EIGHTEEN
ARSENY
After the first morning of waking up in Amsterdam, the days begin to blur and go by too fast. We mostly wake late, when light spills too brightly through the curtains. Caiden insists on coffee immediately, as though survival depends on it.
He talks more here, I’ve noticed. Not constantly, but freely.
Stories slip out of him without him thinking — small things about home, about training disasters, about people I have never met but begin to recognise through repetition.
I listen more than I speak, watching how his expressions shift when he forgets to guard them.
He laughs easily and what surprises me more than anything else is that I love him even more like this.
Despite the amount of talking.
We walk through the streets without a destination in mind. Streets fold into canals, canals into narrow bridges crowded with flowers and bicycles chained together in chaotic order. The air smells like water, bread, and smoke drifting from cafés that spill onto the pavement.
A man kisses another man outside a bakery while locking his bike.
Two women walk past holding hands, arguing softly about directions.
A couple sits on a bench sharing headphones, foreheads almost touching without hesitation, and the lack of reaction from everyone else still unsettles me slightly.
No tension or evaluation is happening. The absence of danger unsettles me almost as much as danger would.
Caiden notices my attention lingering and nudges my shoulder. “You’re staring,” he says, amused. I shake my head but say nothing. Explaining would require admitting how foreign this feels — a world where affection doesn’t demand secrecy or consequence.
Later, in yet another museum, neither of us truly understands. He stands beside me studying a painting with exaggerated seriousness before whispering, “I think it’s upside down.”
“It is abstract,” I reply.
“That means they forgot how to finish it,” he says, making me laugh out loud. The sound surprises both of us when it escapes.
We eat constantly in small cafés, street stalls, and places chosen at random because the windows look welcoming. Caiden insists on trying everything. I suspect half of it is purely to watch my reaction.
“You cannot judge an entire country’s cuisine based on one suspicious pastry,” he tells me after I decline a second bite of something aggressively sweet.
I say that I absolutely can while he grins at me like victory has been achieved regardless.
These moments accumulate quietly — sitting across from him while rain taps against glass, walking shoulder to shoulder along water that reflects the sky like polished metal, conversations that drift without purpose.
Nothing groundbreaking happens, and yet something fundamental shifts.
I begin imagining continuity. Not just visits or stolen time.
A real life.
The thought sneaks up on me cautiously, as if testing whether it will be rejected, but I don’t push it away.
On the third evening — or fourth; time has become unreliable — we wander around without a map until the streets thin and the canals widen. Lights shimmer across the water and are fractured by slow ripples.
A narrow bridge arches ahead of us, and we stop halfway across without discussion, leaning against the railing.
Boats move below us, their engines low and steady.
Caiden talks about something, but I find myself only half listening.
My attention drifts instead to the way his hands move when he speaks, the ease in his body, the complete absence of caution in how close he stands to me.
No one here knows us.
No one cares.
People passing behind us are having conversations in languages I don’t recognise. Not a single person is paying attention to us. Standing here on this little bridge, I realise the danger exists elsewhere. It always has.
Before I fully understand it myself, I reach for him. My hand closes around the front of his jacket, pulling him closer. He looks at me in surprise, his words stopping mid-sentence.
I hesitate only for a second, then I kiss him.
His breath catches in surprise first, then he leans into it, his hands settling at my waist as though this is the most natural thing in the world.
The city continues around us. No one stops, and no one reacts.
When I pull back, Caiden is staring at me like he is trying to understand something enormous.
“You—” he starts, then stops.
“Yes,” I say quietly.
A slow smile spreads across his face. It’s softer than anything I have seen from him before, and it melts me on the spot.
“You’re getting brave,” he murmurs.
“Perhaps,” I answer. But the truth is simpler. For one moment, I wanted the world to see him with me.
And for that single minute, the world didn’t care.
The final morning comes too quickly. Packing feels wrong, and Caiden moves more slowly than usual, watching me more than helping. Neither of us talks about what is approaching.
The airport is loud and impersonal. People move with purpose again, queues form, announcements echo overhead, and reality returns.
“This part’s stupid,” he mutters.
“I know, detka.” He shifts his weight, clearly fighting the urge to say something else. Eventually, instead, he settles for pulling me into a hug, and I allow it for longer than I normally would.
“Email me when you land,” he says.
“I will.” He pulls back and studies my face, searching for reassurance. I squeeze his shoulder, then turn and walk toward the gate before the hesitation becomes visible.
The plane lifts through low cloud, and Amsterdam shrinks beneath the wing — the canals becoming thin silver lines, and buildings dissolve into geometry.
I sit back with my hands folded loosely, listening to the steady roar of engines. Leaving Caiden feels different this time. We proved something here. That a life exists beyond secrecy and that proximity can feel ordinary instead of dangerous.
We proved happiness is not theoretical.
We have a future.
I close my eyes briefly, replaying the bridge — the absence of consequence, the ease of standing beside him openly.
This is no longer a fantasy, and it’s a problem I can solve.
Below, clouds stretch endlessly toward the horizon.
For the first time, the idea of leaving everything behind doesn’t feel like a loss.
It feels like direction. And when the aircraft turns east, carrying me back toward duty and expectation, I begin quietly planning how to make sure the next goodbye is the last.