Chapter Eight
Eight
I have to grip the bridge railing to make sure I don’t tumble into the water. The ground beneath me is buckling, the charming houses blurring together. Those mouthfuls of crooked teeth morphing into something sinister.
“Dani,” Wouter says, a touch of concern in his voice. His rare use of my nickname makes this sound serious, somehow the exact opposite of when anyone else uses my nickname. “Are you okay? Do you need your inhaler?”
He sounds far away, as though he’s speaking to me from somewhere deep underwater.
When I blink myself out of the daze, I’m surprised to discover I’m still standing. That the world is not, in fact, caving in on itself.
And then, just as he warned, I burst out laughing.
“I’m so sorry,” I say, swiping at my eyes. “Maybe that weed was stronger than we thought, because I think you just asked me to marry you? Or—I guess it wasn’t a question, but more of a statement?”
Wouter looks entirely too logical. “I’m not high. I only had one bite of that cake. I—I wanted to be able to look after you.” There’s an uncharacteristic pang as this settles in my stomach, this quiet bit of caretaking. “You need a way to stay in the country. Marriage to a Dutch citizen would certainly accomplish that.”
He says it so simply, as though it’s basic math. One plus one equals visa. He isn’t wrong, of course—except for the tiny inconvenient fact that a green-card marriage must be a crime here the same way it is in the US.
A green-card marriage . I didn’t know this was something that happened outside of movies from the mid-2000s, the kind where the unfairly attractive leads end up falling in love and no one gets in any real trouble from the government.
“Should it be more formal?” Wouter asks. “Do you want me to get down on one knee?”
The postcard-perfect scene in front of us turns claustrophobic. Dizzying. Suddenly I wonder whether I’ve recovered from jet lag after all, because it feels like I left all rational thought on another continent.
My brain focuses on all the wrong questions.
Should my ex-boyfriend and current landlord get down on one knee?
To propose?
To me ?
“I—no, you don’t have to.” With shaking hands, I fumble with a button on my jacket. My molecules are jittery, like someone stuck me in an electric socket and then hurled it into the sun. I probably won’t need caffeine anymore—Wouter van Leeuwen asking me to green-card marry him each morning would do the trick.
How did we go from tentative friendship to marriage proposal in just a few hours? What’s next—tomorrow we’re setting up a joint bank account? Adopting triplets?
He gestures to a bench at the edge of the canal, and I’m grateful because I may not be capable of standing much longer. “It wouldn’t be permanent,” he says once we’re seated. “But it would give you some time to figure out your next steps. It would only have to be on paper, of course, and in front of my family. Aside from that…no one would have to know.”
The way he’s talking about it…it sounds like something we could actually, legitimately do . For one reckless moment, I allow myself to consider it: the extra time to figure myself out. To explore. To travel.
To do whatever the “something big” is that everyone thought I was going to do all those years ago.
“Right. Your family,” I say, unable to believe I’m entertaining the idea. No. Not entertaining it. Just poking holes in his logic. “I’m sure they’d love the idea of you marrying some random American.”
“We could tell a convincing-enough story.” He runs a hand down his stubble, a streetlamp catching a few flecks of gray. “Maybe we kept in touch over the years, and as soon as we saw each other…all those feelings came back.
“And you’re not some random American,” he continues. “We have history.”
I let all of this hang between us. Try to absorb it.
Marriage. A ring on my finger and some kind of official document stating that we’re legally bound.
I’m dizzy again, leaning over to balance my elbows on my knees, chin in my palms. Deep breaths.
A boat pierces the stillness of the water, a group of people bundled up and drinking, singing along to a pop song blasting from their speakers. It’s a welcome distraction, and the sight of it tugs at something in my chest. Ever since I was a kid, I’ve loved being on the water. Ferry trips to Catalina Island that made the hours in the car more than worth it, summers at Santa Monica Beach and rushing into the waves as my parents yelled at me not to go too far but loving the spray of the ocean too much to stop.
Here I am, in a city that was quite literally pulled from the depths of the sea.
The truth is, I do want to stay here. I don’t know if I can go back home with the knowledge that I barely even fought for it.
I sit up straight again. “Then—and I’m not agreeing to it yet—there’s the whole issue of, you know, breaking the law.”
He bites down on his lip, turning sheepish. I wish it weren’t such an endearing look. Maybe it’s because he’s over six feet tall that this giant showing any amount of shyness has always made me soft.
“Actually…a friend of mine did it after university,” he says. “So I have a bit of secondhand experience. Her boyfriend was from Australia, and his student visa expired when he didn’t find a job after graduation. So they got married, then divorced a couple years later.”
“And they’re still together?”
The sheepishness turns to a grimace. “Well—they broke up before they got divorced—”
“Of course they did.”
“—but they stayed married until he could get a proper visa! And it would be much easier for us, since we’re not dating.” The breeze has pulled some of his hair across his forehead, and he reaches a hand up to push it back. “Even after they broke up, it was fairly drama free. No one’s going to be banging on our door, demanding proof that we’re really together.”
I lift my eyebrows at him. “Didn’t realize you’d become such a rule breaker in the past decade.”
He gives me a smirk to match my sarcasm. Nudges my knee with his, sending a shock of electricity up my spine. “Guess I’ve changed, too.”
I think back to his palm on my skin. That whisper of touch that now makes me wonder whether I’ve just been starved for human contact these past few weeks. Then I urge myself to stay rational in this thoroughly irrational situation. If I say yes, whatever glimmer of attraction I might have felt even an hour ago cannot become more than that. I’d have to douse those feelings in cold water—far more willpower than I ever had when he was living across the hall from me.
What he’s really offering here, with this proposal, is the gift of time . The ability to find the right job, to do all the exploring I want, to discover whether this place could truly become my home.
If I let feelings get in the way, I’m not sure I’d be able to forgive myself.
“You don’t have to decide now,” he says. “It’s just an idea. If you hate it, I’m not going to push you. I promise.”
Maybe I don’t actually hate it, though. “How long would we be doing this for? Hypothetically?”
He thinks for a moment. “A year? Enough for my grandmother to know that we’re serious. Just until the deed is transferred over to me and you have a steady job. And then we’d have a quick and simple divorce. No legal ties to each other, nothing uncomfortable.”
A year . I didn’t think far enough ahead to imagine myself living here long-term, but I certainly didn’t imagine I’d be fake married during that time.
“And I’d keep living downstairs?”
A blush tinges his cheeks. “It might make the most sense if we lived in the same apartment. To keep people from asking questions, since we’d need to put the same address on all our forms.”
“Right. Of course.”
“We wouldn’t have to—we wouldn’t be sleeping together,” he manages, the blush turning a deeper scarlet. “I mean, we wouldn’t be in the same bed. Obviously. You’d have the guest room.”
I want to make a joke about him being the tongue-tied one now, but the way he trips over his sentences drags forward the memory I’ve been trying the hardest to suppress.
The one that hurts the most, if only because I didn’t know how fleeting it was.
Once we started sneaking around, sex seemed like an inevitability. Neither of us had much experience beyond kissing, but keeping the relationship a secret made us even more desperate for each other when we were finally alone. I never found myself wondering, How far do I want this to go? From the beginning, I had simply wanted all of him. And even then I wasn’t sure it would be enough.
My friends had talked about how disappointing their first times were, and I’d prepared myself for it—that it wouldn’t be fireworks. That it would be awkward and messy and maybe wouldn’t even feel that great.
The thing was, most of those things were true.
And yet I loved every second of it.
My parents were gone for the weekend, and I lied that I was spending the night with a friend. Wouter and I cooked dinner together, the two of us laughing and blushing more than usual, even when I oversalted the pasta and he underseasoned the green beans. We lit too many candles and set off the smoke alarm— Why does this keep happening to us? —and I had to hop onto the table with a broom to turn it off.
Even with all those mishaps, I’d never felt so adult .
Then I led him into my room, and he kissed me up against the wall before we moved to my bed.
We’d figured it out together, how to make each other gasp, and here we were about to chart another brand-new first. I remember thinking I didn’t know wanting, true wanting, until that moment, Wouter hovering above me with his mouth on my collarbone.
“I’m nervous,” he whispered in that accent I adored. “I want it to be good for you.”
I burrowed as close as I could. “It already is.”
The way he looked at me afterward should have been too tender for how cynical I sometimes felt at my core. He toyed with a strand of my hair, fingers stroking up my bare back. “I love you,” he said against my forehead, and that ignited a whole new emotion. Three words I’d held close to my heart because I didn’t want to expose a too-soft piece of myself. “I love you, and I’m so scared of what’s going to happen when I leave.”
“So just don’t leave. Because I love you, too.” I kissed along his chest, where his skin was the warmest. His neck, where I could smell a hint of aftershave. “How do you say it in Dutch?”
“Ik hou van jou,” he said, and when I repeated it back to him, he held me tighter.
That love felt like a precious, delicate thing, like we were two kids let loose in an antiques shop with signs everywhere declaring DO NOT brEAK .
And yet: we broke.
“How do I know you’re not going to change your mind?” I ask him now. Because he did it once before, took something I thought was serious and turned it into I’m just not sure it’s going to work. I’m so sorry. Thanks for everything.
He swallows hard. “I think you’d have to trust me. I—I understand if you don’t.”
“I guess I just don’t get why you’d do this for me,” I say in a small voice, feeling both seventeen and thirty at once, wholly unprepared for any of this. “You’ve already helped me out so much. There aren’t any ex-girlfriends you’d prefer to ask? Or friends, even?”
He’s quiet for a moment, as though the thought never occurred to him. “This way, you get something out of it, too,” he says. “Nothing about our daily lives needs to change.”
“Except the fact that I’d be living with you.”
A half smile. “Except for that.”
“And you could charge whoever moves in downstairs full rent.”
I’m starting to get dizzy again, imagining this life, picturing how it might feel to be Wouter’s legal spouse. If we ever spent time with his family, we’d have to act married. Newlyweds head over fucking heels for each other.
And my own family…
If my parents found out I’d run away to Amsterdam and gotten married, they’d be on the next flight out of LAX, ready to drag me home and back to my senses. You’re not thinking clearly , they’d say. This isn’t like you .
Maybe that’s exactly why I should do it.
“I’m not really an impulsive person.” I’m not sure why I say it—a last-ditch effort at common sense?
His knee taps mine again. “You packed up your entire life and moved to a different continent. A country you’d never been to before.”
When he says it like that, I can’t help wondering if maybe there is some hidden bravery inside me, something he can see but I can’t. Maybe this is sheer idiocy, or maybe it’s just a means to an end. Either way, by the time we get divorced, he’ll own his building and I’ll have figured out what I’m doing with my life.
Quick and simple. Nothing uncomfortable, just like he said.
Inside my coat pocket, my fingertips graze a scrap of paper. I pull out the straw wrapper from an afternoon iced latte and give him a lift of my eyebrows as I pinch the ends together, tying them in a knot.
He’s grinning when I hand it over to him, and I can find his dimple even in the dark. I used to sketch that smile over and over, never able to do it justice. His lips would be too thin. Too crooked. Eventually I gave up and watched him draw me instead, with a focused intensity I was never sure I deserved.
His fingers shake as he reaches for my hand again. With his thumb, he traces the slope of a knuckle. Up and then back down, like he’s trying to soothe me or himself or maybe both of us. Promising, with those strokes of his finger, that this is a good decision.
“I always imagined I’d be a little more suave when I did this,” he whispers.
God , he’s nervous, even giving me this paper ring.
“You’re doing great,” I tell him, trying and failing to keep the tremor out of my voice. There’s a giddiness there, too, the feeling that comes with doing something that goes against all rational thought—and yet we’ve found a way to rationalize it.
If I went searching for a new version of myself in Amsterdam, I think I’ve found her.
“What do you say, Danika?” My name in his accent shouldn’t be this irresistible. His questions shouldn’t be this earnest. “Do you want to be impulsive with me?”
Somehow it’s the sweetest thing I’ve heard in a long, long time.
“Yes.” The word is trapped inside a laugh, a tiny, incredulous thing. He slides the wrapper ring onto my finger so carefully that for a moment, I can convince myself it’s made of gold. “Yes, I do.”