Page 32 of Every Step She Takes

FIFTEEN VILA PRAIA DE ?NCORA

Mal

“You need me to what ?”

Sadie on sangria is something else. She’s looking me directly in the eye, bold and unflinching. “I need you to kiss me,” she says again. “For science.”

An unhinged laugh escapes my mouth, but Sadie doesn’t flinch.

“Please,” she adds. “Please kiss me, so I can test my hypothesis.”

“Wow. That might be the sexiest thing anyone has ever said to me.”

She folds her arms across her chest. “I’m not trying to be sexy. I’m trying to be… semantic.”

I almost laugh again, but then Sadie takes a step closer to me, and the sound dies in the back of my throat. Her eyes are burning in the dark like twin suns, and in the moonlight, I can still see the millions of stars spread across her cheeks.

“You’re the one who wanted to be my fairy god-dyke. Now I need you to Bippity-Boppity-kiss me so I can know, once and for all, if I’m gay.”

Those words settle over me like a sobering cloud. “Sadie,” I sigh. “You don’t have to kiss a woman to know if you’re a lesbian.”

“I know that,” she snaps impatiently. “But I want to. I need to know what it feels like.”

Her tone slips into the kind of sadness that makes me want to reach for her, but I suspect reaching for her is part of what’s led to our current beach standoff, so I hold back. “I-I can’t kiss you.”

“Why not?” The sadness is gone, and annoyance rises in her tone. “You didn’t have any problem flirting with me all night to prove a point.”

I scrub my face with my hand. She’s right. Sort of.

But I wasn’t flirting with her all night to prove a point.

I was flirting with her because I couldn’t help myself.

I held her hand because I wanted to, and I stood close to her all night because she smells like wildflowers and summertime, and I touched her because she feels so damn good.

I flirted with her, and then half-heartedly tried to turn it into some sort of deranged flirting lesson when I realized I was about to fuck it all up and kiss her on that dance floor.

The problem with a-pitcher-of-sangria Sadie is that I’m also a-pitcher-of-sangria Mal.

I got drunker than I should have. I touched her more than I meant to, and I got caught up in the way she responded to my touch. I got carried away by her freckles and her newness, and I would have kissed her, if not for Michelle’s voice in my head, reminding me that this is what I always do.

Sadie is a pretty girl and a perfect distraction.

Which is why I can’t kiss her now, even if she’s begging me to. I’m worried kissing Sadie Wells will make it that much harder to stop elegizing her freckles.

I take a deep, cleansing breath of salt air. “I’m sorry I flirted with you. I shouldn’t have done that.”

Sadie shifts her gaze toward the ocean, hiding a look of hurt.

I don’t want to hurt her.

I really, really , want to kiss her.

“This night didn’t quite go how I planned in my head,” I confess, shoving my hands into the pockets of my fleece to stop them from reaching for her.

She snorts. “It’s been a real fucking octopus of a night.”

“We should’ve read the signs.”

“The Octopus Omen,” she says, her arms wrapping tighter around her chest. She moves her hands up and down the length of her folded arms, shivering slightly.

“Oh shit, you’re cold.” She took off her zip-up when we got to the bar, and now she’s only wearing her white crop top. I shrug off my fleece and bridge the three steps between us. “Take this.”

“I’m fine,” she says between teeth chatters.

I hold up my fleece, and she steps into it without further protest. I wrap it tightly around her without realizing this means we’re standing too close again, as close as we were while dancing.

Sadie’s hair smells like a garden, her mouth smells like wine, and her skin smells like sunscreen and sweat, like every happy summertime memory.

She smells like all the summers I spent here, in Portugal, with my father.

Summers spent running around vineyards in the sweltering afternoon sun.

Summers spent holding the first sip of wine on my tongue before my father drilled me with questions about acidity and tannins.

Lonely summers spent hiding in the gardens during my father’s lavish parties, lying on my stomach in the grass, reading a book by flashlight and wishing that he would notice I was gone, waiting for him to come find me.

He never did, and eventually I learned to stop waiting.

Sadie smells like all of the real feelings I’m trying to ignore. And here I am, practically hugging her as she puts on my fleece.

“The last guy I kissed… his name was Grant,” Sadie says quietly into the small space between us. “He was one of the guys Vi set me up with. And he was honestly perfect . He was everything I’m supposed to want, and I didn’t want him.”

The sadness returns to her voice, and I can’t fight the urge to hug her on purpose, to wrap my arms around her and hold her close.

“So many men, and I never wanted any of them. And I started to believe that I’d never find love, that I’d never find my person.

That I’d never get married or have a family of my own.

That I’d never get to have any of the things I wanted because I couldn’t make myself be attracted to men.

So I started telling myself I didn’t want those things at all. ”

She goes quiet in my arms, her cheek pressed to my shoulder. “I’ve forgotten what it feels like to want something.”

She raises her head. She’s so close that she takes up my entire field of vision, blots out everything else. All I can see are those eyes, those freckles, those two front teeth piercing her upper lip.

“Right now,” she says in a hushed but firm voice. “I really want to kiss you.”

And I can’t really argue with that.

Sadie

“Okay,” Mal says, exhaling wine and fruit. “Kiss me, then.”

And I’m not going to overthink this.

We’re on a moonlit beach with the sea and the stars, and I’m wearing Mal’s jacket, and it smells like candlewood and sugar and sweat, a mixture of her and this place we’re in together.

She’s right here, with her arms encircling me, and I want to know how it feels to kiss a woman— this woman—just this once.

I’m going to kiss her.

I have no idea how to kiss her, and now I’m definitely overthinking it.

“Um, I-I don’t have much experience in… in this,” I mutter, and the intimacy of the moment goes out with the tide.

Mal chuckles lightly as her hand finds my waist beneath her coat. “Kissing is like flirting,” she tells me quietly, “you’ve got to start by actually looking at me.”

I level my gaze with hers. My stomach leaps into my chest again.

“Then you can touch me…” she coaches.

Anxiety surges through the sangria fog. “Touch you where ?”

Her mouth is back on my ear. “Anywhere you want.”

A shiver of anticipation ricochets through me. I lift my right hand and clumsily put it on her bare forearm, where it was when we were dancing. There’s absolutely nothing sexy about the way I clutch her tibia, but she doesn’t falter. “Then you lean in…”

I lean and Mal leans, and… I nearly headbutt her, for Christ’s sake. I’m in my head instead of my body, fumbling every move.

Her grip tightens on my waist. “And then you just kiss me, Sadie,” she says. And I try to. I arch my head to the side and press my mouth to hers. Only, I barely catch her mouth, and my lips end up mostly on her chin. It’s as terrible as all those kisses with men over the years.

Humiliated, I try to pull away, but Mal’s hand firmly holds me against her. She slowly shifts us both and gently presses her mouth to mine. And… and it’s not terrible at all.

I’m stiff in her arms, not sure if I should move or how, but she somehow decodes my anxiety, and her other hand comes up to gently cup the place where my neck meets my shoulders, her thumb resting on my cheek. The tension spools out of me.

Her mouth is soft and firm at the same time, like her hands. She parts her lips just enough to coax my bottom lip with hers, and it’s nothing like all those kisses with men.

Time slows down on this dark beach, like I’m watching game footage of this kiss in slow motion. I can feel Mal trying to teach me with every touch, every subtle shift. I follow her lead and allow my mouth to soften against hers.

I’m kissing Mal. I’m kissing a woman.

What the fuck am I supposed to do with my hands?

They’re hanging limply at my sides like a pair of dead fish.

Reading my mind somehow, Mal takes one of my hands in hers.

If it’s supposed to make me relax, it has the opposite effect.

Mal’s skin is so warm, it ignites my entire body.

Something hot and restless glides down my spine, pooling heat in my lower stomach.

Mal guides me like a marionette, taking that hand and putting it on her right hip. My other hand gravitates to her left hip. I’m gripping her in place.

My hands clutch the soft flesh and sharp bone beneath her hiking pants and some heady instinct takes over.

I pull our bodies flush. My mouth opens wider against hers, and I can feel the heat of her breath, taste the sangria we shared, feel the tip of her tongue as it enters my mouth and licks, before retreating in a way that makes me want to chase her.

I do chase her tongue with mine, and I’m rewarded with a hot, hot, burning heat that courses through my body.

It’s the opposite of kissing men in every possible way. I want more, not less, and I feel wild with that need. The heat of mouths and tongues and hands and all the places our bodies meet. I moan into her, like she’s a pasteis de nata, but sweeter. So much sweeter .

She meets my moan with her own breathless growl and arches her body against mine.

I try to remind myself that Mal is kissing me for educational purposes; that she’s only kissing me because I literally begged her to. This moment might mean the world to me, but it means nothing to her. I need to remind myself of that fact.

Only Mal is kissing me back like it could mean something . Time has sped up again, and my brain can’t keep up with my body, with all the things it wants to do and is doing. I’m kissing Mal frantically, clutching her hips like I might drown if she doesn’t keep me afloat.

When Mal finally breaks away, her breath comes out in sharp exhales. She clears her throat and tries to detangle our bodies. “Did that confirm your hypothesis?” she asks with scientific detachment, as if she hadn’t stuck her hand halfway up my shirt.

I shake my head with zero detachment. “I think I need multiple data points.” And I pull her back to me, sloppily capturing her mouth with mine. Drunk and dizzy, I kiss her, and she kisses me back, and I maybe grind myself against her hip bone. I’m not overthinking this.

My hands are about ten steps ahead of my heart, which is desperately trying to remind me that this is only an experiment, but it’s hard to focus on that when Mal is touching me everywhere I wanted her to.

When she pulls away again, I collapse into her in a boneless heap. I want more— more and more and more —but I force myself to let go of her hips. She lets go of my waist.

Mal clears her throat so intensely it sounds like she dislodges her lungs. “That seemed… educational ,” she says, dignified, despite her swollen bottom lip. “Do you have the data you need?”

“Absolutely.” I manage a curt nod, even though it feels like the sand is shifting beneath my feet. My whole world is shifting. “So it turns out, I might really be a lesbian.”

Mal laughs into my short hair, my exposed neck. “You don’t say, Freckles?”