Page 36 of Every Step She Takes

Mal

“Practice kisses?”

“I can explain.”

“I’d like to hear you try,” Michelle says dryly into the phone. I watch my clothes tumble round and round through the transparent dryer door.

“Well, you see, she’s insecure about coming out at thirty-five and feels like she’s behind because she missed out on—”

“Wait. Stop. I take it back. I don’t want to hear you try to explain why you couldn’t make it a week without kissing this woman.”

“The kisses are for science?” I try. “You love science.”

Michelle is not amused. In the background, I hear her fingers clacking against her keyboard with sharp jabs of annoyance. “What happened to focusing on yourself on this trip? Have you decided what to do about Quinta Costa yet? Have you spent any time at all reflecting on your future?”

“Don’t be ridiculous. Of course I haven’t.”

I flop back on one of the laundromat’s plastic chairs and sigh.

The Lavanderia Momblanco is empty at eight in the morning, and the tumbling of clothes in the dryer isn’t enough to keep the silence at bay.

Today is our longest day yet—19 miles to Baiona— and I should have slept in.

Everyone else is back at the hostel enjoying a leisurely breakfast, but I woke up early feeling restless.

I hiked up to the Castelo de Santa Cruz to watch the sunrise, but even the beautiful views of the ocean couldn’t get the strawberry-pistachio taste out of my mouth.

When I got back to our hotel room, Sadie was asleep on top of the covers, snoring into her pillow. It felt too dangerous to stay in that room with her. So, I gathered up my dirty clothes and waited outside the Lavanderia until it opened.

Then I called Michelle when I knew she’d be awake feeding Cedar or working on her research. From what I can tell, she’s currently doing both.

“I’m worried about you, Maelys,” she says now, pulling out my full name to emphasize her motherly disappointment.

“There’s nothing to worry about,” I insist for the dozenth time. But I’ve been up since four thirty and have consumed three espressos already, so I’m not sure this is true. “Sadie doesn’t have feelings for me at all. Whatever this is, I’m not at risk of Romeo antics, because it can’t go anywhere.”

“Uh-huh. So you’re telling me you haven’t done anything stupid for this woman?”

I can practically feel the tattoo healing through the fabric of my fleece. “Nope. Not a thing.”

“You’re not pretending to like things she likes, or putting her needs above your own?”

I clear my throat. “As we both know, I have always loved watching Property Brothers .”

“You have said on numerous occasions that the one twin’s beard freaks you out.”

“Why does it look like those nineties Ken Dolls with facial hair that disappeared with water?”

Michelle chuckles, and for a moment I think I’ve managed to distract her from my much-deserved lecture. But then she heaves another giant sigh. “You’ve got to stop running at some point, Mal.”

I choke on my next flippant comment. I want to keep evading her questions, dodging her concerns by turning them into jokes.

But the truth is, I called Michelle because she is the only person in this world who truly knows me, and I want her to remind me why kissing Sadie again last night was an epic mistake.

I need her to stop me from doing it again.

I’ve been drifting aimlessly through life, fluttering from one thing to the next, one trip to the next, always searching for a new beginning and running again when I get bored. Or when things get hard. “I don’t want to hurt her,” I confess.

“I don’t want you to get hurt,” Michelle counters, and then I’m thinking about Ruth again. I fell out of love with her long before she ended things, but that didn’t stop her words from fracturing the corners of my self-confidence.

“Mal?” Michelle probes gently in my ear, and I clear my throat. Something wet dislodges there, as if I’m about to start crying in this laundromat.

The timer on the dryer dings as my clothes finally stop tumbling, and I’m grateful to have a sense of purpose for my body again. I snatch one of the hampers, take my clothes out of the dryer, and wheel them over to the folding table.

“I don’t want to get hurt again either,” I say to Michelle as I hold the hot clothes in my hands.

Michelle is quiet on the other end for a while, and I methodically fold my clothes to the sound of her clacking keys and her thoughtful breaths. In the background, there’s a mechanical sound, like something sucking and compressing in a steady pattern.

“Why does it sound like you’re in the Tardis right now? Are you pumping?”

“Of course I’m pumping!” Michelle snaps.

“All I ever do is pump, so I can build up a freezer supply of milk, so that I’m able to go back into work on a regular basis at some point!

I feed Cedar, then I pump, then I store my breast milk in these flimsy freezer bags, and I’ll be doing that every three hours for the rest of my life! ”

“Surely you’ll be able to wean him at some point before he goes off to college.”

“It’s not funny, Mal. There’s nothing funny about constantly milking yourself like a cow.”

I’m on the brink of tears again as she shouts about her boobs. “I miss you, M.”

“Then come home,” she says. Like it’s so damn simple.

Like I have a home to return to.

I’m avoiding Sadie.

That’s my new plan.

We leave A Guarda promptly at eight, and after prioritizing laundry, I miss the chance to eat breakfast with everyone else.

For the first hour of the Camino, I walk alongside Ari in silence, sharing her AirPods as we listen to a podcast together, even though I want to walk with Sadie and hear about her childhood in her Nan’s store, about her meddlesome family, about all the boys she didn’t love before.

We stop in a tiny town for midmorning coffee, and even though I want to help Sadie order, I join Stefano in running (literally running ) down to the beach to briefly soak our feet in salt water instead.

When we rejoin the group at the café, Sadie is sitting next to Inez, her face conquered by a ferocious blush. Because Sadie is kissing me for science, but she has a genuine crush on Inez.

For the next hour, Sadie walks up ahead with her, nodding along to a story Inez is enthusiastically telling with her hands.

My gaze is fixed on the staggering coastline.

I flutter around the group, landing anywhere except at Sadie’s side.

I exchange travel stories with Stefano; I listen to suburban stories from Rebecca; I even listen to a lengthy story about one of Ro’s corgis who is so old, they have to feed him puree pouches meant for toddlers.

In A Rina, we stop at a small shop for drinks and snacks.

I wander aimlessly up the aisles and end up buying nothing.

We take our provisions another mile up the Camino, to Jardín Meditativo del Caminante, a park along the path.

The group spreads out on a natural bench made of rock for our sharing circle.

As everyone takes out their water bottles and snacks, Ro shoves an orange into my empty hands. “Eat,” they demand, and I don’t argue. I dig my thumb into the rind and citrus squeezes out all the way down my wrist.

“We are almost halfway into our journey,” Inez says, “and I want us to reflect on how far we’ve come.”

Chunks of orange peel fall into my lap as I watch Inez’s animated gestures. “What is something you’ve done in the last six days that has surprised you?”

“Tattoos!” Vera shouts, and everyone laughs. I stare down at the Saniderm wrinkled over that silly tattoo on my biceps.

“Absolutely everything,” Rebecca blurts. “I never thought I could do something like this. We’ve walked eighty miles already, and I’m just surprised I’m still here!”

“I’m surprised by how strong I feel,” Ari chimes in. “I haven’t always had the best relationship with my body, but on the Camino, my body… it’s all I have, really. And every day, my body carries me along this path. I’m so grateful for my body, and that’s not a feeling I’ve had before.”

Several nods and murmurs of agreement echo around the half circle.

“This is so far beyond my comfort zone,” Ro says when the chorus dies down.

“Not the walking part, but the walking with other people. The…” Ro coughs awkwardly into their closed fist. “The sharing. I don’t normally do shit like this. No offense, Inez.”

She bows graciously from her rock perch. “None taken.”

“I just… I haven’t always been great at, uh… expressing my… my feelings.”

Rebecca reaches over and puts a hand on Ro’s shoulder. “You’re still awful at it, love.”

More laughter. I want to join in with it, but I’m stuck in my head, and the only thing I can do is peel this orange.

“Hell, this is Dr. Phil–level for me,” Ro dad-jokes.

“I didn’t grow up in a family where we talked openly about our feelings.

And I think, being Muslim, and queer, and trans…

well. I learned to ignore a lot of my emotions, because if I acknowledged my emotions, then I might have to face the truth of myself. ”

My eyes land on Sadie across the half circle, but she’s staring down at her shoes. My shoes on her feet.

“But I’m trying to be more open,” Ro grunts.

“Rebecca has this way of getting me to talk every night before bed—” Ro pauses to chuckle as Rebecca fluffs her hair in a self-congratulatory fashion.

“And even chatting with Mal about my babies…” Ro nudges me with their elbow.

“That’s hard for me, and I appreciate you listening. ”

Fuck. I am an asshole. I only listened to Ro talk about their corgis to avoid Sadie. It didn’t occur to me that Ro was trying to connect with me in a meaningful way—in the only way they know how.

I stare down at my guilt orange and break off a slice. The juice explodes inside my mouth.

“I’m so proud of you, Ro,” Inez says from across the way.

I expect Ro to bristle at being told this by someone twenty years younger, but they simply exhale and say, “Thank you, Inez. For pushing me to be proud of myself.”

I’m about to cry again. I try to rub a rogue tear out of my eye, but I’ve got orange juice on my fingers, and all it does is burn.

“I am proud of myself as well,” Stefano interjects. “I am learning to slow down. To stop and smell the roses, as they say.”

Stefano is currently standing on the edge of the semicircle, doing push-ups in the dirt while everyone else sits. “I am really learning relaxation.”

Everyone laughs again.

“What? What? ” Stefano asks sincerely as he pulls himself into Mountain pose, searching the faces in the half circle for clarification. “What is funny?”

Inez moves the conversation along. “What about you, Sadie?”

Sadie’s gaze finds mine, and after a morning of avoiding her, the sight of her blue-green eyes and her pink blush burns as badly as the orange in my eye.

“Have you surprised yourself on this trip?” Inez prods.

“Yes,” Sadie croaks. “Um, yes. Yes, I have.” She bites down on her upper lip for a moment, and everyone waits to see if she’ll elaborate on her feelings. She usually doesn’t.

“I’ve surprised myself in a lot of ways. My hair, for one.” She makes a sweeping gesture to her short hair crammed beneath her cheap baseball hat with the vulva-shaped oyster. “And the tattoo, of course. And, um… I’ve been questioning, I guess. Trying to figure out who I am and what I want.”

Sadie smiles shyly, beautifully, as she tries to tuck her hair behind her ear beneath her hat.

She’s wearing hardly any makeup today. She’s all freckles and sunburn and herself.

Beside her, Vera wraps an arm around her shoulders and pulls Sadie into a sideways hug, while I’m across the semicircle, grinding an orange into pulp in my hands.

“I’m trying to be kinder to myself,” she says, “for not having it all figured out already.”

Inez twirls the clear crystal dangling from around her neck. “How boring would life be if we didn’t have anything left to discover about ourselves?”