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“Fuck,” Donovan muttered under his breath.
“American,” the person behind us said in a thick Italian accent. As soon as my eyes adjusted to the blinding light, I saw that it was the same police officer who had caught us by the Colosseum the other night.
Donovan pulled out the bottle of cough syrup and held it up. “Medicine! Medicinale. Si?”
The officer’s bitter laugh was recognizable in any language. “No. Lies. Home, now.”
We complied as the two cops escorted us back to the hotel. Before letting us go inside, one of them snapped our photos with his cell phone.
“Stay,” the officer commanded in his halting English, patting the door to the Residencia Al Gladiatore. He pointed to our photo on his phone. “Leave again? Jail.”
“We understand,” Donovan said. “It won’t happen again.”
The cops watched us go inside. I felt their eyes on us as we walked through the lobby to the elevator.
“I wonder if they’ll barricade us inside,” I said with a nervous laugh. “Like those crazy videos from China. Right?”
Donovan clenched his jaw and stared straight ahead. “That was a mistake.”
“Yeah,” I agreed. “We probably shouldn’t have left…”
“I meant taking a different route home.” He thumbed the elevator button harder than it deserved. “From the top of the hill I knew where every officer was around the Colosseum, but we didn’t know how many were patrolling on the other side. You shouldn’t have insisted on going that way.”
“I’m sorry,” I said as the elevator door opened. “At least we didn’t get thrown in jail.”
He rounded on me. “We will the next time we try to sneak out! We could have explored the city a bunch more times, but now we’re on our final warning. Now we’re stuck in here.” He mashed the button for the third floor. “We should have stuck with the plan.”
His frustration took me by surprise. In our three weeks together, we’d been perfectly happy and content. This was the first time I’d seen him upset about something.
And it stung extra because he was right.
“I’m sorry,” I said in a small voice. “We should have stuck with your plan.”
He nodded and stared at the door.
“Want me to make it up to you?” I slid my arm around him. “What I talked about earlier…”
“Let’s just go to bed,” he said.
Disappointed in how the night had gone, I followed him down the hall to our rooms.
36
Donovan
The Day I Fucked Up
I was so fucking stupid.
I knew we were running a risk by going out. I had taken every precaution to make sure we wouldn’t get caught: moving slowly, pausing every couple of minutes to listen for cops, not using the light on our phones. But as soon as Molly insisted on seeing more of the Oppian Hill, I folded like a cheap table. I let her take her phone out to illuminate the information signs. And then I let her convince me to go out a different way, even though it meant a longer walk home in an area we didn’t know.
As I lay in bed that night, staring at the ceiling and listening to Molly’s breathing next to me, my anger faded. Now I was mad at myself for yelling at her. Okay, maybe I didn’tyellat her. But I definitely took out my frustration on her. That wasn’t fair. Hell, going out into the city was my idea in the first place. She originally wanted to stay in and watch a movie. So if anyone was to blame for getting caught, it was me.
It feels like our first fight.
That thought conjured new emotions in my chest.Firstswere for people in a relationship. But what were we? Two people killing time with each other while waiting for a ticket home?
When all of this had started, I didn’t have much of a plan. There was a cute girl staying in the hotel room next to mine, and she was willing to trade wine for pasta. When we hooked up, I figured it would be a good way to spend the quarantine. Some no-strings-attached fun while we waited out the lockdown.
