Page 34 of What Happens in Amsterdam

The other end of the phone goes silent. I pull on the sweats and sit down on the bed, wondering if the connection dropped.

“Phee? Hello?”

“I’m here, I’m here. I think I fainted.”

“I know it’s ridiculous,” I say, aware of my quickening heart rate. I’ve never been so desperate for her approval. Her understanding. “But if you think about it, it makes a lot of sense. It’ll give me more time to find a job without the stress of potential deportation hanging over me, and—”

“Oh, I’m thinking about it. And it might be the most ludicrous thing I’ve ever heard.” Even though I can’t see her, I can picture her: she told me when she answered the phone that she was wrapped in a blanket on the couch while Maya was asleep upstairs, and I hear what sounds like the blanket being pushed to the floor, Phoebe getting to her feet to pace. When she speaks again, it’s more frantic. “Do you have any idea how much trouble you could get into? Like, internationally?”

“We’re not going to. We have history.” Without meaning to, I’ve echoed exactly what Wouter said to me. “We can pretend we’re in love the same way we pretended we weren’t back when he was living with us.”

“Well, good. Sounds like you’ve really thought about it. Weighed all the pros and cons,” she says. “And your plan is just that Mom and Dad won’t find out? Because you know they’d absolutely lose it if they did, right?”

“They’re on the other side of the world.” I bite down on the inside of my cheek a little too hard. We’ve never fought about anything serious, only childish arguments that led to one of us slamming a door, only for our parents to find us an hour later singing along to vintage Britney Spears and painting our nails together. The hard edge in my voice is almost unrecognizable. “Phoebe. I’m doing this. I wasn’t calling to ask for permission or for a voice of reason. I just wanted you to know.”

There’s another long stretch of quiet. “Okay,” she finally says after blowing out a long breath. Her couch creaks as she sits back down. “I get it. You’re an adult. If you’re sure about this, if this iswhat you really want to do…then I’m not going to stand in your way.”

“Thank you.”

“And you’re still living downstairs?”

The truth hovers right there on the tip of my tongue—but I swallow it back. “Right.”

“Good. Probably smart to have that extra space.”

With everything I’m telling her, I’m not sure why I lie about this. Maybe because the marriage is easier to grasp: we’re connected only on paper, except in front of his family. Living together, the reality of navigating these tight spaces and darkened corners…I’m not sure I could describe it to her in a way that doesn’t make it sound more intimate than it actually is.

Because it isn’t. It’s just practical.

Even when Phoebe tells me she and Maya want to visit before the baby is born and I say I can’t wait, it dawns on me that I haven’t yet planned the opposite: visiting California. It didn’t cross my mind when I was packing up my life, and while I miss her and Maya and my parents, flights are expensive, and leaving and returning to this country might draw more questions at passport control than I’m prepared to answer. Another quandary for the expat crisis center of my brain.

After we hang up, I head across the hall to shower. We were talking for a while; Wouter must have left for work over an hour ago. I reach for the doorknob, push it open, and—

“Oh—”

“Sorry—”

“—shit—no—I’msorry!”

Wouter’s standing there shirtless, a towel wrapped around his hips, mouth open in horror. A razor dangles from one hand.

Fuck fuck fuck.I haven’t even been here a week, and already I’ve fallen into my worst nightmare.

The scene registers in breathless snapshots: wet hair and a fogged-up mirror. The tang of shaving cream in the air. His chest, still glistening from the shower, and a flash of ink on his left shoulder I can’t make out. That trail of hair I spied when he was working on the sink, dusted along his abdomen and disappearing somewhere beneath the towel.

Maybe most dangerous of all is the cherry-red shyness splashed across his face, like I’ve caught him doing something far less innocent than shaving. Our eyes lock for an instant longer than they should, our bodies frozen, neither of us lunging for the door.

He hitches the towel higher, tighter—but not before I get a glimpse of that suggestive V-line between his hips.

Finally, I snap back to my senses and shut the door, my heart still in my throat. It was only open for a few seconds, which was somehow enough time for me to map every detail of his half-naked body. Never let it be said that I’m not efficient.

Even though I can’t see him anymore, I cover my face on instinct. Give my forehead a few light bangs against the wood. “I thought you left for work,” I manage. “I’m so sorry. I shouldn’t have just barged in.”

I can still smell his shaving cream. His peppermint shampoo. Because we shower in the same place, I know exactly what’s in his soap, an off-white bottle with a French name. Notes of green tea, citrus, sage.

“I had a patient cancel this morning. Should have locked the door.” A cough. “Do you mind if—I didn’t bring a change of clothes into the bathroom with me.”

“Oh! Yeah. Of course. You’re safe!” I call out once I’m in the doorway to my room. George is sitting there on the floor, wagging his tail at me, so I toss him the pair of my socks he’s already almost chewed his way through. I have a feeling animals know exactlywhat ridiculous antics their humans are up to, and they are definitely always judging us. Lovingly.

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