Page 33 of What Happens in Amsterdam

The uneven apartment floor seems to tilt at a more precarious angle. The sun went down hours ago, but in the amber lamplight, I can see the faint freckles dotted across the bridge of his nose. His facial hair isn’t a single color but a whole spectrum, blond and reddish and that hint of silver. His sweet dog is asleep in his lap, and if I squint, there’s the Prinsengracht reflected in his glasses.God, his face is a painter’s dream.

Even if his family views me a fraction of the way he’s describing, I can’t help thinking they’ll be skeptical. They know he needs to be married to inherit this place—they could see right through us.

Something else hits me then. Wouter is single—obviously he wouldn’t be entering into this agreement with me if he weren’t—but I don’t want him to think he needs to stay that way.

“This whole thing,” I say, putting a little more space between us on the couch. “It isn’t going to infringe on your wild bachelor lifestyle? Because if you want to bring anyone home, I’m sure we could figure out an arrangement.”

Wouter looks horrified by this. “There’s no wild bachelor lifestyle, I assure you. If one of us feels the need for…companionship, we’ll sort that out.”

I hadn’t expected that he’d want to respect the sanctity of our marriage, at least not in that particular way, and yet I’m relieved that we won’t have to make this even more complicated.

“I should also ask what you’re comfortable with in terms of…showing affection in front of my family,” he says, a blush creeping back onto his cheeks. “Obviously, we’re not going to be, ah, mauling each other in front of them.”

If we’re really going to sell this, he’s right: we have to act like a couple so infatuated, they tied the knot after being back in each other’s lives for only a few weeks. Real couples have their own language, sentences they punctuate with a hand on a shoulder or lowerback. “I think I’m comfortable with just about anything? Short of mauling?” I say, phrasing it as a question because all of this is new territory. A nervous laugh slips out. “What about you?”

He stares down at his mug again. Waits a moment to speak. “When I’m in a relationship, I tend to be…a very touchy person. My family might notice if I’m not doing that with you. If I’m not…” A clearing of his throat, a dragging of his gaze back to mine. “…touching you.”

Oh.

“I don’t mind that,” I say as a new set of memories rushes back to me. A hand on my ankle while we studied in my room. Brushing my hair away so he could kiss the back of my neck. He seemed addicted to that physical contact, and I loved it so much that my next boyfriend told me I was being too clingy when I wanted to hold hands or nudged him to put his arm around me. “We did plenty of it when we were teenagers.”

If his voice sounds a little rougher the next time he speaks, surely it’s only because it’s so late in the evening. “What about you?” he asks. “How do you act in a relationship?”

“Your family won’t really know the difference, will they?”

“But you might.”

I consider this. “I haven’t had many serious relationships,” I admit, stifling a yawn with my elbow. “I’m not sure. Maybe…maybe it’ll all be new to me.”

What I don’t say: that I haven’t always liked the way I’ve acted in relationships, the closed-off girl so desperate to stay in control that she got her heart broken the moment she let someone in.

Now it’s Wouter’s turn to yawn, and we both agree to call it a night. He collects my mug and deposits both of them in the dishwasher, and once he’s done in the bathroom—I insist he go first—I go through every step of my skincare routine for the first time in months. When George makes to follow me into my room, I laughand urge him back toward Wouter, who shuts his door with a quiet click.

I guess I’m going to have to start acting, and that begins with pretending I am completely calm, getting in bed with my fake fiancé on the other side of the wall.

Ten

“So things with Wouter have…escalated,” I tell my sister a few mornings later.

Phoebe’s half laugh manages to communicate both concern and intrigue. “Elaborate.”

With the phone pressed to my ear, I rummage through a drawer for a pair of sweatpants. Fortunately, my sister’s a night owl; these early conversations are becoming as much a part of my routine as hearing the front door open and shut every day at precisely seven thirty, with Wouter’s whisperedbraaf, braaf—good boy—to George as they trot outside for a walk. I’m always hovering on that dreamlike edge before they come back inside, listening for the sound of him pouring food into a bowl. The jingle of George’s collar, a mug of tea being placed on the counter. A few more hushed words in Dutch to his dog before Wouter leaves for work. All of it so quiet, and even so, he messaged me the first morning:I hope we didn’t wake you up.

What I wanted to say: that it’s the best way I’ve woken up in years.

“You cannot tell a soul,” I say to Phoebe. “Other than Maya, because I assume you tell her everything anyway.”

“Correct. Proceed.”

Once I tell her, my Amsterdam life will collide with my American one, which feels, if mildly terrifying, like the necessary next step. I trust her implicitly; I know she won’t tell our parents. And I can’t fathom sharing this with anyone else—certainly not with the friends who’ve barely checked in since I left.

I’ve never been able to keep secrets from Phoebe for very long. She knew about my crush on Wouter even before I admitted it to myself, and I texted her about our first kiss minutes after I left his room. Right before I was hospitalized, those blurry few weeks in my mid-twenties I try not to think about, she was the first to gently suggest that I talk to someone.

No matter what I’m going through, she’s endlessly supportive, with an underlying sense of sisterly worry.

“You know that startup sponsored my work visa, and I can’t be here longer than ninety days without it.” Somewhere in the low eighties now. “But there’s actually an easy solution, and it’s that I’m—well, we—Wouter and I—we’re going to get married.” My mouth trips over the words. I take a steadying breath, bracing myself for her reaction. “So I can stay in the country, and so he can inherit the building his family owns. We’re obviously not in a relationship or anything—it’s just for the visa. And by the time we get divorced, I’ll be much more settled and we can both just…move on with our lives.”

Those words,get divorced—I’m not sure anyone’s ever said them as casually as I just did.

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