Page 95 of Every Step She Takes

TWENTY-TWOQUINTA COSTA VINEYARD VIGO, SPAINWednesday, May 21, 2025

Sadie

“I get why it’s called la petite mort,” I tell her as I stare up at her ceiling, spread out like a starfish in her preteen bed, relishing in the body that just allowed me to experiencethat. “You killed me. But, like, in a good way.”

Mal sits up in a flurry of black sheets. “I am death, destroyer of worlds and Sadie Wells.”

I bark out a laugh.

“La petite mort.” Mal turns the words over in her mouth, her tongue visibly curling. The heartbeat between my legs sputters with little aftershocks from nothing more than watching her tongue touch the roof of her mouth. “What’s that from?”

“Um… the French?”

“I mean, what’s its history?”

I try to prop myself up so I can look at her, but my limbs are made of Jell-O, and I sink right back into the pillows. “Are you asking me to recite the Oxford English Dictionary definition for you? Because I learned the term fromEmily in Paris.”

“Little death…” There’s that tongue again. “I don’t think orgasms feel like death. They feel more like… a littlelife.”

“Ah, well, you know the French.”

“Dramatique.” She finishes in an exaggerated accent.

And Mal’s right. It doesn’t feel like death. It feels like rebirth. Likecreation. Naked and completely unashamed while Mal stares at my body, I feel like I’m learning more about myself, becoming more of myself.

I’m learning how to listen to my body, how to trust it. How to be at home in my skin without feeling shame for the things it wants. I’m learning what I want, and what it feels like to get it.

“I need a pickle,” I blurt.

Mal looks visibly taken aback. “Excuse me?”

“I’mstarving.” On cue, my stomach gurgles in demonstration. “I want a post-sex pickle.”

Mal somehow waggles her black eyebrows independently from her stoic expression. “What would Dr. Freud say about that?” An exaggerated German accent this time.

“He would say not everything is about penises.” I sit up in a flourish of mock outrage. “Pickles are crunchy, tangy, juicy… the perfect post-sex snack.”

“She’s an expert now, folks,” Mal announces to our audience of Beanie Babies. Then she playfully smacks my thigh. “Come on. Let’s go.”

She rolls off the bed, and I’m briefly distracted by this new view of her body. The topography of her ass, the place where it meets the curve of her lean thighs as she bends down to grab her discarded underwear. When she covers that ass with her black briefs, I snap back to attention.

“Go where?”

“To find you a sex pickle.” She cranes her head to glance at me over her shoulder, and the heartbeat in my chest and the heartbeat between my legs both sputter.

We put on just enough clothing to leave the room, and Mal presses a finger to her mouth to silence me as we creep down the hall. We pass a window, and there’s faint sunlight coming through the blinds. I briefly think it’s morning, and that wesomehow had sex all night long, but my Apple Watch quickly confirms it’s 10 p.m.

“Fun fact,” Mal says as she tiptoes toward a secret servant’s staircase at the back of the house. “The reason it stays light out so late in Spain is because during World War II, Franco wanted to be in the same time zone as his buddy Hitler, even if it meant having wacky daylight hours, and the country has been in the ‘wrong’ time zone ever since.”

“There is nothing fun about that fact.”

Once we’re downstairs, we can hear the overlapping voices of Ari and Vera, Stefano and Inez, floating from the dining room. The rest of the tour group is still eating dinner, but Mal has no intention of letting them see us. We skirt around back hallways until we arrive at a huge, restaurant-style kitchen with bespoke appliances: four ovens, twelve gas stovetop burners, an entire wall of refrigerators. “That’s the biggest fucking kitchen island I’ve ever seen.”

“The Greenland of kitchen islands,” Mal says, running a hand along a butcher’s block the size of a Buick. “Drew and Jonathan could never.”

Mal walks toward a pantry with purpose, and I can almost picture childhood Mal coming here in the summer, sneaking out of her room for a late-night snack. She flings open the cupboard door, and I expect to find a few shelves with dry goods. Instead, the cupboard doors disguise an arched walkway that leads into a separate pantryroomat least a thousand square feet in size.

“What in the Property Brothers,” I grumble as she leads me to a room with shelves up to the ceiling. It’s like shopping at a Supermercado Froiz, and Mal grabs two cans of Fanta Limón, a bag of Sabor a Jamón Ruffles, and several Kinder Bueno bars.