Page 52 of Every Step She Takes

Sadie

“Three more days and forty more miles,” Inez says at morning tea, a few miles into our thirteen-mile day to Caldas de Reis. “You’ve all come so far, pushed yourselves so far . I am proud of each and every one of you.”

She smiles at each of us in turn, and when she gets to me, I’m busy staring at Mal, trying to decipher the clench in her jaw.

When I woke up in the middle of the night, she wasn’t in bed with me, and it was hard to go back to sleep next to nothing but cool sheets.

All morning, she’s seemed distant, disconnected from the rest of us.

Even now, she doesn’t seem fully here. She’s staring down at a red crystal clutched in her hands, rubbing her thumb in circles across the smooth surface.

“As we draw closer to the end, I want you to consider what you’ll take away from your time on the Camino.”

“Self-confidence,” Rebecca blurts, like she has during every sharing circle for the past two weeks. “I did something I never thought I could do, and I will hold that close to my heart as I face the challenges I got waiting for me back home.”

“The friendships,” Vera says, and Ari drops her head onto Vera’s shoulder with an awww .

“I want to take this newfound love for my body,” Ro says, and Ari shouts, “Yes!” and snaps her fingers.

“Slowing down,” Stefano shouts from his low squat.

“Gratitude,” Rebecca adds.

“Time for self-reflection.”

“Stillness.”

“Pasteis de nata!”

Their voices all weave together with the banter of people who know each other too well, and when the chorus dies down, Inez fixes her gaze on me, like she’s done at the end of every sharing circle for the past two weeks. “What about you, Sadie?”

All of it . Everything everyone else has already said and so much more. I want to gather up the entire Camino and put it in my backpack, keep the version of myself I was here forever.

But for right now, I want to give Inez the level of vulnerability she’s always given us.

“I want to keep the part of me that’s learned to be okay with the unknown,” I answer, and everyone turns to face me.

“Thanks to this trip, to all of you,” I gesture aimlessly around the circle, even though what I really mean is, thanks to Mal.

“I finally let myself question my sexuality. I was so convinced that I had to have the right label, that if I didn’t, my identity would be less valid somehow.

But it was by living in the ambiguity that I was able to start uncovering who I really am and what I really want. ”

And I know I don’t want to go back to the way things were.

I don’t want to keep holding everyone in my life at arm’s length.

I don’t want a small life of never leaving that store.

I want to go places, see things, have adventures.

I want to keep doing things that surprise me.

As much as I loved my Nan, I don’t want to keep living someone else’s dream.

I want to stop caring so much about what other people think of me. I want to be kinder to myself. I want to be honest with myself and with the people who matter to me.

I want all the things I’ve convinced myself I don’t need. A partner. A family, someday. A thousand kisses with the same woman.

And there’s a part of my vacation brain that wants that person to be Mal.

“Mal? It’s your turn,” Inez cajoles. “What do you want to take from the Camino?”

Her thumb keeps tracing the smooth stone. “I-I thought we didn’t have to share?”

Nothing feels more uncertain than what happens with Mal when we get to Santiago.

“Trouble in the love bubble?”

I pull my eyes away from the Galician countryside to see Ari has fallen into step beside me. She gestures behind us, where Mal is drifting along the path behind even Vera. “There is no love bubble,” I tell her.

“ Dude .” Ari makes a show of dramatically rolling her eyes at me. “We all know that’s not true.”

I want to look over my shoulder again, but I already know what I’ll see. I force my gaze to remain on the trail in front of me. “Whatever you think you know about me and Mal, it’s not…”

It’s not what ? I don’t even know what Mal and I are, or where we stand. Yesterday, she let me comfort her through a panic attack, let me see her in all her rawness, all her realness. But today, it feels like she’s closing up again. “Mal and I… we’re just… practice,” I stammer.

“I’m sorry, you’re what ?”

“Mal has been helping me experience my second adolescence,” I hear myself explain as we stomp along a dusty road.

“And part of that was, um, practice kisses, and like… practice sex. It didn’t mean anything.

Our whole relationship has been about helping me gain confidence and explore my sexuality and—”

“I’m going to stop you right there,” Ari snaps, thrusting her flat palm into my face. “ Practice sex ? Yeah, that’s not a thing.”

“They were more like… sex lessons, really. Friends-with-Educational-Benefits.”

Ari gags. “I literally cannot.”

“Are you repulsed by the idea of us having sex, or…?”

“I am repulsed by the notion of friends with educational benefits .” She sticks out her tongue. Ari has an uncanny ability to say rude things in a way that’s strangely endearing. “That’s not a thing people do. People don’t have practice relationships.”

“I know it sounds weird, but I am woefully inexperienced when it comes to… everything , and Mal—”

She cuts me off again. “Look, either you have feelings for someone, or you don’t. You can’t have practice feelings.”

And she might actually have a point there.

“So, do you have feelings for Mal or not?”

I look over my shoulder once more. Mal has fallen even farther behind. “Of course I have feelings for her, but…”

“But what?” Ari demands.

But I have no idea how to tell her that.

But I don’t know if she feels the same way.

But I’m still just an inexperienced baby gay, still the woman who came out to her on an airplane two weeks ago, still the woman who doesn’t have the slightest idea how to love someone.

When I don’t give Ari an answer, she scoffs. “You know, you remind me of my best friend back home.”

“Thank you?”

“It’s not a compliment.”

Mal

“What crystal is that?”

I look up and see Sadie sitting on the floor of our Caldas de Reis albergue, her legs in a butterfly stretch. “Huh?”

“The crystal you’ve been clutching all day,” she teases, but there’s something sharp undercutting her tone.

“Jasper,” I croak. My throat is dry from a long day of walking in silence.

Sadie moves her knees up and down, her legs flapping like butterfly wings. “What does it do?”

“Inez gave it to me for… for courage,” I manage. “I-I looked it up, and it’s supposed to nurture in times of stress. It… it helps you show up fully.”

I’m aware of the irony: I haven’t been present all day. My brain is twenty years in the past and two days in the future, and my body feels completely stuck.

Sadie unfurls her legs and stretches them out in front of her. “Why does Inez think you need courage?”

I shove the crystal into the pocket of my fleece.

I’m still wearing all my Camino clothes, including my teenage sneakers, as I perch on the edge of my bed for the night.

“I need the courage to…” Break my old habits .

“To deal with my inheritance. With the company and my dad’s funeral and… all of it. Finally.”

I can feel Sadie’s eyes on me even as she twists away in a deep, side body stretch. “I’m so sorry, Mal. When is the funeral?”

“In a week. Back in Porto. It’s going to be… hard.”

She comes out of her twist. “Would it help to have someone there with you?”

“What?”

“I could come to the funeral with you,” she tentatively offers. “If that would be helpful.”

I understand the words she’s saying, but I can’t wrap my brain around the enormity of what she’s offering me, the way she’s willing to show up for me. “You… what ?”

Her eyes are on her bare feet. “When my Nan died, I think I would’ve liked to have somewhere there to hold my hand.”

Would it be helpful to have this woman hold my hand at my father’s funeral? It would be… everything .

“Or not,” Sadie quickly amends. “You probably don’t want a virtual stranger at your father’s funeral.”

I swallow and try to find the way to tell her exactly how much I do want that.

“Not sure how you’d explain the presence of your practice-girlfriend to your extended family.” She laughs, but there’s something beneath that laugh. Something that’s not funny at all.

“Practice,” I repeat. Hearing that word feels worse than looking at that photo on the front page. I touch my hand to my stomach and feel the jasper stone through the fabric of my fleece. The courage to do what’s right. “I think having you come to the funeral might… confuse things. Between us.”

Sadie contorts herself into another side body stretch, but this time, she’s not looking at me. “Totally. Of course. That… that makes sense.”

“It’s just… we’re going to be in Santiago in two days, and…” I take a long, deep breath through my nose. The room smells like dirty socks and hibiscus, like sweat and sunscreen, like Sadie’s summertime sweetness. But summer never lasts, even if you chase it across hemispheres.

“I’ve been thinking about that, actually,” Sadie blathers, “and since the trek is almost over, maybe it’s for the best if we end our arrangement now.

The… the sex arrangement, I mean.” She cringes at herself, even as she keeps babbling.

“I’ll always be so grateful for you, Mal.

Thank you for helping me experience my queer adolescence.

Thank you for helping me question and explore.

Thank you for the practice and the… the sex. ”

Sadie is thanking me for sex . A creeping numbness floats down my body, easing the growing pain in my chest. “And I’ll always be grateful to you,” I say, “for helping me open up about… everything. For listening.”

“Of course.” Her voice jumps an octave. “And I’m so sorry I invited myself to your dad’s funeral. And I’m sorry if I got a bit… too attached. And I’m sorry that I—”

“Please stop apologizing.” The words come from the pain, not the numbness, and I can hear the edge in my voice. Sadie stills on the floor.

“I’m sorry,” she says again, apologizing for the apologizing. Then she pushes herself up off the floor. She sways on her feet, then catches herself against the edge of her own bed. “Friends, right?”

I meet her gaze.

“That was the deal,” Sadie says. She’s smiling, but there’s something underneath that too. “We promised we’d stay friends.”

I try to smile back. “Friends.”

Sadie sweeps across the room and pulls out her toiletries bag like she’s done every night for the past two weeks. “I’m going to get ready for bed,” she tells me in that same false, high-pitched voice, and then she disappears behind the bathroom door.

And this is all for the best. Ending things now before either of us gets too hurt. I have to break my patterns. I have to find a way to focus on myself.

Ending things now is the right thing to do. So why does it feel like such utter shit when I fall asleep in a twin bed that isn’t pushed together with hers?

C’est La Vi with Me

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Things I Will Take with Me from the Camino de Santiago

Sadie Wells

May 24, 2025 81 comments

A love of walking. It’s hard to believe that two weeks ago, I was terrified of the sheer volume of walking that awaited me, because now I can’t imagine not starting every day this way.

An even more intense love of Bueno bars.

Approximately 12 blisters and self-confidence.

An appreciation for the simple pleasures in life: a cold Coke after a long day; a cheap glass of red wine; a free breadbasket; idle time with friends; taking the scenic route; long dinners where no one is in a hurry and food isn’t the main course; soaking in a hot bath; a foot massage; drinking coffee with milk in the sunshine.

The box of pasteis de nata I plan to smuggle onto the plane.

Also, a bag of Sabor a Jamón chips.

Time for self-reflection. Back home, I’m always too busy, too tired, too stressed, but slowing down on this trip has taught me that I need to carve out time to sit with myself. Otherwise, what’s the point in any of this?

A tattoo on my inner left wrist.

A small wooden arrow that a kind Spanish man passed out to pilgrims over his backyard fence.

At least two thousand photos.

A commitment to self-love and to actively trying to see the beauty in myself.

The travel bug. How am I supposed to stay in Seattle when there’s so much beauty in the world I haven’t seen yet?

Plans to do another Camino. I’ve heard that Caminos are like tattoos: once you do one, you won’t be able to stop. I’m already scheming ways to get back here, to explore other routes to Santiago.

Plans to get another tattoo.

The contact info for some of the greatest people I’ve ever met.

I’m not so na?ve as to believe that I will stay close with everyone from my tour group.

I know that realistically, I will never see most of these people again.

We’ll keep in touch in our WhatsApp group chat for a while, but eventually, our relationships will be reduced to liking each other’s Instagram posts.

But it won’t matter, because I will carry my love for these people with me wherever I go from here.

That’s the thing about a Camino family. The very nature of your connection is fleeting, only meant to last until Santiago, but that doesn’t diminish the impact they have on your life.