Chapter Four
Four
“And the amazing thing is that the floor is included at no extra cost,” Wouter says, completely straight-faced, after a run-through to document all the damage. There isn’t much: some of the hardwood floors are scuffed, some of the crown molding cracked. “But that’s an extra perk just for you. Don’t tell any of my future tenants.”
On the outside, this canal house looks like most of the others on the Prinsengracht—gorgeous, narrow, made of brick, and tipping forward just slightly—but inside, the space is bright and clean, with newer appliances and basic IKEA furniture. It was built in 1760, Wouter told me when we arrived, a year I could barely wrap my mind around, and his family’s owned it since the late nineteenth century.
Here in the city’s Grachtengordel—the canal belt—the facades of the buildings are UNESCO protected, with only interior renovations allowed. Even on the inside, plenty of the old-world charm remains: stained glass sliding doors separating the kitchen from the living room, a fireplace, tall street-level windows. Those windows are all over the city, and I can never stop myself from peering inside strangers’ homes. I don’t know how anyone can resist.
The combination washer-dryer may be under the bathroom sink—“we have to get creative with space here”—but even so, I’m grasping for reasons to say no.
I take a closer look at the stained glass doors. A ship is being tossed about the waves, serpentine swirls of blue and green. “This place really is a work of art.”
“Indeed, it’s very special.” There’s a clear reverence to the way he says it. I’ve always scoffed at men who baby their cars or their boats, but maybe I can appreciate taking pride in something beautiful, especially if it’s been in your family for this long. “My grandmother owns the house, but she doesn’t live in the city anymore. I’ve always hoped I’d inherit it one day and have the chance to make some improvements it desperately needs. You’ve probably noticed many of the houses here lean one way or another? Like a mouthful of crooked teeth.”
I nod, tugging my sweater tighter around myself. The heat hasn’t kicked on yet. “And it’s not, I don’t know, dangerous?”
“Nope. With the houses so close together, it’s almost like they’re all holding each other up, and the city is constantly surveying them to make sure they don’t need reinforcements. The leaning…” He heads over to the window, drums a knuckle against the glass. “Some of it is because the houses were built on wooden piles, and they become unstable when the wood starts to rot. And you see the hooks on those houses across the canal, sticking out from the roofs?”
It’s dark outside, but I can still make out the details with the help of a streetlamp.
“Most houses have steep, narrow stairs—including this one. Hundreds of years ago, it wasn’t realistic for people to carry their possessions or merchandise up the stairs, since a lot of these homes belonged to merchants who sold their goods on the ground level and lived up top. So those hooks were attached so they could use a—” He breaks off, brow furrowing. “Sorry, I only know the word in Dutch. Katrolsysteem,” he says, and makes two fists to mime the action.
“A pulley system?”
He nods. “Evidently not a term I’ve ever needed to know in English. They had a pulley system to bring their items up to the higher floors. And the houses were built to tip slightly forward so that they didn’t bang into the building on the way up.” When he turns back to me, I can still see the Prinsengracht reflected in his glasses. “Anyway. You didn’t ask for an architecture lesson.”
“I don’t mind. I promise you’re not mansplaining Amsterdam to me.” Thirteen years, and I’m still enamored by the way he talks about this place. He’s being much too nice, though, and I can’t understand why. “Seriously, the apartment is perfect. Beyond perfect.”
“And yet I can hear the hesitation.”
I blow out a breath, every grudge-holding cell in my body telling me this is a bad idea. “You don’t think it would be a little strange, me living here?”
He considers this. “It doesn’t have to be. We can be adults, right?”
“My aching lower back would say yes.”
“As would my thinning hair.”
I try not to laugh. I don’t want it to be this easy to fall back into conversation with him. Even when we tiptoed around our attraction, we never had trouble talking to each other. He’d wanted to see all the typical LA spots—Rodeo Drive and the Walk of Fame and Griffith Observatory—and my parents were always game to play tourist. But when it was just us, I designed my own itinerary.
“I have to warn you,” I told him once as I started up the car, about a month before our first kiss, “this isn’t going to be very culturally significant.”
“As long as we can get In-N-Out afterward.”
“That’s a given. A cultural touchstone,” I said. “What are you going to do when you get back to Amsterdam and you can’t get a double-double?”
“Open my own franchise, obviously,” he said. “It’s time they expanded to Europe.”
“You’ll be an artist –slash –entrepreneur –slash –fry cook.” I gave him a lift of my eyebrows. “Once you figure out how to make potatoes without burning them to a crisp.”
He let out an exaggerated groan. “That was one time. One time. ” He’d tried to cook dinner for my family, and it had ended in disaster: black smoke curling from the oven, the fire alarm blaring. In all fairness, I’d been distracting him, sitting on the kitchen counter and playing every Top 40 hit from the past five years to see which ones he knew. He kept shaking his head, laughing, telling me that the Netherlands was not in the dark ages and people still listened to Taylor Swift.
That night I drove us to Sunken City, the site of a nearly century-old landslide that had dragged houses into the ocean and left the neighborhood abandoned. My parents wouldn’t have chosen it as one of their daytime destinations, and at night it verged on spooky, the air punctuated by coyote howls. With all the graffiti and jagged ruins, it screamed inspiration.
The risk of hopping the fence past the NO TRESPASSING signs was more than worth it when he turned to me as we sat on a rock, his mouth close to my ear. “You’re the best tour guide,” he said, and despite the warm autumn evening, I shivered all the way home.
This new version of him leans a hip against the kitchen counter, cream granite flecked with gray. Under the bright overhead lighting instead of the dim café, his eyes turn a glowing bronze. “You’d be helping me out, too. Now I don’t have to take a chance on a complete stranger.”
“Still, thank you. This is more than generous.”
I watch him bite down on his lower lip. “I wasn’t generous back then?”
The question is innocent enough, and yet I wrench my gaze away from his mouth, my cheeks burning with the memories.
He was. He always was.
“Maybe you could think of it as a peace offering,” he continues. “A fresh start.”
I don’t hate the sound of a fresh start, especially since that’s the refrain I’ve had in my head since I decided to leave LA.
Until it hits me, what this apartment might actually be.
Not just a peace offering—but an attempt to buy my forgiveness.
The realization is tinged with shame, a familiar emotion when it comes to Wouter. I’d been so embarrassed when it ended, thinking he was a once-in-a-lifetime kind of love. This is the man who broke my heart—and now I’m the one who needs his help.
But fuck , I really want this apartment.
I wander through the living room, lingering on a framed print where a swimming pool takes up nearly the whole canvas. Upon closer look, the figures in the pool aren’t people but dogs. A dachshund lounges on an inflatable hot dog, and a human man sits nearby in a lifeguard tower. “I like this. Who’s the artist?”
He shakes his head. “I got it in some local shop or another—I don’t remember, I’m sorry.”
“You’re not still into art?”
It’s the oddest thing to have known him so intimately when we were seventeen and not know the answer to this question. I get a flash of his palms grayed with charcoal, a smudge of paint on his thumbnail. There’s not as much creativity in UX design as I’d like, especially when you’re working for massive corporations. I hoped this startup would change that—and maybe it still could. This apartment makes me want to be optimistic.
Wouter joins me in front of the painting. I can sense his warmth next to me, his much taller frame; that barrier we once crossed so frequently might as well be made out of concrete now. We are washing dishes in my family’s kitchen, splashing each other with suds, giggling but never touching. A domestic flirtation.
“I’m afraid I don’t have as much time for it as I used to,” he says.
“So the whole European work-life balance is a myth.”
A hard crease of a smile as he leans against the wall. Broad shoulders swathed in green corduroy. I have to tilt my head upward to keep making eye contact, and suddenly I think the heat might be working just fine. “Not a myth. I guess I just have other hobbies,” he says. “What about you? Still a…what did you call it back then?”
He absolutely knows, and he’s just waiting for me to say it.
“A basic art bitch,” I say, crossing my arms. “Yes, I am, and proud of it.” I have a deep and abiding love for Monet’s Water Lilies , Klimt’s The Kiss , all of Degas’s ballerinas. I even have a trio of Van Gogh’s sunflowers tattooed on my hip. They might be some of the most commercialized pieces of art in history, and that’s because they’re magnificent. Every time I look at them, I see something new. “I had a massive Monet landscape in my living room in Burbank—beautiful.”
“Oh, I’m sure it was.”
If he were anyone else, I’d lean forward and swat his arm. The sleeve of his corduroy shirt looks soft. Inviting. But even if we can joke around like this, we are not close. “There’s a reason they’re so popular! As I’m sure I told you a thousand times.”
He’s laughing now, the dimple back. “I don’t dislike them. There’s just much more unique stuff out there.”
This genuine laughter gives me such an endorphin rush that I can’t help joining in—until he pushes back his hair with his left hand and I find myself searching for a ring.
Out of simple curiosity.
“So. Uh. Are you…” The sentence trails off, my face burning once again. “…seeing anyone?” I head for the kitchen and open up the cupboard—my cupboard, I suppose—for a glass of water.
“Ah—no, I’m not. And you?”
“Ended a relationship a few weeks before I left.” I take a sip. Clear my throat.
The relationship had been fun at first, casual sex that became casual dinner dates and then a not-so-casual meeting of his parents. Jace was the kind of guy who swept effortlessly through the office, friendly with everyone, as confident in a one-on-one meeting as he was giving a presentation in front of a hundred people. When he said he wanted to settle down, I believed him. For eleven whole months, I believed him.
Until one of my sister’s friends matched with him on Tinder.
“I just—didn’t want to run into your wife or something in the hall and make anything awkward.”
“No risk of that,” he confirms, following me into the kitchen.
“Great. I mean, not great that you’re single, unless of course you prefer being single, in which case, more power to you—but great in the sense of…now I know!” Surely some people are completely chill in front of their exes. I am not one of them.
Wouter just looks at me, and I can tell he’s biting the inside of his cheek, trying not to laugh.
“You’re making it worse,” I say with a groan.
“You still get tongue-tied when you think you’ve said the wrong thing.”
He’s right. There was the time early in our relationship when I asked if he’d been with any other girls. Before he could answer, I rushed to tell him it didn’t matter if he had—though I was relieved when he confirmed we had the same level of experience. And the time I told him I liked his accent, then worried maybe that was insensitive, and was I somehow problematic for saying it? So I overcorrected and wound up babbling about all the English words I’d ever mispronounced, until he cut me off and said he liked my accent, too.
“That’s me.” I place the glass on the counter and hold out my arms. “Between this and my taste in art—exactly the same as I was at seventeen.”
His eyes rove downward from my face, taking me in almost the same way he did when we first met. Except this time, I feel the weight of his gaze more than I should. I caught a glimpse of myself when he showed me the bathroom earlier, my cheeks flushed from the alcohol and the cold. I looked dazed but hopeful. Happy, in a temporary kind of way.
“No,” he says, a new roughness to his voice. “You’ve definitely changed.”
Then he rubs his fingertips together, that telltale nervous habit. If he doesn’t make as much art as he used to, he should probably reconsider that—his hands are clearly begging for it.
You’ve definitely changed . He might have meant it in a positive way, but the longer it sits between us, the heavier it is. Maybe only in the obvious physical ways, because sometimes I fear I haven’t changed at all. This man, though—aside from his nervous habits, he has changed in more ways than I can fathom.
Once upon a time, Wouter van Leeuwen really knew me, more than anyone outside my family ever has. I gave him so much of myself, the parts I liked and the ones I was still trying to understand, the ones I was shy about and the ones I wasn’t. And I thought that meant we would last.
An apartment and I was an idiot can’t bridge the thirteen-year gap. What would a fresh start truly mean? That we erase all our history and move on? Even if I’d love a familiar face in the vastness of a new country, starting over isn’t that easy.
“I want you to know,” I start, choosing my words carefully, “that you don’t have to babysit me here. Maybe we knew each other in a past life, but we don’t have to make this complicated. You’ll be the landlord, and I’ll be the tenant. That’s it. We don’t—we’re not going to be friends or anything.”
His jaw tenses, that wrinkle between his brows making another appearance. For a second, I’m worried I was too mean and he’ll snatch away this beautiful apartment before I’ve had the chance to unpack a single sweater.
Then he collects himself, features sliding back into neutral. “A past life,” he repeats. Now his voice is purely professional. Distant. “Understood. I’ll send you the rental contract tonight.”
“Oh—okay. Great.” I swallow, unsure why his words are hitting me like ice when I felt so certain I needed to make some rules. “I should go finish packing and bring my stuff over.”
He reaches into his pocket and passes me the keys. “Of course. You want any help?” Then he pauses. Taps his chin. “Actually—and I could be wrong—but I don’t think that’s an official landlord duty. Forgive me for asking.” The venom in his voice is subtle, but it’s there.
“No, no. You’ve done plenty. Really.” And now I would like to disappear.
I guess it could be a form of revenge, my shutting him down like this, but that wasn’t ever something I wanted when it came to him. I only wanted answers.
I walk with him back down the hall, past the artwork he doesn’t remember, and then I struggle with the doorknob, hating that I need his help yet again.
“Old houses,” he explains, reaching for it. His hand brushes my wrist, and because I am too stupid to realize he’s trying to show me how to open it, his fingers curve around mine for a moment. “You just have to give it a good yank.”
Heat attacks my cheeks with such fervor, he might as well have suggested we go at it in front of the street-facing window. And yet he seems wholly unfazed by his word choice. I step backward to give him space, his body shifting in front of mine so he can do all the good yanking he needs.
This man was my entire sexual awakening, every first sigh and first gasp he held in the palm of his hand.
And I need to do my best to forget all of that if he’s going to be living above me.
The door swings open on a creak. “Fijne avond, Danika,” he says, and then he leaves me alone in my new apartment.