Page 7 of Every Step She Takes

Mal

Freckles snores. Loudly .

She passes out around the third kitchen transformation involving two-toned cabinets, and she doesn’t wake up again until they shove her breakfast between her forehead and the seatback tray.

And even then, she simply relocates her head and keeps snoring until we begin our final descent.

As she fumbles for her things, she doesn’t acknowledge me or the discarded headphones tangled around the armrest between us.

By the time we land in London, it’s almost as if that brief bubble of vulnerability never existed, like this woman never opened up to me at a cruising altitude of thirty-four thousand feet.

“I hope you find what you’re looking for on the Camino, Sadie,” I tell her before we part ways.

Her eyes flicker over my face like she can’t quite recall where she knows me from.

“Thank you,” she finally says in a clipped tone.

It’s our aisle’s turn to deplane, and she stands to pull a pristine Osprey backpack down from the bins.

It must weigh a ton, because she almost falls over when it comes down on her head.

I leap up to help, and our hands brush one last time as she manages to wrangle her arms through the straps.

“Bom caminho,” I say in Portuguese. Good journey .

She frowns at me in confusion and turns around to march down the aisle. By the time I grab my bag from a few rows ahead, she’s gone.

Jet-lagged and stale, I step into the terminal to find Heathrow Heathrow-ing . The airport is its typical self: overcrowded, over-perfumed, and overstimulating, all flashing florescent lights and overlapping noises spilling out of different stores.

I love it. Absolutely everything is a distraction from my noisy thoughts.

A few feet from the gate, the terminal transforms into a ridiculous luxury shopping mall, with life-size posters of famous actors selling Prada and Versace and Coach. Handbags and watches, fragrances and coats, and, of course, VAT-free cigarettes sold by the caseload.

There’s nothing quite like the rhythm of an international airport.

The harmony of a dozen different languages, the frantic tempo of shoes and luggage wheels against the lacquered floors as people hurry to catch their flights; the melody of suits shouting at invisible people in their ears as college students have hushed conversations over their travel guides.

I’ve always loved the possibility of it all, the potential.

The hustle and the energy. Airports are like purgatory.

You’re nowhere and everywhere, suspended in a temporal no-man’s-land until you step onto your next flight.

Each gate is like a magical portal to a different world. This door will take you to Vienna, that one leads to Johannesburg. Every door will take you away from whatever past you need to escape.

Airports have been one of the only constants in my life.

Some people chop off their hair after a bad breakup. I book international flights.

When my first love broke my heart at eighteen, I got on the next train that would take me to the Edinburgh Airport and booked a flight to France.

When my undergrad girlfriend and I realized we were better off as friends, I went on a solo road trip around Iceland.

When I got dumped by my grad school professor, I trekked the Annapurna Circuit in Nepal.

I got cheated on, so I went to Patagonia.

Heartbreak doesn’t hit the same when you’re on your way to experience something brand-new.

Most problems seem small when you’re standing at the foot of the Pyramids or the Colosseum or Chichen Itza.

Nothing helps me forget an ending better than the new beginning promised by a boarding pass.

Keep moving, keep exploring, keep focused on what’s next, never what’s passed.

So when Ruth dumped me a week ago, I knew what I had to do. Even if the breakup wasn’t actually the bad part.

I let myself get swept up in the current of Heathrow until my phone vibrates in my fleece pocket, and I look down to see Michelle’s face floating above the red and green phone icons.

“Mal, where the fuck did you put the colander?” Michelle screeches over the distant sound of pots and pans clanging.

Closer to the phone, a baby starts crying.

“Oh, no. Oh, shush shush, baby boy,” she coos softly.

“I know, I know. Mommy shouldn’t have raised her voice.

And she shouldn’t have used an adult word.

But sometimes, Auntie Mal drives her to it. ”

“Hello, Cedar.” I make kissy noises into the phone, hoping the baby can hear me. “Did Mommy look for the colander in the cupboard next to the oven?”

“Of course she did. I did.” Michelle sputters in frustration. “And I’m not talking about the shitty—I mean, poopy —plastic one we bought in undergrad. I need the nice metal one. What kind of forest ecologist would I be if I used plastic kitchen utensils?”

“A tired one who is doing her best?” I try. “And aren’t Kwame’s parents coming over for dinner tomorrow night?”

“It’s called meal prep, Mal!” Michelle hisses.

“At”—I glance down at my phone again to confirm that it’s not even nine in the morning here in London, which means it’s—“two in the morning? Michelle, why are you meal prepping at this ungodly hour?”

Cedar cries out again, and Michelle makes a few more shushing sounds before she continues.

“Cedar woke up and he won’t go back to sleep, and I have the submission deadline on that climate paper coming up, but I can’t work on my data sets with a baby strapped to my chest, so instead I’m getting ready for Kwame’s parents, because for some inexplicable reason, I told them I would make the yams! ”

Her voice has become increasingly frantic over the course of this rant, and I can picture her so perfectly: she’s probably standing in the kitchen of her mom’s old house in Ballard, her three-month-old strapped to her chest in his Ergobaby carrier.

I’m sure she’s bouncing up and down to soothe him while she throws open the ancient cupboards we painted white four years ago, when her mom bought a condo in Palm Springs, and Michelle took over the mortgage on her childhood home.

I flew into Seattle from Guatemala City for the housewarming and ended up staying over a month to help her fix up the place.

She was in the second year of her PhD, and she didn’t have the time or the money to fix the rotting front porch or replace the galvanized steel pipes.

Time and money are the two things I always have in spades.

That was before Kwame moved in with her, before I met Ruth and ended up staying in Seattle for over a year. Before a week ago, when Ruth kicked me out of the condo I bought her—the one I’d put in her name, like a lovesick fool—and I had to start crashing on Michelle’s couch.

Before I booked a plane ticket and fucked off, like I always do.

I’m sure the newborn exhaustion is evident in Michelle’s brown eyes, but her unwashed wisps of blond hair always look intentionally tousled, never greasy, like her years of camping for forestry field research were the perfect gauntlet to prepare her for motherhood.

She’s probably standing in front of the giant window behind the sink, where the sill is lined with dozens of plants.

Some of them are connected to Michelle and Kwame’s research, some are herbs for cooking, and some are simply beautiful.

In a few hours, the sun will hit those yellow walls and turn the whole house honeysuckle, and the kitchen will smell like fresh mint, rosemary, and thyme.

A strange homesickness slices through me. Strange, because I’ve never lived in one place long enough to consider it home , and I’ve never let anyone get close enough to be missed. Except Michelle.

And, by extension, Kwame and Cedar. Though to a lesser degree.

I take an audible deep breath and hope Michelle does the same five thousand miles away.

“Kwame’s parents aren’t going to know which colander you used at two a.m.,” I try to reassure her.

She sighs. “True.”

“And do you really want to be the kind of wife who bends over backward to please your in-laws?”

“Frack no.”

I smile into the phone at her censored curse. Overheard, a chime sounds and a pleasant feminine voice announces a gate change for a Lufthansa flight.

“I take it you made it to Heathrow, then,” Michelle notes in a quiet voice. Perhaps Cedar is falling back to sleep.

“Yes,” I say, equally quiet as I dodge a rogue wheeling suitcase.

“Have you eaten anything yet?”

“I’m on my way to find food, Mom chelle.” The terminal opens into a hexagonal food court, and I beeline my way toward a cafeteria-style place I remember serving black coffee.

“ Food, not just black coffee,” she scolds in demonstration of her terrifying psychic friendship powers. When I arrive at the eatery, I grab the largest cup for coffee, but I also grab a banana. For Michelle.

“I don’t need you to micromanage my eating habits from five thousand miles away,” I snap, even though I sort of do. Grief does weird things to your appetite, and sometimes I forget about food all day until it’s midnight and I can’t sleep because my stomach is an angry pit of despair.

Not that I’m grieving. Not exactly.

I position my cup beneath the coffee carafe, but then I force myself to put a sausage roll on my tray.

“Yes, you do,” Michelle snaps back, because she knows me far too well. “I’m worried about you. This whole trip feels a lot like fleeing again.”

“I’m not fleeing . I was going to fly out for the funeral in three weeks anyway, and now I’m arriving early to do a quick Camino.”

“It’s the funeral part of that sentence that concerns me.”

My hands tighten around my tray, and I find myself frozen in the middle of this airport cafeteria. The fucking funeral.