“Just tired,” I promise brightly, sitting up and gulping the water, tucking my hair behind my ears. I lie back down and rest my cheek on his chest, listening for the reassuring thud of his heart beating underneath the cotton and trying to stop thinking about Gabe. Ian rubs my back for a long moment, making swirls and loops and intricate patterns, before ever so slowly rucking up the side of my tank top, running one gentle finger along the bare skin above the waistband of my jeans.
“That cool?” he asks quietly.
I swallow, my stomach swooping. “Yeah,” I tell him, smiling as he pushes himself up on one elbow, ducking his head to press a kiss against my mouth. I reach a hand up to scratch my fingers through the hair at the back of his neck, shifting to make room as he gets closer, his body heavy and dense and warm. “That’s cool.”
Ian nudges the strap of my tank top out of the way and plants a trail of kisses along my collarbone, dark beard rasping against my skin. I reach for the hem of his T-shirt and he hums. The anticipation sparks between us like a live wire, and I know he’s wondering if this is the moment, same as I am: even though we’ve definitely fooled around a bunch over the last five months, we still haven’t actually had sex.
“I want to,” I promised him the first time we really talked about it, sitting on the lumpy mattress in his apartment last April, my bra strap slipping down my arm. “I think I just need some time.”
“Yeah, of course,” Ian said seriously, rubbing at his own bare, freckled shoulder. “Take as long as you need.” The fact that he was so sincerely nice about it made me like him even more than I already did, although now it’s almost the end of August and I know he can’t have been expecting it to take quite this long. I’m just waiting for the perfect opportunity—for the stars to align and the lighting to turn golden, for that moment when I’m one hundred percent sure. God knows I’ve made more than my fair share of mistakes about this kind of thing in the past, breaking hearts and ruining relationships and making choices I couldn’t take back. This time, I want to be absolutely certain I get it right.
I close my eyes and slide my palms over the muscles in Ian’s stomach, reaching around to count the ridges of his backbone and telling myself I’m not still thinking about Gabe. Ian’s a good kisser, friendly, and his fingertips are gentle along the underwire of my bra; he’s fumbling with the clasp when the reminder on my phone chimes out on the nightstand, the volume jacked loud and startling.
“Shoot,” I say, letting a breath out, squeezing Ian’s upper arms to call him off. “We’re supposed to go to that happy hour, remember? The place with the hundred beers.”
Ian groans. “Let’s skip it,” he says, ducking his head to nip at my shoulder.
“Can’t,” I murmur, grinning as I wriggle out from underneath him and reach for my tank top, enjoying the tease. “Gotta stick to the schedule.”
Ian grumbles a bit more, but after a moment he gets up too, heading into the bathroom to brush his teeth while I dig through my suitcase for a silky black T-shirt dress, pushing the thought of Gabe standing there on that train platform out of my mind once and for all. Everybody has their secrets, I tell myself, fluffing my hair out and slicking on a pale swipe of lip gloss. The trick is to leave the past where it belongs.
“You ready?” Ian asks now, coming out of the bathroom and holding his hand out, pink-cheeked and scruffily handsome.
“Sure am,” I say, then twist my fingers through his and squeeze. “Let’s go.”
Day 2
We spend the next day playing tourists, Tower Bridge and the Rosetta Stone at the British Museum, popping up out of underground stations like subterranean animals after a long, cold winter. For lunch we slip into a tiny corner shop and pick up cheddar cheese sandwiches with mustard and pickles on bread so crusty you could break a tooth trying to eat it. I like traveling with Ian, I think again as we post up on a bench in Covent Garden to eat them: in spite of all my careful planning he’s open to a kind of wandering, with a willingness to sit in one place for an hour at a time and watch the world go by. “We’re not seeing anything,” I protest when he suggests running across the street for ice cream.
“Take a breath, General,” Ian tells me, nodding at the crowded plaza. “We’re seeing plenty.”
“Jerk,” I tease, although truthfully, my new vacation sandals are rubbing a blister on my pinky toe and I’m happy to have a break. In any case, it’s not like he’s wrong. When I follow his gaze I spy a deliveryman unloading a shipment of flowers from a truck and loading it into the service entrance of a nearby restaurant; I watch a pack of skateboarders in brightly colored T-shirts zipping through the throng. Across the street is a newsstand packed with gossip magazines, their covers splashed with lurid photos of Sabrina Hudson’s latest nightclub meltdown, and I frown for a second, squinting to read the headlines: Sabrina Hudson was a huge TV star back when I was in middle school, and there was even chatter about her possibly playing Emily Green in my mom’s Driftwood movie, but for the last year or so she’s been on what seems like one long bender, getting fired from film projects and arrested for a DUI and embroiled in public knock-down-and-drag-outs with one sketchy boyfriend after another.
“I used to have a huge crush on Sabrina Hudson,” Ian tells me now, nodding at the magazine racks with a grimace. “I mean, before she turned into a giant train wreck, clearly.”
“You and everybody else,” I tease, though I’m still peering distractedly at the tabloids. God, it must be awful to crash and burn like that in front of the whole entire world. “Okay,” I say finally, smiling at him and reaching for my phone to check the schedule. “Let’s get going.”
In the afternoon we wander through the cluster of bookstores on Charing Cross Road, all low ceilings and narrow aisles and the smell of old paper and must, rare first editions locked safely into glass-front cabinets and fusty shopkeepers like something out of Harry Potter keeping a watchful eye on their wares. A bookstore cat darts across the end of the aisle, a flash of white paws and Bengal stripes, there and gone again. It’s the kind of place I probably would have found boring a year ago, but Ian is so clearly in heaven that I find myself getting excited about it too, the two of us digging through the messy, overcrowded stacks with the enthusiasm of contestants on some kind of ultra-dorky game show.
“You’re not going to have room for all of those in your backpack,” I warn him finally, eyeing the growing haul tucked under his arm. Ian collects Vintage Contemporaries paperbacks from the eighties, the kind with tacky paint-by-numbers art on their covers and bright bands of color along their spines. I’ve seen them lined up on the bookshelves in his apartment, forming a rainbow nearly narcotic in its orderliness.
He shakes his head, looking confident. “Oh, I’ll make room,” he promises.
“You will, huh?” I ask, charmed. He raises his eyebrows in reply, then sets the books on a nearby shelf and kisses me, broad chest and beer-tasting tongue and both hands on my face. I love Ian’s hands; they’re oddly aristocratic compared to the rest of him, long and lean, with bitten-down nails that are all college dude. Watching him hold a pencil always strikes me as stupidly dear.
“This,” he mutters against my mouth, “is how I want to die.”
I laugh, flattening my palms against his T-shirt; I can feel his heart tapping steadily away underneath the cotton. Bookstores are holy sites for Ian—he’s a double major in English and secondary education, the only guy in his teaching cohort. Back when we first started dating he used to bring me books instead of flowers, leaving them on my desk and in stacks at my door like offerings—Stephen King, Jane Austen, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie. I’ve never been a huge reader, truthfully—not to mention the fact that after the Driftwood debacle I wanted to stay as far away from my mom’s career as humanly possible—but I didn’t want him to think I was a moron, and in the end I was surprised by how much I enjoyed them, dipping into a dozen different worlds in the sterile quiet of my dorm room. I wanted to know all the authors he’d falle
n in love with. I wanted to read everything he’d read.
“Come on,” I say now, pulling gently away. “We get kicked out of this place for unliterary activities, you’re never going to forgive me.”
“You’re probably right,” Ian says seriously—then kisses me back into the shadows, grabbing one last book off the shelf above my head.
For dinner we’ve got a reservation at a place I scoped out on one of the travel blogs I haunted all summer, a ten-table bistro with crispy chicken cooked under a brick and the best mashed potatoes in London. It’s close enough to walk from the apartment, and we leave a little early, taking our time as we stroll past souvenir shops and coffee bars all closing up for the night, street vendors locking up their carts. It’s clear and cool outside, that first hint of fall coming. The sky is a soft, velvety blue. The streets are lined with pubs and restaurants, their patios packed with a rowdy Friday-night crowd; I press my cheek against Ian’s sturdy shoulder as we pass a street-corner busker picking out “Eleanor Rigby” on the guitar. The more time goes by, the more convinced I am that seeing Gabe was some kind of weird neurochemical aberration, my brain bending double and snapping back.
We’re nearly to the restaurant when I stop short at the sound of music coming from a massive brick building on the corner of a quiet street, a converted warehouse bearing the faded logo of a canned goods company on one side. I’ve noticed this about London, the way new places and things are layered on top of old ones, like the whole city is a talented seamstress fashioning one-of-a-kind couture out of ancient thrift store finds. An alley to one side is strung with a canopy of old-fashioned white lights and leads to a beer garden on a back patio; I can see a jazz trio set up back there, a girl in thick glasses and red high heels plucking away at the double bass. “Oh,” I say, before I can stop myself. “Look.”
“That’s fucking awesome,” Ian says, a slow smile spreading across his face and his accent just detectable like it always is when he’s excited about something. Then, taking my hand: “Let’s check it out.”
I hesitate for a moment—thinking, stubbornly, of the app on my phone—but Ian bumps my shoulder. “Come on,” he urges. “It’s a kuddelmuddel.”
My eyes widen. “I’m sorry,” I say, a laugh pulling at the corners of my mouth, “a what?”
“A kuddelmuddel,” Ian repeats, grinning back at me. “It’s German. It actually means, like, messy chaos? But my mom always uses it to describe what happens when you’re traveling and you find something sort of good and unexpected that isn’t part of the plan.”
“A kuddelmuddel,” I repeat, falling a little bit more in love with him. “Okay.”
The restaurant is massive inside, all dark wood and basket-weave tile and one whole wall of windows flung wide open to the courtyard, the faint whiff of cigarette smoke on the breeze. A dozen framed mirrors hung behind the bar catch the candlelight flickering on the tiny bistro tables; at the back is a row of booths with dividing walls that stretch to the ceiling, deep-red curtains hung across each one. It smells like fried fish and dark beer and underneath that a certain not-unpleasant sourness, generations of spills mopped up on the wide, scratched floorboards. Also, it’s packed.
“It’ll be at least forty-five minutes,” the hostess says, once we make our way through the crowd; she’s got impossibly long lashes and cat-eye liner, a smart black dress paired with combat boots. “You could get a pint while you wait?”
“You wanna bail?” Ian asks, checking his watch and glancing back toward the exit. “We can still make your reservation, if you want.”
“Actually, no,” I hear myself say, surprised by the urge to stray from my carefully curated itinerary. But there’s something about the energy of this place that I like, a sense of possibility. I watch a burly, bearded waiter hurry by with a tray of bright-pink cocktails in delicate champagne coupes. “Let’s stay.”
Ian orders us a couple of beers and we find a spot to post up near the bar as the crowd thickens all around us, cologne and bright lipstick and plaid button-down shirts. We keep getting muscled into each other, my chest pressed up against Ian’s. Behind me a girl who’s already half drunk is telling a very enthusiastic story to her friends, all hand gestures and colorful British expletives; I duck out of her way, scooting from side to side to avoid a pint glass to the back of the head. After a while I’ve got a rhythm down—my hips rocking ever so slightly into Ian’s, then back again, holding my glass up so I don’t spill on my dress. Beer drips down onto my wrist. I lift my arm to lick it away and when I look back up Ian is staring at me, the intent on his face so overt it makes me shiver. He raises his eyebrows, something that just misses being a smile tweaking the corners of his mouth. “What are we, dancing?” he asks, head tipped down close to mine.
It takes me a minute to realize what he’s getting at, that low swoop in my belly. Then I grin. “Why?” I ask, flirtatious. “You wanna dance?”
Ian shakes his head, mischievous. “I mean, not particularly.”
“Well then,” I tease. “What do you want?”
He’s about to answer when the girl behind me swings her glass with particular vivacity; I overcorrect as I’m ducking out of her way, stepping directly onto the foot of the dark-haired guy standing to my right. “Whoops,” I start, blushing like a clumsy tourist; I turn around guiltily, free hand held up in apology. “I’m sorry.”
“Nah, it’s cool,” says a deep American voice I know in the cells of my bone marrow, a voice I know in the ventricles of my heart. “You’re good.”
He glances at me quickly, then immediately does a double take; for a moment both of us just freeze. I can’t stop staring, struck silent by the shock and the horror and the fact that apparently I wasn’t hallucinating yesterday in the tube station: it’s Gabe, who I’ve known almost as long as I can remember. Gabe, whose family I destroyed for the second time last year. He’s here in this pub in London in dark jeans and a soft-looking henley, a bottle of Amstel clutched in one hand.
And he’s with a girl.
She was with him yesterday in the Underground station too, I realize now, though I didn’t notice her at the time—as if my brain was protecting me somehow, only seeing what it wanted to see. It feels like this whole trip is reshuffling in front of my eyes like a deck of enchanted cards from an animated movie, becoming something other than the thing it was five minutes ago. It feels like my whole life is.
“Um,” I manage finally, just the one idiotic syllable. “Hi.”
“Hi,” Gabe echoes, sounding just about as useless. “What are you doing here?”
“What am I—I’m on vacation,” I retort, more snottily than I necessarily mean to. “What are you doing here?”
“Yeah,” Gabe says, gesturing to the beautiful blonde beside him. “Us too.”
Us. Right. I suddenly remember Ian waiting patiently at my side, watching the proceedings with a curious, quizzical expression. I hesitate for a moment, realizing abruptly that I have no idea how to explain what’s going on here. “This is Gabe,” I blurt roughly. “Gabe, this is my boyfriend, Ian.”
Just for a second, what looks like the ghost of a reaction—surprise? Jealousy?—flares across Gabe’s achingly handsome face. Then he grins, and just like that he’s the King of Funtown, same as he always was back at home. “Wow, good to meet you, dude,” he says easily, reaching his hand out for Ian’s. “This is my girlfriend, Sadie.” He turns to the blonde, lays a confident palm against her back. “Molly’s from Star Lake,” he explains smoothly. “She dated Patrick forever, way back in the Stone Age.”
I blink. He’s not wrong, certainly—I did date Gabe’s brother, Patrick, forever—but that’s definitely not our only connection. By the end of last summer he was the only Donnelly I had any interest in giving my heart to at all.
“Oh wow, hi,” Sadie says. She’s tall and toned, with a long waterfall of hair braided into a fishtail over one golden shoulder. Her handshake is firm as a bear trap. “It’s so cool to meet you. How wild i
s this, right?”
“Seriously wild.” I smile what I hope is the smile of a normal person and not an escaped convict whose haunted past is flashing before her eyes three thousand miles from the scene of the crime. It occurs to me that if we hustle, maybe Ian and I can still make our reservation at the chicken-under-a-brick place. Hell, maybe we can hop a flight to Burundi. Anything to get out of here.
I’m about to make an excuse—a migraine, a phone call, explosive uncontrollable diarrhea—when the hostess interrupts. “Any parties of four waiting for a table over here?” she calls, popping up on her toes and shouting over the din in the bar. “I could take a quad right now.”
The chatter in the crowd gets more purposeful then, everybody peering around to see who’s going to claim it. But there don’t actually seem to be any four-person parties waiting; it’s all couples like Ian and me—or Gabe and Sadie, I think with shocking sourness—and big, raucous groups. The quizzical hesitation is palpable as we look at each other, the four of us coming to the same obvious, horrifying conclusion at once.
Sadie’s the one who says it. “Do you two want to double up?” she asks cautiously. There’s a low midwestern lilt to her voice, Kansas maybe; it makes me think of wide-open spaces, of long afternoons running around in the grass. “I mean, were you waiting for a table?”
“Totally,” Ian says. “Let’s do it.” He glances at me for confirmation, apparently oblivious to the panic and dread I’m sure must be radiating off me in a thick, noxious cloud. “That’s cool, right? Honestly, I just want to sit down someplace. I’m about to eat my shoe.”
“Um.” I purposely don’t look in Gabe’s direction, same as I can tell he’s purposely not looking at me; it feels like one stray second of eye contact might give up the game here, lay our whole sloppy history out for everyone to see. The last thing I want is to have dinner with him. I don’t see how I can have dinner with him without one or the other of us somehow plowing up the past I’ve spent the last year keeping buried for everyone’s benefit. I don’t trust myself not to lose my head and start screaming, to demand an explanation for why he ghosted like he did. I needed you last fall, I want to tell him. I needed you, and you made sure I knew I didn’t matter.
9 Days and 9 Nights Page 3