

Mal laughs. “You’re not the only one.”

To prove her point, Stefano does some kind of jog-samba combination with Ari still on his back as he asks, “Are we dancing tonight, bellissimi amici?”

“You can dance if you want to, my friend,” Ari answers. “But I certainly won’t be.”

“If I dance, you dance!” Stefano declares, and then he runs to catch up with Arjun as Ari screeches the whole way.

The twentysomething British pilgrims lead us to a bar on the water with an open patio shaded by an undulating white canopy.

A live band plays Fado music, and the black tables on the patio are crammed with people of all ages, locals and pilgrims alike.

There’s a large, wood-paneled bar on the far side, and we all make a beeline toward it.

“Let’s get you some water and carbs to start,” Mal whispers against my ear again.

“And wine,” I add.

Mal orders a plate of fries, a beer, and, somewhat reluctantly, a glass of wine for me.

Vera and Inez grab their drinks and shout something about finding tables, but we stay at the bar even after the fries and mayo dipping sauce are put in front of us.

I don’t know I’m ravenous until I take my first bite of fried potato.

“So good,” I grumble through a mouthful.

Mal smiles, and then her hand comes up to my face, her thumb brushing the corner of my mouth. “You had a bit of mayo,” she says.

She’s propped against the bar with her body angled toward mine, and I can’t explain it, but the way she’s leaning right now is the sexiest thing I’ve ever seen.

“Do you think you have a type?”

“A type of what?”

Her smile widens. “A type of woman that you’re attracted to.”

The type of woman who knows how to sexily lean against surfaces, apparently. I swallow a hunk of potato. “I-I don’t think so.”

“Okay, well, what do you like about Inez?”

“I don’t like Inez,” I say without thinking. Even after the words come out of my mouth, the mixture of sangria and loud music makes it difficult for me to figure out why they’re the wrong words. “Oh! You mean my crush on Inez! Yes. Right.”

“Right. What is it about Inez that makes her special?”

My brain is a useless maelstrom of alcohol and anxiety, and I can’t think of a single damn thing about Inez at all.

“I, um, I like her… hands.” It’s the first thing that comes to my mind, because I like Mal’s hands.

I especially like the way one of her hands grabs me by the waist to pull me away from a drunk Australian who almost knocks me over on his way to the bathroom.

“Her hands ?” Mal laughs. “Okay, Freckles. What else?”

I close my eyes and try to picture Inez’s face over the din of the bar and the din inside my head, but I can only see one face. “I like her mouth. It doesn’t fit the rest of her face, but I like that. It’s like a surprise in the middle of her face.”

“Her mouth is a surprise…?” I can hear the smile in Mal’s voice, but I keep my eyes squeezed shut.

“I like her accent, and the purposeful way she moves her body. She’s terse, like a poem. Everything she does is so deliberate, no movement ever wasted.”

“Her body is like a poem?”

I nod. “She’s selfless and kind, and I like how she makes me feel… seen .” The honesty of this statement catches me off guard. “I’ve spent my whole life trying to be invisible and small,” I say with my eyes closed as tight as possible, “but when she looks at me, I feel like I exist .”

Mal doesn’t repeat my words this time, and when she speaks, there isn’t a smile in her voice. “Sadie, open your eyes.”

I obey, my gaze trained on the glass of wine in my hand.

“Look up at me,” Mal orders firmly, and it takes me a second to work up the courage, but I obey this command too. Now that the sun has gone down, her eyes are almost onyx, and her gaze is locked on my face. I squirm under the sudden seriousness.

“What?” I blurt. Mal doesn’t say anything, but she’s still staring at me, and I want to look away. I’m desperate to look anywhere but her face.

But I don’t. I can’t.

There’s a sudden flurry of limbs as someone wedges themselves between us.

It’s Ari’s limbs, Ari who is unintentionally pushing me away from Mal.

“What are you two doing over here?” The question seems directed to both of us, but Ari is only talking to Mal.

She presses herself fully against Mal’s body as she cajoles, “Come join us!”

Ari starts to yank Mal away from me, but Mal reaches for my hand.

Ari pulls Mal, and Mal pulls me, and we make it across the patio in a chain of joined hands.

There are two tables pushed together and covered with more glasses than there are people.

Arjun is there, and so is Oliver, sitting on Stefano’s lap.

Inez and Vera appear to be playing quarters, but when they see us, they both throw their arms into the air to welcome us.

Ari pulls Mal down into the chair next to hers, and I awkwardly hover next to the table until Inez snags an extra chair from the table behind her and swivels it around for me. “Here, Sadie. Sit. Sit.”

The chair is as far from Mal as possible, which is for the best. But it feels like the worst.

“Where were the two of you?” Inez asks me, gesturing to Mal with the black straw from her cocktail.

“Uh, just… fries,” I say.

Three seats away, Ari drapes herself over Mal, and the fries turn to acid in my stomach.

I have to remind myself that I like Ari.

I like her a lot. And I know she likes Mal.

She made that clear in Matosinhos. She’s probably Mal’s type too.

She’s funny and free-spirited, somehow both direct and elusive in turns.

She’s funky and hip. She’s confident and experienced and so damn sure of herself.

I like Ari, but that doesn’t mean I want to watch her fall face-first into Mal’s lap.

I jump out of my chair. “Stefano! Come dance with me!”

He jumps out of his chair too, even with Oliver in his lap.

“I thought you’d never ask!” He squeals as he takes one of my hands in his, clutching my waist with the other.

We spin in a wide circle and somehow end up on the small dance floor, right in front of the stage where the live band is playing a cover I vaguely recognize.

Despite the carbs and water, I’m still wildly drunk as Stefano happily twirls me around, and the people and tables and twinkle lights all twirl along with us.

I’m about to be sick just when Stefano brings the world to a standstill again.

He holds me tight against his muscular chest and moves us slowly through some kind of tango, and my stomach steadies itself.

“Don’t worry, my beautiful friend,” Stefano coos in my ear. “She doesn’t like her.”

I arch back so I can see his face, hoping his expression will clarify this nonsensical statement. “Who does like who ?” I slur in confusion.

“Your Mal. She doesn’t like Ari. Not the way she likes you.”

My sangria-soaked brain gloms onto only part of what he’s said: your Mal .

I drop Stefano’s arms and take a step backward at the same time Oliver appears, ready to whisk Stefano away. Inez and Vera are in front of me, doing silly dance moves, but I’m frozen in place.

Ari joins us, dragging Mal behind her, with Arjun trailing behind. She dances provocatively against Mal’s body, and I shouldn’t care.

I don’t want to care about any of this.

I’m thirty-five, not fifteen, and this night is starting to resemble the drama of a middle school dance. I’m too old for crushes and jealousy and crying on the dance floor.

Of course, I never did any of that at a middle school dance. I never had a real crush—just the ones I pretended to have to fit in with my friends. I never liked a boy enough to be jealous, and I never cried over one, because I never actually cared.

Standing in the middle of this cramped dance floor, watching Mal’s hands touch Ari the way I imagined them touching me, I find myself almost missing that. I miss the indifference of dating men. It was so much easier than whatever this is.

Mal looks up, her hands still on Ari’s hips, her eyes suddenly on me.

My eyes were already on her. I’m too drunk to look away in time, so she catches me staring.

I force myself to pivot toward Vera, force myself to shimmy alongside her, to laugh when she laughs, until a hand is on my waist again, a raspy voice in my ear.

“Hey,” Mal says, her lips on the shell of my ear.

Because it’s loud. Because she has to be this close for me to hear. “We got interrupted earlier.”

Her hand slides to my lower back, and I feel like a puppet as she turns me around to face her. I am suddenly reminded by my anxious brain that thirty minutes ago, I described her body as a fucking poem.

God, I miss men.

“Ari is very beautiful,” Mal says as we sway to another cover song, and I am two seconds from lying down in the middle of this dance floor and letting everyone trample me. The Fado band starts playing a cover I do recognize. It’s “Like a Prayer” by Madonna. A strange, hauntingly sad version of it.

“Is she your type?” Mal asks with her hand still on the small of my back. I don’t know what to say. Mal is trying to pick up our conversation from the bar when we left it, but I can’t seem to get back there. The words feel too clumsy to hold.

“Do you think Ari is beautiful?” Mal presses.