Page 14 of What Happens in Amsterdam

By the middle of the next week, I’ve begun to truly adjust—real, this-is-my-actual-home-now adjusting. I grocery shop every few days and bring home only what I can carry. No more weekly trips to Trader Joe’s or overstuffed canvas bags jammed into the trunk of my car. Cashiers try Dutch with me when I’m checking out, switching to English after I mumble aSorryand thenDank je wel, fijne dag, the paltry Dutch phrases I’ve picked up so far.

I’m too cowardly to try my bike again and decide to return it to the subscription shop, so I rely on a pair of Nikes and my OV-chipkaart, the Dutch transit card—because the public transportation here isspectacular. There are trams and buses and trains and a metro, and every time I slide into a seat on one of the sleek blue-and-white trams, I’m overcome with a sense of peace I never felt while stuck in LA traffic.

I hurry inside with the single bag of groceries I picked up on the way home from work, eager for a scheduled video call with Phoebe.

“Hi, hello, I miss you!” she says when she picks up, her dark hair piled on top of her head. She’s wearing this crochet patchwork cardigan that’s nearly part of her DNA—she made it ten years ago and wears it once a week; the thing is indestructible—and gives me an inordinate amount of homesickness. Her store doesn’t open for another hour, and she’s in her office there, surrounded by books, sipping from a mug that saysI’M WITH THE BANNED. “Look at you in your cute Dutch apartment! With your cute sweet face! And yourhair looks so much better now that it’s grown out a bit, wow. I love it.”

“I can’t take credit for any of the design choices but agree about the hair, thank you for the validation,” I say with a laugh, because my sister’s voice has the power to soothe any amount of stress. “You want a tour?”

“Yes, please,” she says, and I spend the next few minutes bringing her to each room and trying my best to remember all of Wouter’s explanations. Then I settle at the kitchen table, propping the phone on a stack of Dutch cookbooks.

“How are you? How’s Maya? How’s the store?”

“Good, good, and good. We’re collaborating with some local artists for Valentine’s Day and hosting a bookish craft fair—it’s going to be adorable.”

Another pang. “I wish I could be there.”

“I’ll send you a valentine,” she says, taking another sip of coffee. “Maya’s been lucky with the morning sickness, and I swear she’s already glowing. And I know it’s probably too early to buy clothes, but Dan, everything is so precious. I found these tiny overalls at a flea market last weekend with manatees all over them—I’ll send you a picture. It’s criminal that they don’t come in adult sizes.” After I’ve squealed over them, her voice turns a little chillier. “And the question of the moment…How’s Wouter?”

For some reason, hearing her say his name out loud makes my heart lurch in my chest, as though it’s a confirmation that this is really happening. I told her the night I moved in, still trying to make sense of it all, and she was understandably cautious. Thrilled that I wasn’t living in a dungeon anymore, but cautious nonetheless.

Half on instinct, I glance up at the ceiling. “I haven’t seen him much since Friday, actually.”

Just once, when he was locking up his bike when I got homefrom work yesterday, and we exchanged awkward waves andCan you believe the weather?Sometimes I hear what sounds like a dog scampering around on hardwood floor, but I’ve never seen him outside with one, so we must keep very separate hours.

Despite all my unanswered questions, this can only be a good thing. Once I can afford a place of my own, I’ll be gone, and he’ll find another new tenant who’s only a tenant.

I’ve even seen his upstairs neighbor more frequently, an older man named Hendrik who claims the stairs keep him young. Meanwhile, my LA friends have grown increasingly terrible at answering their texts, to the point where I’m not sure I can blame the time zone anymore—but then again, I haven’t been making much effort, either. Truthfully, they felt distant even before I left.

A few times when the evening quiet turns lonely, I consider messaging Iulia but always stop myself. She seemed settled, seven years in the Netherlands and likely zero desire for an aimless American friend.

I also asked Phoebe not to tell our parents about Wouter. In the years after he left, they’d say they wished they’d done a better job of keeping in touch, though I think they were a little stung that he’d ghosted them. It was one kind of cruelty to end our relationship the way he did, but my parents had never been anything but generous toward him.

While I’m sure they’d be beside themselves that he’s back in a Dorfman’s life, I don’t want them to view him as this Amsterdam savior.

“But he’s been…cordial,” I say to Phoebe after hunting for the right word, trying not to think about the way he stood where I am now and told me I still got tongue-tied. Even after severing our connection, he held on to so many details. “He’s a physiotherapist now, which might be different from a physical therapist? I’ve been meaning to look it up.”

“You know I can never forgive him for what he did to you. He lived with us for ayear. He told you he fucking loved you.”

I pull the sleeves of my big gray turtleneck over my hands. It’s a habit I developed in college, when I studied in a library with AC that was always a bit too strong. “Do you think this is some way of trying to make it up to me? He feels sorry for me, and he saw an opportunity?”

Phoebe and I spent so much time trying to decipher that four-sentence rejection text, searching for meaning when there wasn’t any. Maybe he’d met someone else, and this was his way of letting me down easy. Maybe he didn’t think long distance would be worth it.

Or maybe he meant exactly what he said:I need to be with someone who has a little more ambition.

“I can’t tell if that’s nice or insulting. Maybe both,” she says, still sounding uncertain. “Just be careful, okay? He’s still half a stranger at this point, Dan. I don’t mean this cruelly, you know I don’t, but—you don’t really know him anymore.”

“Trust me, we’re not going to have any kind of relationship that goes beyond real estate. I…made that pretty clear to him the other day.”

Phoebe stretches in her chair, calls out hello to someone entering the office. “God, I can’t believe you’ve been there almost a month. How’s your Dutch?”

“Niet goed. I signed up for a class that starts next month.”

“And your job is still sketchy as hell?”

“Two more people quit yesterday. The CEO’s been out of town the whole time I’ve been there, and everyone seems to worship him, although no one can explain to me why he’s supposedly so amazing.”

“Maybe it wouldn’t be the worst thing if you started looking around.”

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