Page 61 of Every Step She Takes
Sadie
“I can’t believe I have to endure Seattle traffic home because of you,” Vi grumbles from behind the wheel of my Subaru Forester.
I haul my bag over my shoulder and glare at her through the open passenger-side window. “Do you know how many times I’ve driven you to the airport during rush hour?” I ask from the Arrivals curb.
Vi rolls her eyes. “Once or twice, maybe.”
“And I’m driving you to the airport in two weeks for your Camino,” I remind her.
Vi finally got the go-ahead from her doctor, and now she’s going on her own tour with Inez.
I have a difficult time imagining Vi participating in sharing circles with any level of sincerity, but I know Inez will crack her.
And I’m curious to see what version of Vi comes home afterward.
“Fine. Whatever. You’re an amazing big sister,” Vi reluctantly admits. I give her a little wave before I turn toward the revolving door into the airport. “Wait!” Vi calls from the driver’s seat, and I turn back.
“You are an amazing big sister,” she says again, her tone serious this time. “Thank you for all the rides to the airport. And just for… everything .”
I lean through the window to see her face up close. “What is this? What’s going on? Are you dying?”
“Hardy har har,” Vi monotones, but I swear I see a tear escape her right eye. “I just want you to know that I see how much you’ve done for me my entire life. I-I hope you can do something for yourself.”
“Okay, weirdo.” I clap the door. “Love you. See you in five days.”
“Love you,” she echoes in that same strangely serious voice before she chaotically merges back into the flow of Arrivals traffic, and there is a very good chance she might actually be dying. But I’ll deal with that when I get home from Michigan.
The week I officially shuttered the doors on Live Wells Antiques, I went to Portland to stay with Ari for a few days.
Given that we live only three hours apart, she’s been adamant about us becoming best friends, especially since her real best friend got engaged while we were doing the Camino.
Ari lives in a giant house she calls “Brideshead,” with several other queer roommates, and we spent a long weekend sampling different food trucks and coffee.
And when we FaceTimed Stefano together, he was shocked to learn we lived driving distance from each other.
“Are you driving distance from Michigan too?”
His first post-injury Ironman was going to be on Lake Michigan, and he begged us to come. “I really need my beautiful friends there,” he said with a well-executed pout.
Neither of us could argue with that, even if his US geography is spotty.
Vi gave me some airline miles so I could go, because I promised myself I would travel more, and while it’s not exactly on my bucket list, I’ve never seen the Great Lakes.
When Rebecca heard Ari and I were going, she splurged on her own tickets and invited Ro to join us too.
So the Ironman was going to be like a mini-Camino reunion, minus Vera and Inez. And minus Mal.
As I head to the security line, I think about the last time I was at SeaTac: crying into my mother’s sweater after I got off the plane from Santiago. It was only four months ago, but it feels like a lifetime.
It also feels like no time has passed at all. Those feelings—of first love and first heartbreak—still feel so fresh sometimes.
But I am totally over Mal. I will be totally over her, someday.
Someday, I won’t feel butterflies every time I hear the ding of a WhatsApp notification. But today, in this Hudson News, is not that day. My phone buzzes, and my stomach launches into my chest, and I immediately check her message.
ARE YOU AT THE AIRPORT YET?
I grab a Bueno bar from the display by the register and snap a pic to send. YEP. JUST STOCKING UP ON AIRPLANE SNACKS.
I can see from her read receipts that she saw the photo, but she doesn’t respond, and I shove my phone back into the pocket of my jeans. I buy the candy. Someday .
Maybe it’ll happen on Lake Michigan.
“Sadie Wells. If there is a passenger named Sadie Wells here, please come see us at the gate.”
I hear the announcement when I’m still a few gates away, and I pick up the pace, almost breathless when I reach the Alaska Airlines counter. “I’m Sadie Wells. Is everything okay?”
“It’s your lucky day!” The agent smiles at me. “You’ve been upgraded to first class! I just need to print you a new boarding pass.”
“I’ve been upgraded?” I repeat. “Why? How?”
The woman behind the counter winks at me. “Someone must really love you.”
Someone could only be my sister, who helped me buy the ticket with her elite mileage plan. This must be why she was acting so damn weird. I send Vi a thank you text as I board the plane early with all the other first-class passengers.
In first class, there is plenty of overhead bin space, and even more space in the seat for me to fully relax my body. But when the flight attendant swoops in to offer me champagne, I decline and decide to stick to water. No one needs a repeat of the last time I drank on an airplane.
I’m in the aisle seat, and the window seat next to me is empty.
It remains empty as the rest of the plane starts to board, people staring at me as they pass like I’m some kind of fancy, potentially famous first-class person.
I take out my phone, and even though Mal still hasn’t replied to my previous message, I snap a pic of my ample legroom.
UPGRADED TO FIRST CLASS! IS THIS WHAT IT FEELS LIKE TO BE RICH?
IS THIS WHAT IT FEELS LIKE TO BE YOU????
She once again reads my message and once again does not respond. I close out of WhatsApp and close my eyes, holding my phone to my chest as I remind myself once again. I have to get over her .
Someone clears their throat and grumbles, “Sorry, but that’s my seat.”
I open my eyes to see someone pointing at the window seat next to me.
No. Not someone. Mal .
Mullet and widow’s peak and Cupid’s bow mouth. The poop-brown backpack and the Hydro Flask covered in gay stickers and the Cotopaxi fleece. Tattoos and visible nipples and Mal .
All the individual traits add up to her, but my brain can’t fathom how she could be here. Not in Porto, but on an airplane in Seattle.
I don’t move. I don’t say anything. I don’t know how to react to this impossibility.
The flight attendant starts coming through, closing overhead bins as she goes. Mal quickly shoves her pack into the bin above my seat, her shirt riding up to reveal an inch of the grapevine tattoo I once traced with my tongue. Mal .
She stands in the aisle for a few seconds, and when I remain immobile in my seat, she climbs over me in an awkward jangle of limbs.
“What…” I finally say. “What are you doing here?”
Mal fastens her seat belt as the airplane door is closed three rows ahead of us and a flight attendant starts pantomiming along with the overhead safety announcement.
Mal turns her whole body toward mine and takes a long, deep breath.
“I hate the Property Brothers,” she says, and my brain has no idea what question she’s answering with that little proclamation.
“I can’t explain it, but their faces make me irrationally angry.
I’m sure they’re very nice people, but I also want to punch them. ”
“What?”
She pushes her hair out of her eyes, and I realize her mullet isn’t blue anymore.
It’s back to what I imagine is her natural dark-brown color.
“On the Camino, I pretended to like the Property Brothers to have an excuse to spend time with you,” she confesses.
“And then I kept watching it on my own afterward so I’d have an excuse to message you. ”
“What?” I say again. I still have no idea why or how she’s here. The plane is backing out of the gate, and Mal is in the seat next to me, and I can feel her presence in every bone of my body.
“And I bought like half the furniture from your Etsy page under several different fake accounts.”
“What?” There’s no other word for any of this.
“Not because I don’t believe in you or anything!” she rushes to explain. “But because I genuinely love everything you make, and I wanted pieces of you at the vineyard in Porto.”
At least one thing is starting to make sense. “Did you do this? Did you get me upgraded to first class?”
“Oh. Yes. I thought that was obvious.”
“How did you get my flight info?”
“Your sister.”
“You talked to my sister ?”
“Yes, and she kept calling me Malcolm for some reason…”
The plane rattles as we begin takeoff, and Mal and I reach for the armrest between us at the same time. Her hand is warm, and I hold it on instinct as the plane leaves the ground. My stomach bungees into my rib cage.
“And the first CD I ever owned was Hootie and the Blowfish, and the only person I invited to my eighth birthday was the woman who worked in the children’s section at the library in Porto.
She was seventy-two,” she continues confessing, for no apparent reason.
“And when I was twelve, I got really into this series of Nancy Drew mystery computer games, and I kept playing them until I was way too old.” She pauses, then exhales again.
“As in, I played the most recent one last year. I just never stopped playing them, and they are very much for children,” she keeps blathering on, and this finally starts to make sense too.
Mal is telling me all of her secrets on an airplane, the way I did when we first met.
People are turning to glare at her, but she doesn’t stop.
“I was afraid of the dark until I was in my mid-twenties, and I had to travel with a battery-powered nightlight. And I’m still genuinely afraid no one will ever love me if they see all of me. ”
“You don’t have to do this,” I tell her, still clutching her hand.
“I do have to,” Mal says with a nervous grimace. “Because it’s what I should have done from the beginning. From the first day we met, you gave me so much of yourself.”