Page 24 of What Happens in Amsterdam

“That’s really lovely,” I say, meaning it.

He asks about Phoebe’s bookstore, and I tell him it’s the cutest little oasis in Pasadena: bright colors, beanbag chairs, bookish products from local artists. “You and your sister, Roos, were close, too,” I say, trying to pronounce her name the way he taught me to, notRosebutRohss, with a rolledR. “You still are?”

He nods. “She lives near Vondelpark, only a short bike ride away. Works in marketing. We probably see each other once a week, although I’m not sure how much of that is her wanting to spend time with George.” When I make a pleading face at this, he laughs and says, “You’ll meet him, I promise! Anything else to help me update my Danika Dorfman file?”

“There’s a whole file?”

“A whole cabinet, even.” Then he clears his throat. “You said you broke up with someone right before you left? If it’s okay to ask about.”

“Sure. Yeah.” I tighten my hand on my purse strap. “My ex, Jace. We were together for about a year, and I thought we were going to move in together…until I found out he was cheating. Such a cliché, it’s embarrassing.”

But there’s a hard slant to Wouter’s brow. “You shouldn’t be embarrassed—you didn’t do anything wrong. I hopehe’sembarrassed.”

“I’m not sure he is, but thank you.”

I’m hesitant to share any details that might make me seem immature, the way my friends were so quick to judge. Just like every other relationship, I made sure I was the one ending it. On my terms.

And maybe I went too far, but I only want Wouter to put the best version of me in that Danika Dorfman file.

We’re rebuilding something, the two of us, and I don’t want to dredge up the past. Even after today, there’s still plenty I don’t know about him: his past relationships and why they ended. Why he’s living alone in that beautiful house instead of with a partner.

If someone gave him a pencil, what he’d sketch.

Maybe I’d forgotten not just how handsome he is but howkind. My standards dropped so low over nearly a decade on the apps, and here he is, offering me a place to live and showing me around and putting his hand on my back to make sure I don’t stumble.

Before I got on that plane, I imagined Amsterdam as an escape. An adventure.

I never thought it might feel like trying to regain something I’d lost.

Again I feel that ache in my chest for the naive versions of ourselves who thought we’d be able to make a relationship work by sheer force of will and heady teenage desire, despite the thousands of miles between us. The fact that we’re in the same place again after all these years…well, it’s something that might make me believe in fate.

“I really like it here,” I say, gazing out at the water. At first it feels safer than looking at his face, but even this canal makes some new emotion take root in my stomach. “Three months feels like it could go by fast.”

“You’ll find something,” Wouter says, sounding more certain than I’ve ever felt about myself. His deep hazel eyes meet mine, so pure and focused behind his glasses. “I remember you always put your whole self into everything you did. I haven’t seen your work, but I have no doubts that you’re good at it. That startup wouldn’t have brought you over otherwise.”

“Maybe. Or I could do a hundred interviews but never make thefinal cut, or I could get let go again, or—” I’m so surprised by the waver in my voice that I have to take a moment to collect myself. But when I speak again, it’s still there. “This is going to sound stupid.”

“I promise you, it’s not.”

A shaky breath. “It wasn’t just my boyfriend cheating. After I found out, suddenly everything about my life seemed…wrong.”

How after years of casual relationships, I didn’t know I wanted something serious until it was over.

How I looked through my closet and realized I’d spent too much time in clothes that didn’t make me feel like myself, but I also didn’t know what “myself” was supposed to wear.

How despite being let go, I didn’t miss anything about the day-to-day work.

All these ways I thought I was supposed to act felt like some grand performance, one where everyone else had learned the choreography and I was stuck stumbling over the basic steps. I don’t know how else to vocalize it without exposing my deepest fear, the one about all my wasted potential.

I push my hands into my eyes, not wanting him to see me like this. Fragile.

“That doesn’t sound stupid,” he says softly. “If it makes you feel any better…I’m really glad you’re here.” Then, before I can linger on that: “And I don’t feel like I have my shit together, either.”

“I don’t know, the tool belt really communicated something else entirely.”

He cracks a smile at that.

“I think maybe I’d gotten so complacent in LA that I didn’t even realize I was unhappy. And now that I’m here, I have a chance to do things differently. Maybe that’s a drastic way of looking at it, and of course I miss my sister, and my parents, and burritos, but…I like it here. A lot. I—I’m not ready to leave.”

---