9 Days and 9 Nights

by Katie Cotugno

  “Okay,” I agree, not moving. Then I blink and come back to myself. “I—right. Yes. Let’s . . . do that.”

  Gabe coughs. “Let’s,” he agrees, straightening up.

  We head back in the direction we came from, a careful, respectful distance between us. My whole body is humming and hot. “So who are we, then?” Gabe asks, after a seemingly endless stretch of awkward silence. “If we’re not being ourselves, I mean?”

  “That’s a good question.” I think for a moment, grateful for the distraction. “A count and countess from a small but prosperous kingdom near Switzerland,” I decide. “Brother and sister, of course.”

  “Of course,” Gabe echoes.

  “We’re here for the summer to stay with our rich and eccentric aunt,” I continue, getting into it, “who it turns out was running an illegal pigeon-fighting ring out of the secret subbasement of her mansion, but it was raided by French police off a tip by her jilted ex-lover, so now—” I break off at the sight of Gabe’s skeptical expression. “What?” I ask, laughing a little self-consciously. “Too much?”

  He shakes his head. “Not enough,” he counters, grinning. “If we’re going to go for it we should really go for it, you know?”

  “Oh, okay,” I tease, surprised and pleased. “You think you can do better?”

  “I do, in fact,” Gabe tells me grandly. “We’re Lars and Heidi von Krinklestein, heirs to the world’s largest ball-bearing fortune. We’re in Paris as emissaries of our mother, the ball-bearing magnate, but we lost our luggage in a terrible private-jet mix-up—”

  “Art imitating life, I see.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Gabe says smoothly, but the wink he sends in my direction gives him away. “Anyway, the shock of losing her priceless souvenir shot-glass collection, which she never leaves home without, sent Heidi into an amnesiac episode—”

  “Actually, I think it was Lars’s collection of diamond-encrusted belt buckles that went missing,” I cut in. “His favorite is in the shape of a wedge of Swiss cheese.”

  “Oh, is that what it was?” Gabe asks, stroking his chin thoughtfully. “He must have forgotten.”

  I burst out laughing. “Oh my God, corny!”

  Gabe laughs too, his whole face breaking open. “You missed me,” he says with a shrug, and in this moment I can’t deny that it’s true. I’d forgotten over the last few days, in the fog of sour moods and misunderstandings, how happy it used to make me just to goof around with him.

  “Come on,” I say now, shaking my head and smiling. “Let’s find this damn arch once and for all.”

  We wander the narrow, winding streets for another twenty minutes, dodging bicyclists and peering up at flower-filled window boxes and breathing in the smell of car exhaust mixed with yeast from the open door of a tiny boulangerie. My sandals are giving me blisters again, but somehow today I can’t bring myself to mind. When we finally turn the corner onto the Champs-Élysées and the Arc comes into view, the victory has me crowing out loud. “Put ’er there,” I order, holding my knuckles out for a fist bump; Gabe, I note with some satisfaction, remembers to explode it this time.

  “See?” he says, smiling a little. “It’s not so terrible, spending the day with me.”

  That gets my attention. I hurt his feelings this morning, I realize with a sharp pang underneath my breastbone. It hadn’t occurred to me that I still could. “I never said it was going to be terrible!” I protest. Then, reaching out and touching his arm before I can talk myself out of it: “Seriously, Gabe, hey. I never thought it was going to be terrible, either.”

  Gabe makes a face at that, skeptical, but at least he doesn’t argue. “Come on,” I continue, nodding across the plaza. “I’ll take your picture so you can prove to Jules you actually made it.”

  Turns out he’s in the mood to be a ham about it, mugging like a chimp and even turning a cartwheel right there on the concrete like I haven’t seen him do since we were little kids horsing around on the lawn of his parents’ farmhouse, clusters of fireflies lit up all around us. “Very impressive,” I say once he’s upright again, pink-cheeked and smiling.

  “Lars gives good picture,” Gabe agrees, taking his phone back; the tips of our fingers brush as I pass it over, my heart tripping a bit in the moment before I remind myself I’m not noticing things like that. “We should probably take a selfie,” he jokes. “You know, to send to our mother, the ball-bearing magnate.”

  I start to laugh, only then he actually does it, leaning in close to me and stretching his arm out. “What—delete that!” I protest, swatting at his shoulder. “I’m making the world’s weirdest face.”

  “You know, I don’t think I will, actually,” Gabe says calmly, tucking his phone back into his pocket. “Mummy will love that one, don’t you think?”

  I snort, I can’t help it. “Jerk,” I huff, though in the back of my mind it occurs to me I’m not actually all that put out about it.

  “So how is she, anyway?” I can’t help asking as we move through the crowds in the plaza. “Jules, I mean. Not Mummy the ball-bearing magnate.”

  “Right,” Gabe agrees, laughing. “Jules is good. She’s going to Syracuse in the fall. She took Elizabeth to senior prom, which I thought was pretty cool.”

  “That is cool,” I echo, feeling a tiny pang like I always do when I think about Jules my former friend and not Jules my sworn blood enemy. We were circling the world’s most fragile armistice last summer before everything came crashing down again, and I’d be lying if I said I didn’t have regrets.

  “We hung out a lot while I was home, actually,” Gabe continues, “at the shop and whatnot. She’s mellowed out, if you can believe it. She wants to do business stuff too—she’s got all these big ideas, just like you do. I actually think you guys might get along now, hugely improbable as I realize that sounds.”

  “I will . . . take your word for it,” I tell him, unable to hold back a quiet laugh. Still, I’m surprised by how it feels almost normal to talk about her, that apparently enough time has passed for me to hear her name without my hands going clammy and my blood pressure spiking like I’m about to have a stroke. “But I’m glad.”

  Gabe nods; we’re quiet for a moment, strolling under a leafy canopy of trees. “You can ask about my brother, too, you know,” he tells me. “I can, like, feel you wondering over there.”

  I raise my eyebrows, not entirely sure what he’s getting at. “I mean, definitely not in a romantic way,” I say truthfully.

  “No, I know,” Gabe says quickly. “I get it. I think he’s good too, though, in his big-grumbles Patrick way. We’re not close or anything, but he seemed happier this summer, he’s got a bunch of new friends. Maybe only one of us can have an existential crisis at once, I don’t know.”

  “And you’re up at bat right now?” I ask, looking at him sidelong.

  “Kind of feels that way.” Gabe shrugs. “Anyway, I’ve been thinking about him a lot on this trip, kind of. He was always complaining that things came easy to me, right? And it’s not like I ever thought he was wrong, exactly. But I also never thought that I wouldn’t be able to handle it if things got hard.”

  “You are handling it, though,” I tell him reflexively. “Gabe, really. I promise things aren’t as bad as you think.”

  Gabe shakes his head. “Aren’t they?”

  I frown at that, spying an empty bench beneath a row of chestnut trees on the plaza; I sit down and after a moment Gabe joins me, tipping his head back to peer up through the leaves. “There must be something you like about being in Indiana, right?” I ask, bumping his shoulder with mine before I can talk myself out of it. “Like, even just one thing.”

  “I mean, the bars,” he reports. Then, off my eye roll, “I’m kidding. I’m kidding.” He scratches the back of his head. “I like how quiet it gets at night,” he says finally. “Like if I’m walking home across campus from Sadie’s or the library or wherever. It’s peaceful. And it gets kind of peaceful in my hea
d, too.” He shrugs, looking a little bit embarrassed at the revelation, like maybe he said more than he meant to. “What about you?” he asks, stretching his arms out along the back of the bench and changing the subject. “What do you like about Boston?”

  “I mean, everything, kind of,” I confess. “Like, don’t get me wrong, it’s cold and miserable a lot of the time, but there’s something about it that just feels really . . . homey to me? I can imagine being there a long time, I think.”

  Gabe’s eyebrows flicker at that, I notice, but he doesn’t comment. “Your roommate sounds cool” is all he says.

  “She’s fantastic,” I confirm, smiling at the thought of Roisin’s preppy button-downs and her love of all things Star Wars. “She reminds me of Imogen, kind of, because she’s so open and fun and easy to get to know. She invited me to come visit her in Georgia this summer, even.”

  “That’s awesome,” Gabe says. “How was it?”

  Now it’s my turn to realize I’ve said more than I necessarily meant to. “I mean, it’s possible I didn’t actually go,” I admit.

  Gabe looks confused. “Why not?”

  “I don’t really know,” I say slowly. It was an instinctive no, a reflex; it wasn’t until later that it occurred to me my instincts might have been wrong. “Like, we’re really, really good roommates. We’re going to live together next year, she’s the closest person to me at school—um, except for Ian, obviously—but I guess I still kind of held myself at a distance from her sometimes? I was always afraid of things getting, like . . .” I trail off, waving my hand.

  “Messy?” Gabe supplies.

  “Yeah.” I nod, feeling myself blush. “Like if we got too close inevitably I’d do something to make her realize she didn’t actually like me that much.” I’m surprised—shocked, even—to hear the words come out of my mouth: this isn’t the kind of thing I’d normally say to anybody, let alone him. I didn’t even know I was thinking it. “Anyway, I’m going to try and do better at that this year,” I resolve. “Not everybody who gets to know me can possibly be destined for horrible disappointment, right?”

  I’m joking around to cover my own embarrassment, but when I glance over at Gabe he’s gazing back at me, even. “There’s nothing disappointing about you, Molly Barlow,” he says quietly. My heart stutters a bit inside my chest.

  “Well,” I say, standing so quickly I almost get dizzy, all the blood rushing out of my head at once. “We’ll see, anyway. You wanna go find some lunch? My treat,” I add, when he hesitates.

  Gabe makes a face. “Ian’s treat, you mean.”

  “I mean, yes, Ian’s treat,” I admit, sighing a little. “He gave me some cash before we left. But what are you going to do otherwise, starve? I get if you’re sensitive about Ian paying for stuff, but it’s only because—”

  “First of all, can you stop saying that?” Gabe asks me, sounding irritated again for the first time since this morning. “That I’m sensitive about stuff? You said it the other night, too, and it makes me sound like such a fucking pansy.”

  I roll my eyes. “First of all,” I mimic, “don’t say pansy.”

  “Now you sound like Imogen,” he points out.

  “Good,” I shoot back. “Imogen is smart.”

  “I know Imogen is smart,” Gabe says. “And you know what I mean. It makes me sound like somebody who can’t handle himself.”

  You were just saying you don’t think you can, I almost point out, then think better of it. “It makes you sound like somebody who’s afraid of emotions and isn’t going to let his son play with dolls, actually.”

  “My son can play with dolls if he wants to, Molly!” Gabe says, but he’s laughing, which is something. He tilts his head back, stares up at the trees. “I just want to not feel like my life is spiraling wildly out of control at every moment.”

  That stops me. “What’s spiraling out of control?” I ask, sitting back down beside him.

  “Well, I’m depending on your boyfriend for my pocket money, for starters,” Gabe says immediately, ticking off a list on his fingers. “I’m about to apply to a bunch of extremely expensive medical schools I don’t even want to go to—and yes, you win, this is me saying it: I don’t want to go to medical school. I don’t even want to go back to Indiana, honestly. Five will get you ten, my girlfriend is about to break up with me because I can’t seem to stop being a dickbag, even when I want to. The other day I spent a hundred dollars I definitely do not have on skydiving, for some reason. And then there’s y—”

  He snaps his jaws shut at the very last, but the look on his face is as clear as if he’d finished the sentence: and then there’s you.

  And then there’s me.

  I gaze at him for a moment, every bone in my body gone hot and heedful. After all, it’s not like he’s wrong. Something is happening between us, clearly, though whether it’s garden-variety muscle memory or a rarer breed of bird altogether I couldn’t honestly say. What I do know is that I’ve been batting it away all week: in the obvious moments, like the other night outside the hardware-store bar, but also every single time I’ve stared for half a second too long at his sharp wrists or the cliff of his collarbone or remembered what it’s like to hold his hand. I miss him, Gabe Donnelly with his swagger and his smile and his heart as big and steady as a steamship. Not just as a person, but as mine.

  And if the way he’s looking at me now is any indication, he misses me, too.

  I shake my head to clear it, tucking my hair behind my ears and staring out across the plaza at the Arc. This is a dangerous road to travel, even if it’s only in my mind. No matter what’s about to happen between him and Sadie—no matter what’s going on with Ian and me—there are a million reasons why Gabe and I are a plane crash waiting to happen. There’s so much he still doesn’t know.

  “You’re twenty-one, dude,” I remind him finally, nudging his elbow with mine in a way I hope is sufficiently platonic; I feel the ache of it anyway, the dull singing of an overworked muscle. “You don’t have to have everything perfectly figured out. You don’t have to be perfect.”

  “Don’t I?” Gabe asks. Then, angling his chin in my direction like he thinks he’s caught me at something: “Don’t you?”

  My skin prickles in irritated recognition; I don’t like the implication there. “We’re not talking about me,” I remind him, chafing a bit. “We’re not supposed to be talking about any of this, actually, if you recall.”

  Gabe looks at me for another long moment. Then he nods. “Fair point, Heidi von Krinklestein,” he says, holding his hands up. “What do you want to talk about instead?”

  “The history of this arch,” I announce, pulling up a guide on my phone and pointing to it. “Did you know, for example, that it honors those who fought and died for France in the Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars?”

  “That’s fascinating,” Gabe says, in a voice like he still wants to be talking about the other thing. I shrug, looking away.

  Eventually we make it to lunch after all, a tiny falafel place with the softest pitas I’ve ever eaten, the warm air pungent with the smell of oregano and dill. We sit outside on a tiny patio to eat, the midafternoon sun toasting the back of my neck.

  “I emailed my mom about what you said, by the way,” Gabe tells me, offering me a napkin and motioning to the smear of tzatziki sauce on my face. “Your ideas for the shop, I mean.”

  “Really?” I ask, surprised. “I thought you said it was all too serious for any of that stuff to work.”

  “I’m a cranky ass, remember?” Gabe shakes his head. “That was me being a cranky ass. They were good ideas.” He plucks a stray tomato out of his tinfoil wrapper, shrugs. “Anyway, she said to say thank you. She said she always knew you had a head for that stuff.”

  My eyes widen. “She did?” It’s hardly an absolution, but still I’m hit with a pang of longing for Connie as physical as if someone had reached into my body and squeezed. “Wow,” I say, casting my eyes downward, embarrassed by how much I still
ache for her approval. “That’s really great, Gabe. I’m glad.”

  Gabe sits back in his metal chair then, all long limbs and skepticism. “Yeah, well,” he says, lips twisting wryly like looking hopeful makes him weak. “We’ll see if we’re too far gone.”

  Just for a second it sounds like maybe he’s talking about something besides the pizza shop. I clear my throat, crumpling up my wrapper and rattling the ice in my plastic cup. “Okay,” I say, bright and impersonal as a tour guide charged with a bus full of sandaled retirees. “Where to next?”

  Gabe scoops our garbage up off the table, holds his hand out for my empty cup. “You’re going to make fun of me,” he says, tossing it all into a trash can at the corner of the patio, “but there actually was one thing I wanted to do that we didn’t get to yesterday.”

  “Why would I make fun of you?” I glance over my shoulder and make a face at him, teasing. “Is it something really shameful and touristy, like going to the top of the Eiffel Tower?”

  Gabe blanches. “Uh,” he says.

  “Oh my God, is it really?” My jaw drops open, recognition and giddy delight. “Do you really want to go to the top of the Eiffel Tower?”

  “Fuck you,” Gabe says, but he’s smiling. The sight of it is like a warm cup of coffee the morning of the first snow of the year. “Not anymore.”

  “No, it’s just—” I break off. I want to explain about Ian, about what happened yesterday, but I don’t know how to phrase it in a way that wouldn’t be some kind of betrayal. Instead I only grin back at him, already keying the destination into my phone. “We’re totally doing this.”

  And that’s exactly what we do—though not before we ride the Metro in the wrong direction for two stops and walk a block and a half out of our way like a couple of bozos. “How does this keep happening?” Gabe asks, both of us laughing at the ridiculousness of it, annoyed with ourselves but also, I think, not that annoyed. “I can literally see the fucking thing!” Eventually we find the ticket booth and take a crowded elevator to the top of the tower, my stomach flipping dizzily as we step out onto the observation deck.