Page 41 of What Happens in Amsterdam

He lets out another low groan, one I’m worried I may have conjured through sheer desire—and that’s what makes me tremble back to my senses.

It’s too much. Too intimate.

“You—you can stop,” I say, the words shaky, and he instantly moves his hands away. “I think I’m good for now.”

I’m newly self-conscious as I lift myself from the table too quickly, my head spinning. Without looking, he passes me my T-shirt, and I’m so dazed that I put it on backward. Once it’s properly on and I give him the okay to turn around, his cheeks are pink with exertion.

The way that blush is spread across his face is downright sensual, as though he’s the one who’s been caught in the middle of a gasp. Sweat edges his hairline, and I picture him wrapped in that towel again, wondering if he blushes all the way down his neck. If I touched him the way he touched me, how hot his skin would be.

“How do you feel?” he asks.

Feverish. Trembling. My back, however, has never felt better. “Great,” I manage. “Thank you so much. You are…extremely good at what you do.” I reach for my scarf and jacket, feeling exposed in just a T-shirt, and grasp for a conversation topic that will throw cold water onto my indecent thoughts. “So. Friday’s the big day.”

Our appointment with city hall, more bureaucracy than romance, and thank god for that.

He nods. “And then I thought we could go to Culemborg tohave lunch with my family.” Now his voice is steadier. Cheerful, almost, as though to confirm everything we did in this office was just part of his job. He tugs his sleeves down his forearms to rebutton them, and I try not to think about those long muscles flexing as he hovered over me. “Everyone will be dying to meet my wife.”

Twelve

When I imagined getting married,I never had the clearest vision. I didn’t have dreams of long white dresses or flower arrangements, but I did picture a kind face at the end of the aisle. Someone who loved me.

I certainly didn’t picture the amount of paperwork involved, or that it would all be in Dutch.

The gemeente building, Amsterdam’s city hall, is a modern structure that looks out of place in a neighborhood of canal houses, all glass and concrete. We take our place in the waiting area, and because we’ll need two witnesses to sign the wedding certificate—who can be anyone at all—Wouter asks another couple if they wouldn’t mind stepping in.

I bury my hands in the sleeves of my cable-knit sweater, probably stretching them out past the point of no return.

Four. Everyone knows this is fake.

Seven.The police are on their way.

Eight.I’m going to waste away in a Dutch prison and bring eternal shame to my family.

It’s possible the therapist who taught me those exercises never accounted for this specific circumstance.

When it’s our turn, Wouter translates for me. A middle-aged woman gives us a restrained smile as she conducts the ceremony, and I have to remind myself she’s just doing her job, that she sees dozens of couples every week and can’t tell that we’re not madly in love.

The whole thing takes less than fifteen minutes, as anticlimactic as waiting in line at the DMV. The past month and a half tumbles through my head in a bizarre tableau. Moving across the world. Everything falling apart. Crashing into the man who was able to pick up some of the pieces.

Then there’s the form we have to sign declaring this isn’t a marriage of convenience. Standard procedure when a national is marrying a foreigner, the woman tells us, which only yanks my anxiety out of its hiding place. My chest is tight—either a symptom of an impending asthma attack or just the consequences of my actions coming back to bite me.

Marriage of convenience.

Schijnhuwelijk.

The Dutch even have a single word for it.

That’s exactly what this is. Marrying him is extremely fucking convenient for me, and yet seeing it in such plain words makes the illegality sink in.

“You all right?” Wouter asks.

I keep my voice low, hoping my shakiness looks like regular wedding jitters. “I didn’t expect there would literally be something we’d need to sign declaring this isn’t a marriage of convenience.”

He gives my hand a squeeze as though he knows I need not just the reassurance but some kind of anchor. “That’s the beauty of it, though,” he says. “We’ve been madly in love for the past ten years.”

If only, I think, and then I sign my name next to his.

Gefeliciteerd to us.

---