Page 6 of Every Step She Takes

THREE SOMEWHERE OVER CANADA

Mal

“Fuck…”

The woman with the freckles slowly exhales the curse as the disgruntled flight attendant slinks away.

I expected her to apologize for the tenth time, so the shocking profanity makes me laugh. It’s probably inappropriate, given the near-death experience everyone thought we were having.

The turbulence was admittedly awful. I’d rank it right up there with landing at the Taipei airport during a typhoon, and that puddle jumper I misguidedly took in the Seychelles because the pilot let me pay him in Jif peanut butter.

But we were never going to die .

Freckles, though. She had the fear of death in those saucer-size blue-green eyes. Now, realizing death isn’t going to put her out of her misery, her pink skin turns even pinker beneath the constellations of freckles sprinkled across her face.

“I’m so sorry,” she gasps in horror.

Ah. There’s the apology.

“Sorry for frightening small children with your shouts of imminent death?” I ask with a slight cock of my head. “Or sorry for coming out to me?”

Freckles rips her hand away from mine like it burned her, but she was squeezing so tight a minute ago that there’s still a faint pressure on my palm after she lets go, like the ghost of a hand still resting in mine.

I try to recall the last time Ruth held my hand like that, but my brain quickly informs me the footage cannot be found. I spent a year with a woman who never once held my hand. A year of pretending that I didn’t care, that I didn’t need that kind of innocent intimacy.

And then Freckles grabbed my hand, and I remembered how nice it feels to be anchored to another person.

Freckles is ignoring me again as she fumbles for the free headphones, her eyes firmly focused on her episode of Property Brothers . “Are you really just going to go back to watching HGTV after all that?”

Splotches of red spread down her pale neck. “Yes. Yes, I am,” she mutters.

I lean closer and whisper, “You have nothing to be embarrassed about.”

This isn’t strictly true. She did shout about dying a virgin on an airplane. But I feel compelled to make sure this woman knows her lack of experience isn’t the embarrassing part. Not figuring out you’re gay until thirty-five isn’t embarrassing, either.

“Please don’t talk to me,” Freckles mumbles. “I am busy trying to repress the last thirty minutes.”

“Hey,” I say gently. I take a risk and tug the cord of her headphones out of the screen to cut off the sound.

She doesn’t yell at me for doing it, which I take as a sign to keep bugging her.

“I hate to break it to you, but there is no repressing something like that. You can’t scream I think I might be a lesbian , unload all your queer trauma on me like I’m your fairy god-dyke, and then shove it back down again. ”

“Oh God .” She covers her blushing face with both hands. “I can’t believe I did that.”

“Yeah. It’s too bad we didn’t die.”

She drops her hands and turns to face me fully. “That—that wasn’t me,” she insists. “I’m not that person. That was the wine!”

“And the Xanax, probably.” I saw her pop it before takeoff, but it didn’t stop her from anxiously tapping her foot for the first two hours. “Bold move, chugging cheap red on top of that.”

Her head whips forward again as her polka-dot blush intensifies. “I’m an idiot. ”

“Nah. I once took Dulcolax instead of Imodium on a sixteen-hour flight to Sydney. You got off easy by comparison.”

She doesn’t even react to my worst diarrhea-while-traveling story because she’s too busy hyperventilating in her seat. At this point, I should probably let this poor woman go back to her Property Brothers episode. Let her stew in embarrassment for the rest of the flight.

And I would, if it wasn’t for the silence. The first two hours of the flight were unbearably quiet, even with my music at full volume in my headphones. There’s an emptiness that creeps in whenever I’m alone these days, making room for my too-loud thoughts.

I can’t handle hearing my own thoughts right now, and Freckles is the perfect distraction.

I nudge her with my elbow. “Hey. What’s your name?”

She huffs a defeated sigh. “Why? Do you want the details for when you write about this whole humiliating saga in your memoir someday?”

“Oh, sweetheart,” I tease her, “you’re not making my memoir. I’ve lived a very interesting life.”

Freckles purses her lips, and it takes me a second to realize she’s suppressing a laugh. So she is capable of laughing at herself.

“I’m Mal,” I try, extending a hand toward her.

She stares at it for a moment, as if she doesn’t remember the way she clung to me during the turbulence. “Mal? As in bad ?” she asks, like I’m the human embodiment of a bad omen. There’s something about her genuinely frightened tone that makes the words wedge themselves between my ribs like knives.

Mal as in bad .

The thoughts grow too loud to drown out.

I hear my father’s rumbling voice, yelling in Portuguese.

What did I do to deserve such a bad daughter?

I see the disappointment etched into his face every time I failed to live up to his expectations.

The way he’d tighten his fists at his side, the way he wouldn’t talk to me for days at a time if I screwed up.

He always wanted me to know that he could take it all away if he wanted to, until the day he finally did.

The memories feel like a tightened fist around my throat, like a boulder sitting on my chest.

“I’m Sadie.” Warm fingers suddenly slip between mine, and Freckles’s sweaty hand tethers me back to this airplane. I focus on the woman shaking my hand, because that makes it easier to stay in the present instead of lost in a past I can’t change.

Her auburn hair is pulled into a loose ponytail with a clip, a few wisps falling around her temples from the almost-crash.

Her shoulders are tensed halfway up to her ears, and she’s still blushing.

Freckles has one of those young, angelic faces that makes her look perpetually sixteen.

And those fucking freckles. She’s wearing makeup, but they’re still visible beneath her thick foundation.

She must have a million little reddish-brown freckles covering every inch of her exposed skin.

You could play connect-the-dots with those freckles and create an unsolvable maze.

You could paint by numbers all over her peaches-and-cream skin.

If we were going to die, hers would’ve been a wonderful face to be my last. I’m trying not to stare at what’s below that face, but I am fairly certain her body is equally divine. Soft and curvy, the plump, pale skin of her stomach visible between her high-waisted yoga pants and crop top.

Okay, fine, maybe I am staring.

“Sadie,” I repeat. Her name tastes like sweet tea. “So maybe a lesbian, huh?”

She groans again. “No. I don’t know. Maybe? Or maybe just queer? Or… I googled something called asexuality, and that could be it. But I just don’t… how are you supposed to figure it out?”

It takes all my willpower not to smile as she works herself into another bluster.

“You could try talking about it with your fairy god-dyke.”

That gets her to snort a laugh. “Seventeen dates,” she says.

“I let my sister set me up on seventeen dates, and I couldn’t make myself feel anything , and at some point, I felt like I was looking at my whole life through this different lens.

I’ve never been attracted to men, but I’ve never considered that there might be another option. ”

This particular bluster involves frantic hand flailing, and I’m not sure why I find it so utterly charming.

“But I couldn’t figure out how to tell my sister any of this, so I kept going on those stupid dates until I couldn’t stand it another minute. And now I’m here .”

I think Sadie is crying again, the way she did when the Property Brothers built that piano alcove before the turbulence.

“Why did I spend so many years repressing all of this?” She takes a sharp breath.

“I shoved it down to a place so dark and deep, it could never reach me. And now I can’t even think the word lesbian without crying. ”

“Because you don’t want to be a lesbian?” I hedge.

“Because if I’m a lesbian, then I tortured myself dating men for nothing .

” She fumbles to hide the evidence of her tears, as if she didn’t draw my attention to them two seconds ago.

As if she hasn’t been breaking off bits of her heart and sharing them with me like the other half of a Bueno bar.

“I’ve punished myself for not making it work with men.

But now… I mean, I’ve never even kissed a woman. ”

For one deranged second, I wonder what she would do if I kissed her right now on this airplane.

It’s probably not the right time, on account of the tears and extreme emotional distress. And all the wine.

She sighs. “I guess there’s no point in imagining an alternate-universe Sadie who isn’t starting from zero at thirty-five.

” It feels like the rest of the plane has faded away into the white noise of the engine and it’s only the two of us in this intimate little bubble where this total stranger keeps trusting me with her vulnerabilities.

I fumble for something useful to say and land on, “Maybe you can try to forgive yourself for not being ready instead.”

Sadie blinks and blushes and tries so hard to hold back her tears. “Ready?”

“Yeah. Maybe you weren’t ready to know you’re gay.” I shrug. “Maybe it’s not too late. Maybe you’re right where you’re supposed to be.”

Sadie shakes her head in disbelief.

“I’m telling you this as a concerned queer elder: you are not too old,” I say slowly, clearly, hoping she will finally hear me.

“Growing up, our heterosexual peers got to experiment and explore and figure themselves out, but thanks to the twin horrors of homophobia and heteronormativity, many of us missed out on that whole developmental phase.”

Sadie twirls her hair thoughtfully, and I watch the red strands wind around her pale finger like ribbons on a present.

“You weren’t able to have a queer adolescence, and that’s not your fault.”

“I don’t really know if… I mean, maybe…” She twirls and twirls. “Maybe I’m not even a… lesbian .” She whispers the last part like it’s a dirty word, and like she didn’t shout it many times when she thought we were all about to die.

“Maybe you’re not.” I shrug again. “But in my experience, not many straight people feel the need to come out in the midst of a near-death experience,” I say, and I watch as she folds in on herself, scrunching up her shoulders again, tucking in her elbows, trying to make herself small in her seat.

“I-I… I’m sorry,” she stutters, “but I’m… tired. Do you mind if I just…?” She points to the paused seat-back screen.

“You can do whatever you want, Sadie.”

She slots one headphone into place, her eyes glued forward. The silence fills my head like old television static, a haunting emptiness my darkest thoughts are all too eager to fill.

“Can I watch with you?” I ask, pointing to her screen.

She hesitates, fiddling with the second headphone a moment before she offers it to me like some kind of olive branch.

Sadie with the freckles allows me to share her headphones and her armrest as I lean in closer to watch Drew and Jonathan lament the Soto family’s cramped kitchen, grateful for all the noise that fills my head.

“Do you think they’ll take out that wall and put in an unnecessarily large kitchen island?” I ask her.

Sadie’s jaw is clenched, and after a long stretch of silence, I’m convinced she’s going to ignore me again, even though we’re attached by cheap airline headphones. But then she smiles, just a little bit. Just in the corner of her mouth. “Drew and Jonathan? Never.”

C’est La Vi with Me

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The Ultimate Camino Packing List

Vi Wells

April 29, 2025 68 comments

As always, Nomads, this post contains affiliate links, and I receive a small commission if you purchase anything from these links. I only promote products that have helped me embrace my life of adventure!

If you’ve been around this blog for a while, you know there’s nothing I love more than a travel hack! And if that hack helps me save space in my carry-on? I’m a goner!

How you pack for the Camino de Santiago can depend on many different factors, such as the Camino path you’re trekking, the duration of the trek, and the time of year you plan to go.

For example, if you plan to spend 40 days doing the Camino Frances in October, your packing list is going to look very different from a packing list for doing the Portuguese Coastal Camino for 14 days in May (like I’m doing).

It’s also important to consider where you plan to stay each night before drafting your packing list. Some pilgrims choose to stay in municipal albergues, where you pay as little as 10 euros for a bunk bed in a room with anywhere from 6 to 30 pilgrims. If that’s your plan, you’ll likely want to include a sleeping bag, pillow, and maybe even a sleeping pad on your packing list, along with a quick-dry towel and shower shoes.

However, I’m traveling with Beatrix Tours, and all of our accommodations include private, double, or triple rooms (depending on your price point) with en suites, so all of my bedding will be provided for me.

There are a million Camino packing lists out there written by pilgrims who have done this trek dozens of times, and you can find some of my favorite ones here . I also wanted to share some of my must-have travel items that will certainly be making the trek with me!

This 40L Osprey pack. !

My Keen hiking boots— both stylish and practical for long days on the trail.

My favorite yoga pants by FitCheck . They come in a dozen beautiful colors, and their sizes go up to 4XL, because they know that us thick girls want to look hot while exercising too.

This dress from Columbia. It rolls up super small in your bag, doesn’t wrinkle easily, and will look great for nights out after a long day of walking.

My portable sound machine by Hatch. It’s meant for babies, but I think it’s perfect for drowning out noise at a loud hotel (and it comes in this adorable mint green).

My favorite moisture-wicking undies from Duluth Trading Company. Not only do they keep me dry in my downstairs, but they’re cute enough for any surprise rendezvous you might have with fellow travelers.

This incredible travel makeup bag . What can I say? Even when I’m roughin’ it, I like to look good. How else do you think I find myself in surprise rendezvous?