What Happens in Amsterdam

Chapter Nine

Nine

The first time we lived together, there were rules. Foreign exchange students had to attend school every day and help out with chores around the house. They weren’t allowed to drink, drive, or get a job, and Wouter’s program strongly discouraged dating.

“We’re supposed to treat him like a member of the family,” my mother said. “Not like a guest.”

Wouter became our newest family member two weeks before junior year started. And I was completely unprepared.

In the beginning, we were overly polite. My mother brought out a stack of board games we hadn’t played in years, and my father tried to incorporate every major food group into our dinners. Then slowly, we let out the real Dorfmans, who weren’t bad by any means—just a little less polished. We traded Monopoly for Netflix, grain bowls for pizza night. We stopped brushing our hair before going downstairs to breakfast.

I was used to sharing a bathroom with my sister, but now her familiar scents and sprays had been replaced with all these products that signaled Very Boy, Much Man. The guys I sat next to in class were always overcologned and underwhelming. Observing one in his natural habitat—or as natural as it could be, an ocean away from home—turned me into a scientist. Every discovery unstitched me a little more: body wash with a label in Dutch, aftershave with a hint of cloves that made me dizzy in a way I instantly loved. Then there were the clothes Wouter wore just to lounge around in, a pair of soft gray sweatpants and a faded Ajax T-shirt for Amsterdam’s football team. A smiley face drawn in the condensation on the shower glass, and later, a heart.

Here we are thirteen years later, about to share another bathroom.

“Third home’s the charm,” I say as I haul my backpack up the steepest, narrowest flight of stairs I’ve ever seen. I’ll never make fun of anyone on House Hunters International again.

With far too much ease, Wouter nudges my suitcases over the threshold. A tiny dog clambers toward us the moment the door opens, nails clacking on the hardwood floor. He’s deep brown with long tufts of hair on his head and chin and above his eyes, maybe a dachshund mixed with a terrier, absolutely adorable. His tail goes wild as I kneel to try to pet him, but he’s leaping around too quickly to catch, such a flurry of activity that I can barely take in the apartment. He wants love from his human, but he’s also out-of-his-mind delighted that Wouter’s brought him a new friend.

The dog zips from the hall over to the living room, does a lap, and races right back to us. And again. He carries something into the hall and drops it at my feet—a sock?

“Are you calm enough for a proper introduction?” Wouter says, and the dog seems to understand exactly what’s being asked of him, plopping down on the floor and tilting his head. “Danika, this is George Costanza. George, this is Danika.”

“Sorry, your dog is named…”

“George Costanza. After the character from—”

“ Seinfeld . I know.”

We spent so much time watching old Seinfeld episodes when he lived with us, my parents on the sectional, Phoebe curled up in the armchair, Wouter and I cushioned on the floor with a couple of pillows. A wholesome family activity, something all of us could do together. Wouter found the show hilarious in its Americanness. We made our way through two and a half seasons, shocked by the number of plotlines that could be resolved with the simple presence of a cell phone.

All these years later, he named his dog after a character from a show that had to—in some small way—remind him of me .

“Some of my fondest memories from the States,” Wouter says, bending to pick up George and giving him a kiss on the head. “Guess I have a weakness for American sitcoms.”

I needed only a couple days to pack everything up again, during which time I replayed our bridge conversation over and over. I spent hours researching green-card marriage horror stories, convincing myself we could really do this without getting caught. I half expected he’d get cold feet and I’d wake up to a message asking if we could talk. More than once, my own fingertips hovered over his name on my phone, debating the same thing.

And every time, I stopped myself.

Now that I’m in his home, I realize I didn’t spend enough time contemplating the reality of not just marrying Wouter van Leeuwen but living with him, sharing this space from morning until night, seven days a week. I’ve only ever lived with my family, my sister, and a handful of female roommates. Never alone with a man—and the rational assumption was that if and when I did, it would be out of love, not pragmatism.

This man is about to become your husband , I think as he explains that George is around seven or eight, a rescue brought over from Hungary a few years ago. The dog’s little pink tongue darts out to lick Wouter’s cheek. I squeeze my eyes shut for a moment. Four. Seven. Eight. The breathing technique that always sounded much too simple to work, and I’m still surprised when it releases some of the anxiety from my body.

Four. You’re not going to get caught.

Seven. It’s not permanent.

Eight. This is the best option.

It’s not an instant cure for every spiraling thought, but at least I can breathe a bit easier.

When I imagined his apartment, I expected it to be covered with art. The reality is that it’s lovely if a little stark, with modern built-in shelves, a coffee table with a single book on it, a blanketed bench by the windows with that unbelievable canal view that looks like the perfect reading nook. A basket of dog toys in one corner, though Wouter says George was probably never socialized as a puppy and doesn’t understand the meaning of fetch.

“The only things he ever plays with are my socks, so you might want to keep a close eye on yours if you don’t want holes in them.”

There’s a kitchen table that seems used mostly to store mail, a couple barstools at the counter, a balcony. Some of the original details remain, like the tiled fireplace and those cursed stairs, but aside from a few family photos, there’s nothing that screams this is where Wouter grew up.

Then something becomes apparent that I should have noticed right away.

“Wait, is the floor…”

Wouter turns sheepish, rubbing at the back of his neck. “It’s not level, yes. The house is tilting.” He grabs a pen from the kitchen table, sets it down on the floor. Both of us crane our necks as it slowly starts rolling.

“I didn’t notice it downstairs,” I say.

“It’s more pronounced on the upper floors. We need to level it off, but it’s not cheap.” Another shrug. “My parents always loved the floors, so we never got around to fixing them, although the angle wasn’t quite as pronounced back then.” He pats one of the walls. “I painted a couple years ago, but that was the last major change I made. I love this place, though. Maybe too much. Almost makes me feel guilty that I can’t devote more time or money, but it feels like a separate full-time job.”

I linger on one of the photos hanging above the sofa. Wouter and his parents, sister, and grandparents at what must have been his high school graduation. They’re posed in front of this apartment, the Dutch flag behind them with a backpack hanging from it—a Netherlands tradition. His sister’s grin is the widest; she’s hugging her brother like he’s her favorite person in the world. His father has his arm around his mother, his grandmother— the grandmother, the one I’m going to have to impress—next to her. The boy in this photo is so close to the Wouter I knew. Ganglier, maybe a bit more self-conscious, with the kind of thick-framed glasses that were in style back then, contrasted with the thin circular frames he wears now.

The house is almost three hundred years old. It’s staggering to imagine all the people who lived here before the Van Leeuwens, all the milestones and heartbreaks they endured within these walls.

Wouter leads me down the hall, tapping on the first door. “My bedroom,” he says, and then in front of the second, “and yours. Hopefully it’s okay?”

I peek inside the tidy minimalist space, dropping my backpack on the bed while Wouter leans in the doorway, as though now that he’s christened it mine, he needs permission to come inside. The duvet is a neutral paisley pattern, and everything else is white: lamp, sliding wardrobe doors, slim dresser.

And there’s a small print of Van Gogh’s sunflowers on the wall.

“Did you—was that here before?” I ask, somehow already knowing the answer.

He bites back a sheepish smile. Runs a hand through his hair. “Wanted to make it feel…a bit more like home for you.”

“It’s perfect, truly. Thank you.” Then I wander into the bathroom across the hall and let out a bewildered laugh, grateful to move past the way that Van Gogh print tugged at my chest. “Still with the tiny sinks with cold water?”

“What’s wrong with our tiny sinks?”

“Why are they that small?” I ask. “And what if you have big hands?”

Now he’s laughing too, eyes turning bright behind his glasses. “That’s just how it is here,” he says. “Maybe your American sinks are too big.”

“That was what you took away from your life-changing year abroad? That our sinks are too big?”

“And your bread is too sweet.” Then, as I unzip a suitcase: “Can I help you with anything?”

“Sure. You want to open this mystery box with me?” I take out the package that arrived from the US yesterday. “A care package from Phoebe.”

Wouter returns to the kitchen, where he rummages around in a drawer, then reappears with a box cutter. George is making himself at home on my bed, jumping onto the duvet so he can get closer to me, wagging his tail as I bend to scratch him.

“It’s his only fault,” Wouter says, mock-solemn. “Anyone else he meets—he instantly gets more attached to them, even though I’m the one who supports his lavish lifestyle of canned food and fleece blankets.”

“I don’t think you have any faults at all,” I tell George, because I am already in love with his little face and perfect ears and the way he rolls over so I can scratch his belly.

My sister’s box is full of treasures: Trader Joe’s cookie butter, a few boxes of Annie’s white cheddar macaroni and cheese, a Costco-sized pack of NyQuil.

“You can’t get that here,” Wouter muses.

“Leave it to Phoebe to unknowingly smuggle me drugs.”

His hand dives into the packing peanuts. “What’s this— oh .” And he drops a lavender vibrator as though he’s just unearthed a tarantula.

My reaction is twofold.

One: complete and utter mortification.

Two: gratitude, because I tossed my old toys before moving, thinking this would be a good time to restart my collection.

“Not sure why she felt the need to include one of these,” I say quickly, even as I clock the brand as one of my favorites. “Obviously you have them over here. I mean—the general you, not you specifically, although no judgment if you do! Of course they can be enjoyed by—by anyone.”

Wouter’s face is a brilliant red, and I think he might be trying to hold back a laugh. “I don’t have one,” he says. “But now you’re making me think I’m missing out.” He nods his head toward the package. “Wow, twenty different vibration patterns.”

“You know, I don’t think I need help after all.”

On the bed next to the box, my phone starts buzzing, and the sound is so jarring that at first I think the vibrator somehow got switched on.

But it’s just a call from my mother, as though she knows exactly what’s happening, a garage door lurching beneath us just as I was about to drag him down onto my bed. The two of us splitting apart, Wouter darting to the room across the hall and pretending he’d been studying the whole time.

“I should answer that.” I’ve been avoiding my parents ever since Wouter’s proposal, as though they’d be able to tell just from the sound of my voice that something unusual was going on. I’ve never kept this much from them.

I wait until Wouter leaves to walk George before I pick up the phone.

“Danibear!” my mother croons, an old nickname that makes me feel ten years old again. “Is that really you? Our long-lost daughter?”

I fight rolling my eyes. “Hi, Mom. How are you?”

“Good, good. Your father’s out in the garden. The lilies are looking beautiful, but unfortunately the rabbits think so, too.”

My parents are two other people whose jobs seem perfectly suited to them: my father teaches high school math, and my mother works in public health for the county. Solid jobs. Jobs that give something back.

Even if no one said it, I knew it would have delighted them if I’d gone into a similar field, but I always felt awkward in front of kids, and spending so much time in hospitals when I was little left me with zero desire to go back.

“We haven’t gotten any photos from you in a while,” my mother continues. “You haven’t been updating the family album.”

“Oh—I haven’t?” I feign surprise. “Maybe something’s off with the connection. I’ll check once we hang up.”

“Loved the ones from the Van Gogh Museum, though. You must have been in heaven, seeing all of that in person!”

At that, I let myself smile. A rare moment of connection between us. “I really was. It’s still a little surreal to be here, but—I like it. I do. And before you ask, I’m taking all my medications.” Wouter’s out with George, but still, I say this quietly.

“What about a therapist? I’ve heard that with universal healthcare, sometimes it can take a long time to get an appointment to see someone…”

“Haven’t looked into it yet,” I say, in part because I hadn’t been seeing anyone regularly in LA for a while. “But I will.”

“You just want to make sure you have someone before you need them,” she says. “What about friends? It breaks my heart to think of you feeling lonely out there. Have you made any yet, maybe some people from work?”

It’s hard, gritting my teeth and telling her half truths. I hear Wouter come back inside and move around the kitchen, opening and closing cupboards and setting a pan on the stove.

These secrets have to become easier to keep.

—

After a dinner of some store-bought gnocchi and a salad, I clean up while Wouter opens a cupboard on the other side of the kitchen. “Tea?” he asks. “Unless you prefer coffee—I’m happy to make it.”

“I want the tea,” I say, which marks the first time I’ve uttered those words and meant them literally.

He places a ceramic kettle on the stove, showing me his various boxes of loose leaf so I can pick one out. Then he meticulously measures out tea leaves and pours the hot water over the strainer.

I wish I could tell heartbroken seventeen-year-old Dani that one day Wouter would be making chamomile hibiscus tea for her in Amsterdam.

“I love the ritual of it,” he says while the water turns a warm caramel color. “If I’m having an awful day, making a pot of tea always seems to help. It’s probably a bit more complicated than it needs to be, but loose leaf has so much more flavor than tea bags. They’re essentially tea dust.”

“No, this is cool.” And it is—there’s a reverence in the way he talks about it.

“That’s the first time anyone who owns five different teapots has ever been described as cool.”

We bring two mugs over to the couch along with a small plate of cookies, and George lifts his head from where he’s nestled in a blanket to sniff the air, just in case. I hold the mug to my face and breathe it in, letting the aromatics soothe some of my anxiety.

Wouter turns on some classical music as he sits down next to his dog, who instantly hops over to my lap. “See? No loyalty.” He crosses one leg over the other, leans back into the couch. This is more relaxed than I’ve seen him look so far, his posture less severe, sleeves rolled to his forearms and exposing a dusting of strawberry-blond hair.

The whole scene is so domestic, it could mess with my brain if I let it.

“You’re not regretting this yet, are you?” he asks. “I know it’s a lot of change in a short period of time. And if there’s anything in the apartment you don’t like—I’m not attached to any of the decor.”

I have a feeling he’s just being nice; I’m not about to redecorate his entire apartment. “Surprisingly? I feel calmer than I have since my plane landed.”

“I’m glad,” he says. “I think there are a few things we should discuss before the appointment.”

Appointment : the most accurate way to discuss our impending nuptials. We had to declare our intent to marry two weeks before the appointment itself, and in the end, that’s all it is, really. A time slot at city hall.

I alternate between petting George and sipping my tea. “Right. Getting our story straight for your family?”

“That’s what I wanted to talk to you about.” He brings his mug to his lips, waits a while before he speaks again. “It’s just my mom, my sister, and my grandmother. My dad passed away a couple years ago.”

The words are a punch to my stomach. “Wouter, I’m so sorry. I had no idea.”

A couple years. That’s hardly long ago at all.

“I’ve been waiting for the right time to tell you,” he says. “But I suppose there never really is one. He had a stroke my first year of university. He was in the hospital for a few months, first for recovery and then for rehabilitation—it took a while for movement to come back. My mom made sure he exercised and ate as healthy as he could, and we really thought he was going to be okay after that. But a few years later…he had another one. And then he just wasn’t the same.”

I picture a Wouter not much older than the version I said goodbye to, all that fear and uncertainty twisted up inside him. That brow wrinkle he’d get from squinting down at his sketchbook, now a permanent fixture on his face. He would have been only eighteen or nineteen when the first stroke happened. A kid in so many ways.

Your parents must be proud , I said the day we first met, and he didn’t correct me.

Without even second-guessing it, I reach out and brush my fingers against the hand that’s resting on his jeans. I run my thumb along his knuckles in what must be only a marginal comfort, and yet his eyes fall shut for a moment.

“He needed a lot of help. His speech and mobility were impacted pretty significantly, and they weren’t coming back the way they had the first time. He was adamant about not wanting to leave Amsterdam, but the stairs weren’t possible anymore, so I moved with him to the ground floor unit. Helped him with his medications, exercises, eating and drinking. I’d been in De Pijp at the time, in a one-bedroom, but that felt much too far.”

“You took care of him,” I say softly, and he nods, not meeting my gaze again.

“I wanted to. It wasn’t what he wanted for me, I know that, but Roos was still in university, and my mom…I could tell it was harder for her. Not that it was easy for me, but I think, because of my work, I could compartmentalize sometimes. So I thought—no matter what, if these are the last years I get with him, even if he’s different from the father I grew up with…then I want to do it.”

I try to imagine this, Wouter at the bedside of the man in the photo right above me. Holding his hand as he grew frail.

“You should have had more time.”

In this moment, he’s clearer to me than he ever has been: a man who puts other people before himself. Who cares so deeply about his family, he’d do anything for them.

He nods again, mouth pressed in a firm line. If our thirty-year-old selves knew each other better, I wonder if he’d let himself show more emotion. “My mom’s in Culemborg now, a much smaller city. My grandmother moved there a while back because that’s where her husband was from. They debated selling the Amsterdam house, but I couldn’t handle the thought of losing it when we’d already lost so much. I wanted to keep all those memories intact. So I suggested we renovate, convert it from two units to three so we could rent out two of them, and I’d gladly take over the landlord responsibilities. I couldn’t live downstairs again, but—but I could live here.” As though aware he might be needed, George lifts himself from my lap and drops his head into Wouter’s, and Wouter absentmindedly strokes his fingers along his back. “This place comes with a lot of tradition. And with this marriage…it might seem counterintuitive, but I want them to think I’m happy.”

Are you? I want to ask, but we’re certainly not close enough for that.

“Of course, I know marriage isn’t a requirement for that,” he continues, hand buried in George’s soft brown fur. “But it feels worth the lie if it means they won’t worry about me. Because—I think they do sometimes.”

“The people who love us really can’t help it.” As different as our families are, I can understand that piece of it. “And they’ll be okay that you got married without telling them?”

“Maybe at first they won’t quite get it. But it’ll be easier because we knew each other as teens.”

“Then we’ll just have to sell it harder,” I say. “Whatever we need to do—I’m all in.”

“Thank you. Really. I think I might be getting more out of this than you are,” he quips, and while I’m relieved that telling me about his father hasn’t made him shut down, he is very firmly wrong about that. He straightens his posture, returning to the beginning of our conversation: the editing we have to do to our history. “We can start with what we talked about the other day. We fell in love as teenagers, and then reconnected.”

“Love at second sight,” I agree, the word love getting trapped in my throat in a way it didn’t for him.

“You crashed your bike into me—we can keep that part.”

“Do we have to?” I rub at the spot on my knee where the bruises have finally started to fade.

A half smile. “Probably best to stick as close to the real story as possible. Let’s say that happened in the first couple days you were here, just to give us a bit of extra breathing room.”

“Okay. So I crashed my bike into you, and we realized how much we’d missed each other all these years. And we got married quickly because…”

“We couldn’t wait another minute. We’d been out of each other’s lives for over ten years, and we didn’t want to waste any more time.”

“You think they’ll buy that?”

At that, his gaze falls to the floor. “They…know how I feel about you. Felt about you. Back in LA.”

I almost choke on my next sip of tea. “You told them? About us?”

I wasn’t prepared for any of tonight’s revelations, and this one stuns me more than it probably should. I assumed that after the breakup text, he hid me away like I was something to be ashamed of. By the time I got to college, I sometimes questioned whether any of it had been real, and the hookups I had freshman year, the greedy touches and desperate releases—none of them made that ache go away. All through my twenties, every casual relationship felt like something was missing. The guy who only texted me after midnight. The guy who hated foreplay. Jace. Maybe it was just the innocence of first love and the dry-throat, beating-heart adrenaline rush of discovery.

Or maybe I was broken.

They know how I feel about you.

I thought I did, too.

He nods, toeing a line in the rug with his sock. “Not everything, but some of it.” A sip of his tea, another long pause. “What happened when I went back to Amsterdam, I want you to know—it’s one of my biggest regrets.”

When his gaze meets mine, it’s almost wistful.

I try for a joke because anything else might take this conversation somewhere I’m not prepared for it to go. “So, what, they think I’m this charming, jaw-droppingly gorgeous American who was the love of your life?”

A quirk of a smile. “Precisely. Not that you aren’t all those things, but—”

Now the joke is getting out of hand. “It’s okay,” I say quickly, still reeling but trying to spare us both. “You don’t have to pump my ego.”

“I’m not.” His brow furrows, as though he’s working out some complex equation. “Danika. It can’t be some mystery to you that you’re beautiful.”

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 lower back. “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 laugh and 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.