Page 11 of Every Step She Takes
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 ofProperty 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’tstrictlytrue. 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 screamI 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.”
“OhGod.” 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’man 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 herProperty Brothersepisode. 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 sheiscapable 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 inbad?” she asks, like I’m the human embodiment of a bad omen. There’ssomething 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 weweregoing to die, hers would’ve been a wonderful face to be my last. I’m tryingnotto 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.
