Page 73 of What Happens in Amsterdam

The sales guy looks thoroughly perplexed, but he just shrugs with a sense of finality. “I suppose it’s less likely to be stolen.”

—

“Okay, little devil,” Wouter sayswhen we get to Vondelpark, Amsterdam’s largest park. “Show me what you got.”

Before we left the bike shop, I had a basket added to the front, and while it doesn’t satisfy my pastel Dutch daydream, I don’t feel like I’m losing control with my feet on the pedals. My demon bike feels sturdy. Reliable.

In the early afternoon, the park is full of people enjoying the rare springtime sun, even if my weather app warns me it might rain later. As soon as it hits sixty-eight degrees—twenty degrees Celsius—everyone seems to rush outside, determined to get their vitamin D before it’s gone. A few herons, those statuesque birds, dot the sides of a pond.

Once I hop on, it takes me a moment to gain full control of the handlebars, and I accidentally nudge Wouter’s bike with mine.

“And one more thing,” he says as I mumble asorry. “You’re not allowed to apologize.”

“What?”

“You’re learning. You don’t have to apologize for that.”

“Even if I crash through a shop window?”

“Nope.”

“Even if I topple headfirst into a hot dog truck and bring you down with me?”

“Unlikely, but nope.”

I start pedaling, wobbling a bit before I find my center of gravity. Every time we encounter a pack of people, I get too in my head, needing to get off the bike to go around them.

“Trust yourself,” he says when I hop back on. “I’ve seen you make that turn without people around—yes! Like that. Goed zo.” The pride in his voice sends a new kind of thrill down my spine. He wants me to be good at this—not just good but confident enough to do it on my own.

“I’ve been intimidated,” I admit after a few more minutes. I hate saying it. The first few years of my life were marked by so much weakness that I always felt I had to prove I was strong enough, healthy enough, game enough. “I think that crash maybe left a bigger psychological wound than a physical one, and I’ve had this mental block ever since.”

“I get it. When I was eight or nine, I hit a pole and flew off my bike, right onto the concrete. When my mom bandaged up my knees, I told her over and over that I was never getting back on a bike, and she just laughed. Because she knew there was nothing that could keep me from it—not in this country, not when that was how all my friends were getting around. And she was right. I was back on it the next day, scraped knees be damned.” He cups my handlebar. “But getting over the mental hurdle is the hardest part. You’re doing fantastic. Not to mention…” His voice drops an octave. “You look so fucking cute on that thing.”

“Ridiculous, you mean.”

“No,” he says, and tosses me a smirk as he speeds off.

After a few more laps, we take a break to grab some döner wraps from a food cart, and Wouter spreads out a picnic blanket he had tucked away in his backpack. The first tulips are poking up out of the ground, yellow and pink and red with white tips. The sky has turned gray, thick clouds threatening to yield to rain, but for now, we’re safe.

Mostly.

We got back from Bruges a few days ago, and the only reason I haven’t begged him to take me to bed is that I have a Dutch exam coming up. I’m relieved my interest in the language hasn’t faded. That I haven’t given up, tossed it to the side when I wasn’t instantly good at it.

Because I want this to work, I realize.Because I want to stay here. The closer I get to fluency—though I’m still many months away—the easier time I’ll have finding a job, even if that brings back the uncertainty of what Wouter and I will become once we’re divorced.

Do we simply…stay friends? Keep having casual sex?

Or is it that once we’ve each gotten what we need, his house and my visa, we’ll have no reason to remain in each other’s lives?

“There’s something I don’t understand,” I say once we’ve finished eating, trying to avoid a thought spiral, “and I’m hoping you can enlighten me. You’re obviously not terrible-looking—”

“Wow, thank you.”

“—and you have some decent qualities—”

“Stop, I’m blushing.”

I lean over to push against his arm, and with the way he’s grinning, it takes all my willpower to keep from tipping him completely over onto the blanket and climbing on top of him. “If you knew you had to be married to inherit the apartment—I mean…”

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