Home > 9 Days and 9 Nights

9 Days and 9 Nights
Author: Katie Cotugno

Day 1


Ian tells me he loves me for the first time in front of an enormous display of medieval torture devices, halfway through a tour of the Tower of London on the second morning of our trip.

“Shit,” he says as soon as the words are out of his mouth, reaching down for my suddenly sweaty hand and tugging me gently toward the back of the group. He’s sheepish and wide-eyed, his thick straight eyebrows hooked together with alarm. “I’m sorry. This is, like, the world’s most awkward venue to be saying this to you.”

For a moment I just gape at him. “No, no,” I lie—though not, I suspect, super convincingly. Over the nicker of my own skittish heart I’m vaguely aware of our guide rattling cheerfully on in a crisp British accent: “While these were once thought to be the axes which beheaded Anne Boleyn, in fact history shows she died by the sword. Now, if you’ll look over to your left . . .”

Ian grimaces and rests his warm, heavy palms on my bare shoulders, shifting me out of the path of a family speaking enthusiastic German and using a selfie stick to take a picture of themselves in front of a collection of antique flails. “I mean, it definitely is,” he admits. “But honestly, I’ve been thinking it since we took off from Boston. I mean, before that too, but especially since we got here. And every time I opened my mouth I was worried it was going to come out at a wicked inopportune time.”

I laugh at that, I can’t help it. “Like now?” I ask as he takes my arm and moves me again, both of us edging aside as another gleeful gaggle of tourists jostles its way through the crowd, camera flashes exploding.

“I mean, yeah,” Ian says, his pale face going pink under his Red Sox cap. He digs the complimentary Tower map out of his pocket and refolds it a couple of times, nervous. We’ve been in London since yesterday morning. We’ve been dating for five full months. “Like now.” He makes a face. “Is that weird?”

“Oh yeah,” I assure him, unable to hide a smile. Out the narrow window behind him I can see a raven flying in lazy circles against the blue-gray August sky, swooping low and then righting itself gracefully. The guide said there are seven of them living in the Tower, a creepily macabre brood of avian house pets. “But not in a bad way.”

Ian tilts his head to the side, hope splashed all across his handsome face. “No?”

“No.” I reach up and fuss with the sleeve of his T-shirt, suddenly shy myself. The skin of his upper arm is warm and solid and smooth. The truth is, I’m not so much shocked by the setting he’s chosen for this particular declaration as I am by the fact that he’s saying it at all. You don’t even know me, I think, then push the notion away, banishing it to the place where I store all the messiest parts of my past. “Not in a bad way at all.”

“Okay,” Ian says, letting a breath out, scrubbing a hand through the day’s worth of vacation beard on his chin and smiling a little uncertainly. “Damn, Molly. I should have at least waited till we got to the room with the Crown Jewels or something.” He glances around, shaking his head. “It’s really morbid in here, now that I’m looking. This was not a slick move on my part.”

“No, come on, this is great.” I giggle, motioning around at the empty suits of armor standing at attention along one wall, the reproductions of executioner’s masks hanging up alongside some horrifying metal contraption with a million sharp teeth, the intended purpose of which I’d rather not contemplate. “You’re really getting your William the Conqueror on.”

“Shut up,” Ian says, but he’s laughing too now, his studious face cracking open. “That’s not even the right time period.”

“Oh, well, God forbid I mess up my time periods,” I tease. That was one of the things I liked first and best about Ian, how silly and self-aware he could be for someone so serious; getting to know him was like finding a secret late-night dance party in the green-lampshade reading room at the Boston Public Library. “I love you too.”

“Really?” For one second Ian looks completely, purely delighted; then, just as quickly, he shakes his head. “You don’t have to say it back,” he reassures me, shoving the map back into the pocket of his dorky cargo shorts. “I mean, you know that, obviously. But you don’t.”

“Yes, thank you.” I wrinkle my nose. “I know that. But I want to.”

Ian squints at me like he’s looking for the punch line. “Really?” he asks again. He sounds very young even though he’s two years ahead of me at college in Boston; he’ll be a senior when we go back to campus in two weeks. “You do?”

I laugh, not a little nervously. “Yeah, nerd,” I say, trying not to feel like a jerk at how shocked he sounds by the admission. He said it to me without expecting it back, I realize abruptly. He said it to me like an offering. “I do.”

Ian grins at me for real then, slow and steady. You could light the whole London Eye with that smile. “Okay,” he says. “Well. Good, then.”

“Good,” I echo, more certain than I was even just a moment ago when I blurted it out. I do love him, after all: I love his brain and his heart and the person I am when I’m with him. The person he makes me want to be. And isn’t that what love is, really? Wanting to be the best version of yourself for someone else? If that’s the rubric that we’re using, then I’ve been in love with Ian since the very first day we met.

I was in the library at BU one rainy Saturday morning in late October of last year, rain streaking down the tall, wide windowpanes and a forbidden cup of coffee from the café downstairs rapidly cooling on the desk in front of me. It was barely a week after the clinic visit and I still had faint stomach cramps, a feeling like someone periodically reaching a cold hand inside my body and squeezing as hard as they could. Still, as I sat there in the carrel in my sweatpants and ponytail, a bulky plaid scarf wrapped around my neck, I was calmer than I’d been in two full weeks. I’d been gravitating toward the library more and more the last few days, in between classes and after dinner, drawn to the tall shelves and stain-resistant armchairs and most of all to the immaculate, antiseptic silence. Boston is a pretty quiet city, all Unitarian churches and hipster coffee shops and cobblestone streets made uneven by tree roots, but lately it was all too bright and loud and overwhelming, like I was walking around with my organs on the outside of my body. Everything felt screamingly, ferociously raw.

I was halfway through a calc problem set that wasn’t due until Tuesday when someone stopped next to my hard wooden chair and cleared his throat. I startled, blinking up at the sandy-haired guy casting a broad shadow over my notebook. He looked like everything I’d always pictured when I thought of Boston: broken-in corduroys and L.L.Bean boots unlaced halfway down, a plaid flannel shirt rolled up to his elbows. He was pushing a metal cart full of library books.

“Um,” he said, motioning at my coffee cup and smiling a shy, sheepish smile. “You’re really not supposed to have that in here.”

“Oh!” I felt myself blush deep and red, shame flooding all the way down to the soles of my feet inside my sneakers. “Shoot, I’m sorry.” It was such a small, stupid thing, a contraband coffee, but getting called out for it by a total stranger flew directly in the face of everything I was trying to be here, with my neatly organized planner and my soothing playlist of classical music and my homework done three days ahead of time: somebody who didn’t cause any problems. Somebody who didn’t break any hearts. “Um. You can take it, or I can go throw it away, or—”

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