Page 98 of What Happens in Amsterdam

“And what aboutyou?” she asks. “Any boat-related news?”

“My final interview was yesterday.” I had to give a tour to the owner of the company and a few other higher-ups, and I felt as confident about it as I could. “I should hear back soon.”

She holds up both hands, crossing her fingers.

As I’m leaving Roos’s apartment, I get a message from Wouter.Okay if I stop by to pick up a few things?

My heart thuds in my chest, because as much as I want to see him, I don’t want it to be an ambush.Give me an hour, I write back, and then I race home.

When I get there, I try to tidy up a little before realizing we’ve made much bigger messes together. Then I grab the familiar yellow stack from his nightstand and head into the bathroom.

My bottle of antidepressants is right there on the counter. I don’t bother putting them away, the way I would have at the beginning, when I was overly concerned with him having an image of me I thought was the right one.

Now I only want the real one.

I stick a Post-it note in the center of the mirror, where he can’t miss it.

Locals-Only Amsterdam Tour Tomorrow

10 a.m. sharp

Our first meeting place

—

All that night and thenext morning, I worry he won’t show up. It’s not a significant intersection by any means, and I even panicked that maybe he wouldn’t remember where it was.

The sight of him makes the breath stall in my lungs. This is springtime Wouter, almost summer, and even if we’ve had just as many gray days as clear ones lately, his wind-ruffled hair looks like it’s been touched by sunshine more often than not. A deep green jacket, a heather-gray V-neck, every part of him looking softly touchable.

And the band of gold around his finger, catching the light.

“Hi,” I say when he’s finally in earshot.

“Hi.” The sound of his voice, that single syllable,threatens to make my knees buckle. “This is where the tour starts? I see I’m the only one here…”

I have to bite back a smile. “Ah, this is actually a private tour. Did you not read the brochure? Costswaymore than a regular tour, but the benefit is that you get some quality one-on-one time with the guide.”

“Sounds worth it to me.”

“How…have you been?” I ask, awkwardly jamming my hands in the pockets of my jeans. “You’ve been commuting in to see your patients?”

He nods. “I don’t mind it. George has fully bonded with my grandmother, though. I’m not sure I’m going to be able to drag him back.”

I imagine Wouter waking up in a room that’s only half his, desperate to tell him I’ve missed not just a warm body next to me in bed buthiswarmth.

“Well. This first location is a really crucial one, because it’s where everything began.” The pavement isn’t wet and the sun is bright in the sky, but there’s the spot he locked our bikes, and on the next street, the café he took me to. “Or, depending on how you look at it, how everything beganagain. This is where I crashed my bike into my ex-boyfriend, because the bike was too tall for me and I didn’t know how to properly ride it, and I was quite frankly not paying as much attention as I should have. And you wouldn’t believe how shocked I was to see him again after thirteen years—because of the way he broke up with me when we were seventeen.”

“Sounds like a real asshole.”

“Yeah, well. Everyone’s capable of growth,” I say. “Keep up, we have a lot to cover.”

I swear I hear a laugh as we continue walking.

“This is the place where my husband proposed to me.” I wave my arm with a flourish. “It may look like any other canal, but if you look closer, you’ll see that this one actually had to be completely rebuilt recently, just because of the sheer amount of drama that occurred on it.”

“You know, I read about that,” he says, craning his neck to see over the bridge. “I thought it was an urban legend.”

“Nope. One hundred percent real.”

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