Page 50 of What Happens in Amsterdam

“Nah, you’re not boring. You’re conning the Dutch government. If that’s not badass, I don’t know what is.”

Though he allows a small smile at this, his jaw ticks with what I think might be anger toward this man he’s never met. “What a piece of shit. You deserved so much better.”

“Yeah, well. Half-true.”

“You don’t believe that?”

“I told you,” I say, wondering why my voice sounds thinner than it did a second ago, “I haven’t done serious relationships. Clearly I’m not cut out for them.”

We’re standing too close, and I’m sure it’s only because I wantedto keep this conversation both quiet and private, and he needed to be able to hear me. I can see his strawberry lashes almost brushing the lenses of his glasses. And there’s the scent of his soap again, invading my brain.

I back away. Clear my throat. “Besides,” I say, with a flutter of my ring finger, “I’m married now. So I’m off the market.”

We continue making our way through the museum. Not everything is designed to be aesthetically pleasing, and I like that—that messy, rebellious art has a home here. The abstract shapes and the realistic figures, the blocky text and the canvases that look like they’re dripping paint. Wouter spends a while in front of a piece that features a man in gray scale pulling back a curtain to reveal a brightly colored wall of graffitied words bursting to get free.

“I was reading about this one online,” I say, and without even needing to glance at the description: “Martin Whatson, Norwegian artist. He has a whole series of work like this, where he mimics the urban environment in order to contrast it with the vibrant nature of street art.” A sigh slips out. “If only I could get a job spouting obscure facts about Amsterdam.”

“The job search isn’t as fruitful as you’d like?”

I consider this. Are there jobs out there that suit my skill set? Sure. Does a single one of them fill me with anything but dread? That’s a harder question to answer.

“I had a phone interview a couple days ago.” A big tech company based in the US that also has offices in Amsterdam. Maybe I was out of practice, but I stumbled my way through basic questions and ended the call uncertain how I’d ever been hired for anything. “Not sure how well it went.”

“But you’re still looking,” he says, phrasing it not as a question but as a declarative statement. I’m still looking, because that’s what I’m supposed to be doing. The reason he married me.

“Of course. I don’t know, maybe I’m just burned out.” I say this half as a joke, so I’m surprised when he responds with pure seriousness.

“You don’t have to brush it off like that. Burnout is very real,” he says. “Here we even have burnout leave.”

I’ve never considered the word before, because the only extended time I ever took off from work was when I checked myself into the hospital. What I don’t tell him is that sometimes I feel rudderless, that it’s almost a scary amount of freedom I have here. There’s nothing but a marriage certificate to catch me if I fall.

“I can tell UX design isn’t your life’s great passion,” he continues. “You used to enjoy everything, though. You tried it all. I liked that about you, that openness you had.”

The words scrape against my skin like gravel. Because maybe he liked that about me for a short time, but once he got back to Amsterdam, he realized that what he liked didn’t matter or that he’d never liked it all that much in the first place.

I have to keep reminding myself he’s no longer the carefree teenager who pushed me up against the wall to kiss me when my parents were downstairs, who showed me sketches of myself I couldn’t believe could be that beautiful.

It’s deeply unfair that all my memories of him are tender, hot, or both.

“When I studied it, I didn’t imagine spending the next forty years doing it,” I say. “For a while I thought I’d study something related to art, but it didn’t feel practical. I mean, I still love museums, and I’ve always spent too much time deciding what to put on my walls, but I never let myself justplaythe way I used to. Maybe we both thought that we had to give it up and get serious about something else.”

“I miss that.” His voice is so soft, the draft in this warehouse could carry it away. “The playing. The day you moved in and askedabout art and I said I had other hobbies…I went upstairs and racked my brain, wondering what other hobbies there really were. When we went to Van Gogh, I realized I hadn’t been to a museum in years. Aside from walking George and getting drinks with friends, the occasional football match…it’s possible I’ve been in a rut.”

I wish that didn’t make my heart ache—it would be so much easier if it didn’t. He had been so starry-eyed and hopeful when I knew him, and the truth is that he returned to what I thought was this fairy-tale country and retreated entirely into himself. Spent his twenties taking care of his father, and when he finally came up for air, the grief must have been the heaviest weight.

Without overthinking, I place my fingertips on his sleeve, give him a quick brush of my thumb. This time, unlike in his mother’s guest room, he doesn’t pull away. “Maybe we could have some hobbies together,” I offer, because I’ve certainly never been a stranger to them. Hobbies are safe. Hobbies are platonic. “We could make art without caring about whether it’s good or not.”

He smiles at this. “I think I’d really like that.” Then he clears his throat, and I drop my hand. “Can I ask you something? I have this work conference next weekend in Bruges—Belgium. It’s only a few hours away by train. I was considering canceling, but then I was thinking, you haven’t been, and Roos is always begging to watch George more often because she’s convinced, probably correctly, that she’s his favorite person. Though you might be giving her a run for her money. And it’s a beautiful city…” Now he’s the one tongue-tied, whipping off his glasses to rub them against his shirt as though hoping it’ll distract from his rambling. And it does, if only because of how soft his face looks without them. “Would you want to come with me?”

“Come…with you? To Belgium? For a physiotherapy conference?” The words rush out before I can overanalyze them. “Absolutely, yes. Let’s go to Belgium.”

“Great,” he says, sounding relieved. “I really think you’ll love it.”

His gaze holds mine a beat too long while my pulse falls into an uncertain rhythm. I try not to think about the constellations I could draw in his pattern of freckles, or how much I like the faint lines on his face he didn’t have at seventeen, the ones with stories I haven’t been around to hear.

There might be something else between us, something either unresolved or wholly new. In this moment, I’m not sure I can tell the difference.

I’m not sure I want to.

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