Chapter Nineteen
Nineteen
The guy at our fifth bike shop sizes me up. Squints. “You’re looking for an adult bike?”
“Maybe a frame size under fifty centimeters?” Wouter says.
This earns us an exaggerated grimace. “Something that small…I’m afraid I only have bikes for children.”
“Can I see?” I ask, and he disappears into a back room.
When I got home from Dutch class late last night after missing my usual tram—a construction-related reroute—Wouter was on the couch reading, George curled up beside him.
“It would be so much easier if I could just bike home,” I said, breathless.
“Then that’s it.” He snapped his book shut and sat up straight. “We’re going bike shopping tomorrow.”
The bike the guy wheels out is secondhand and a little scuffed, black with red and yellow flames swirled on the side. LITTLE DEVIL is written in aggressive white letters.
I’m instantly obsessed with it.
“I just don’t want to make any of the ten-year-olds in the neighborhood jealous,” I say as he raises the seat for me.
I can tell even before I climb onto it that it’s a perfect fit. My hands wrap loosely around the handlebars, and when I ring the bell, it lets out the shrillest little ding. I take it around the block a few times, getting used to the feel of it. It’s older, and there’s something comforting about that. Like this bike has seen a lot of kids through their most adventurous, carefree years, on their way to school and their friends’ houses and out for ice cream.
Wouter just watches me, a ridiculous grin on his face that must match mine.
The sales guy looks thoroughly perplexed, but he just shrugs with a sense of finality. “I suppose it’s less likely to be stolen.”
—
“Okay, little devil,” Wouter says when we get to Vondelpark, Amsterdam’s largest park. “Show me what you got.”
Before we left the bike shop, I had a basket added to the front, and while it doesn’t satisfy my pastel Dutch daydream, I don’t feel like I’m losing control with my feet on the pedals. My demon bike feels sturdy. Reliable.
In the early afternoon, the park is full of people enjoying the rare springtime sun, even if my weather app warns me it might rain later. As soon as it hits sixty-eight degrees—twenty degrees Celsius—everyone seems to rush outside, determined to get their vitamin D before it’s gone. A few herons, those statuesque birds, dot the sides of a pond.
Once I hop on, it takes me a moment to gain full control of the handlebars, and I accidentally nudge Wouter’s bike with mine.
“And one more thing,” he says as I mumble a sorry . “You’re not allowed to apologize.”
“What?”
“You’re learning. You don’t have to apologize for that.”
“Even if I crash through a shop window?”
“Nope.”
“Even if I topple headfirst into a hot dog truck and bring you down with me?”
“Unlikely, but nope.”
I start pedaling, wobbling a bit before I find my center of gravity. Every time we encounter a pack of people, I get too in my head, needing to get off the bike to go around them.
“Trust yourself,” he says when I hop back on. “I’ve seen you make that turn without people around—yes! Like that. Goed zo.” The pride in his voice sends a new kind of thrill down my spine. He wants me to be good at this—not just good but confident enough to do it on my own.
“I’ve been intimidated,” I admit after a few more minutes. I hate saying it. The first few years of my life were marked by so much weakness that I always felt I had to prove I was strong enough, healthy enough, game enough. “I think that crash maybe left a bigger psychological wound than a physical one, and I’ve had this mental block ever since.”
“I get it. When I was eight or nine, I hit a pole and flew off my bike, right onto the concrete. When my mom bandaged up my knees, I told her over and over that I was never getting back on a bike, and she just laughed. Because she knew there was nothing that could keep me from it—not in this country, not when that was how all my friends were getting around. And she was right. I was back on it the next day, scraped knees be damned.” He cups my handlebar. “But getting over the mental hurdle is the hardest part. You’re doing fantastic. Not to mention…” His voice drops an octave. “You look so fucking cute on that thing.”
“Ridiculous, you mean.”
“No,” he says, and tosses me a smirk as he speeds off.
After a few more laps, we take a break to grab some doner wraps from a food cart, and Wouter spreads out a picnic blanket he had tucked away in his backpack. The first tulips are poking up out of the ground, yellow and pink and red with white tips. The sky has turned gray, thick clouds threatening to yield to rain, but for now, we’re safe.
Mostly.
We got back from Bruges a few days ago, and the only reason I haven’t begged him to take me to bed is that I have a Dutch exam coming up. I’m relieved my interest in the language hasn’t faded. That I haven’t given up, tossed it to the side when I wasn’t instantly good at it.
Because I want this to work , I realize. Because I want to stay here . The closer I get to fluency—though I’m still many months away—the easier time I’ll have finding a job, even if that brings back the uncertainty of what Wouter and I will become once we’re divorced.
Do we simply…stay friends? Keep having casual sex?
Or is it that once we’ve each gotten what we need, his house and my visa, we’ll have no reason to remain in each other’s lives?
“There’s something I don’t understand,” I say once we’ve finished eating, trying to avoid a thought spiral, “and I’m hoping you can enlighten me. You’re obviously not terrible-looking—”
“Wow, thank you.”
“—and you have some decent qualities—”
“Stop, I’m blushing.”
I lean over to push against his arm, and with the way he’s grinning, it takes all my willpower to keep from tipping him completely over onto the blanket and climbing on top of him. “If you knew you had to be married to inherit the apartment—I mean…”
Now he lifts his eyebrows. “Are you asking why I’m still single?”
This makes me groan, because it’s such a cringe-inducing question. The question no single person ever wants to hear. “I’m not not asking. But…yes.”
“I did think I’d be settled down with kids at this point,” he admits after a while, sliding a blade of grass between his fingertips. “When I was taking care of my dad…that became my whole life. I don’t regret any of it, but my mom was always encouraging me to go out, and I did—sometimes. But I don’t think I was a very present partner.”
My heart breaks for him all over again, the ways he closed himself off because he wanted all the time with his father he could have. “What was your dad like? If you want to talk about him, I mean.”
A slow nod, as though he’s making the decision in this moment that he does want to talk about him. “He was a lawyer. That was how my parents met, actually—in law school. That might make it sound like he was this strict, very by-the-book kind of person, but he was only like that at work. He had the most booming laugh, one that I swear I could hear sometimes when I was outside turning onto our street.”
“And—what was his name?” I ask, realizing I don’t know, and it feels crucial.
“Joost. Very Dutch name,” he says. “He was good with his hands, too. Always working on the apartment, because he knew how much it meant to my mom. When I was younger, I wanted to know everything he was doing. He humored me, getting me a little wrench so I could pretend I was fixing things up, too. And he loved American pop culture,” he continues. “He’d seen everything, and he always knew the popular shows on HBO. I’ve never met anyone who loved Entourage more than my dad.”
I can’t help laughing at that, and Wouter’s smiling, letting me know it’s okay. “I really love that for him.”
“He was a huge part of the reason I wanted to go to the US. Especially to LA.”
“I am so sorry I couldn’t help you live out your Entourage fantasies. You could have at least called me Turtle when I was driving us around. I wouldn’t have minded.” I squint one eye at him. “Were you more of a Vince or an E? Don’t tell me you were an Ari.”
“They’re all terrible in their own ways,” Wouter says, leaning over to nudge my shoulder. Then he turns serious again. “Now you can understand why I hadn’t dated anyone in a while. Sometimes I even wonder if I’d be a good partner. A real one,” he says, tapping my ring with his index finger. “My family and my work have been my whole world for so long. It felt like I didn’t have space for hobbies or for travel or for fun , really. My whole life has revolved around being practical, being logical, being available. I told you why I wanted to keep that apartment, even if it’s falling apart—I used to imagine my parents growing old there, that I’d bring my kids to visit. That’s changed, of course, and now I want so badly to raise children in the place I love so much.” Another pause. “Maybe that’s the problem. Maybe I want it too much.”
I think back to what his mother said about his desire to feel needed. All of that caretaking he did for his father—and then when he passed away, he didn’t know how to take care of himself.
My throat is dry when I speak again. “I have absolutely zero doubts that you’ll be a phenomenal partner. For—for the right person.”
Slowly he nods, and I wish I could explain why that cracks my heart in half.
“For what it’s worth,” I continue, “I don’t think you want too much. At all.” Because that’s the truth—he deserves the fucking world, and whoever gets to give it to him is going to be indescribably lucky. “And…I’m trying to think of a delicate way to ask this, but you’re doing okay?”
“I spent some time in therapy after my dad passed away. Just needed to talk to someone who could be gentle with me, and who could help me be gentler on myself.”
“I’ve been in therapy, too. Not that I’m saying that my issues are anywhere near yours.” The words come out too quickly, before I can second-guess them.
He frowns at this, and for a moment I’m worried this wasn’t the right time to share it. “Why does it have to be a competition?”
“It’s not. I just…” I take a deep, shaky breath. I hadn’t planned on telling him any of this, not now and maybe not ever. But now it’s out there, and he’s already shared so much…“I had a bit of a breakdown. About four years ago.” The way he’s watching me doesn’t make me feel as though there’s a spotlight on me, like I’m onstage confessing this while sweat drips down my back. There’s no pressure here. “I was in the same place I am right now, pretty much—no boyfriend, a job I didn’t care about, and everyone else was doing great things and getting married and having kids, and I just…felt so far behind. Like I’d never be able to catch up. I’ve always had that. This worry I’m not living up to my potential. I mean—you know my whole birth story.”
He nods, because he knows the basic facts. “There was a lot of trauma there for all of you. I remember the photos your family showed me. The news stories.”
“God, those stories. I couldn’t help feeling I was supposed to do something good , something that mattered , all because I’d survived. I was a ‘miracle baby,’ and therefore I needed to go out and do something miraculous. And my parents—I know they meant well, but they had me in a bubble, like I could get a paper cut and it would be a national emergency.” I’m breathing hard now, my chest aching a little. Four. Seven. Eight. When I say it out loud, none of it sounds worthy of that hospital stay or the pills in my nightstand drawer. How could something that happened solely in my head measure up to everything he’s just confessed? The horrible things he’s been through? I’m such a fucking idiot, embarrassed to have brought it all up. With a trembling hand, I shade my eyes from his. “It all just kind of caught up to me. I spent two weeks in the hospital with therapists, getting stable and figuring out the right kind of medication. It…was probably the best thing I could have done at the time.”
Wouter’s eyes are full of an emotion I don’t think I’ve ever seen on him. Sympathy, but it’s misplaced. “I’m so sorry, lief,” he says softly, cupping my knee with his hand. “I wish you hadn’t had to go through any of it, but I’m so glad you got help.”
“It was a positive experience,” I say honestly. “I’m grateful I was able to do it. But sometimes even now, it’s like—what right do I have to depression?”
“The same right as anyone else,” he says. “You don’t have to feel any shame about asking for what you needed.”
“But on paper, there was nothing wrong with my life. And yet I just couldn’t make myself be happy.”
“You took charge and prioritized yourself. You should feel the opposite of ashamed. You should feel…” He searches for a word, fingertips stroking along my jeans. “Strong. That’s what I always think when I look at you.”
I bite back a laugh at how ridiculous that sounds. “ Strong? Me, the thirty-year-old woman who’s learning to ride a child’s bike?”
“ Yes ,” he insists, and there’s something in his conviction about it that washes over me and makes me want to believe him. “You’ve always been brave. Ever since you were a baby—you’re a fucking fighter. You moved here with no idea what it was going to be like. You didn’t know anyone, didn’t have a backup plan. You just took a leap.”
“But you did the same thing.”
“Completely different. I didn’t have to worry about money or a job or where I was going to live.” A crooked smile. “Although I probably should have worried about how I was going to keep my cool, living in the same house as you.”
“Please. You were so chill, it took me ages to realize you liked me back.”
He holds a hand to his heart in faux shock. “Me, chill? My seventeen-year-old self didn’t know the meaning of the word.” Now his hand finds mine, tracing along my knuckles, inching up my wrist. “There was something special about it, wasn’t there? Sharing all those firsts the way we did.”
“Stumbling through them, sometimes,” I say, all my senses attuned to his fingertips. “Like the time we were fooling around in my car, and you smacked your head on the roof of it. I was so worried you had a concussion, even though you had zero symptoms, and I was going to have to explain to my parents that you got it from trying to take off my bra with your teeth.”
“Suave, I was not.” His hazel eyes turn soft, crinkling at the edges. “But you still stopped at a grocery store for a bag of frozen peas.”
We sat in a park like this one until curfew, Wouter’s head in my lap, me holding the makeshift ice pack to his forehead, feeling for a bump that wasn’t there.
“I think my hand went numb,” I say, laughing. I never thought I’d have the chance to do this kind of reminiscing with him, and it’s healing something inside me I didn’t realize needed closure.
“We had a couple disasters, yes, but I like to think we figured it out.”
And we did, didn’t we? For a while, we had something so precious. Maybe it ended in heartbreak, but the memories are still there, and finally knowing the truth about the breakup repaints them all with the rosiest lens.
He brings his hand to my shoulder, fingertips flirting with the edges of my hair. I lean into him—not overthinking, just accepting this kind of simple, tender touch for what it is. Now that he can be open about how he feels, he’s letting out everything he’s kept locked away. I close my eyes at the sensation, lost in thought while a beautiful man braids his fingers through my hair.
In so many ways, I still don’t know what I’m doing here. I was supposed to find a new job, but I can’t picture being stuck in another one of those corporate offices. I don’t know what I want, but it’s not that.
Burnout , he called it at the STRAAT Museum, and it seemed foreign to me. Probably I thought you had to be settled in a career to feel burned out, that you needed to have some kind of fire beneath you when all I had were a few sparks. I don’t think he was wrong, though—between the job I didn’t love and the constant yearning for more, my utter exhaustion and my stay in the psych ward…all of it added up to something that’s only now becoming clear.
“I guess it just feels like I’ve never found my footing. A perpetual late bloomer.” I glance up at him. “Is there a similar phrase in Dutch?”
“It’s the same, actually. Laatbloeier.” He considers this for a moment. “I get it. I can’t decide if I’m too old for my body or if I’m something of a laatbloeier, too. Or maybe I bloomed, but not in the right way. Not in a way that my younger self, the self that you knew in LA, would be very thrilled with, I don’t think.”
“Then change,” I say, as though it’s so easy. As though it didn’t take me stumbling halfway across the world to learn I was capable of it. “It’s not too late. I promise.”
It’s only when we fall into a companionable silence that I realize he called me “lief” when no one else was around. I looked it up after Culemborg. “Sweetheart,” “darling”—that’s what it means.
Scattered raindrops have started falling, and some people are packing up their stuff. I’m not used to putting my insecurities on display like this. Even Jace didn’t know much about my hospitalization or the residual miracle-baby anxiety.
We said this was going to be casual, but that doesn’t account for all the truths I’ve already spilled to him. All the things I’ve never been able to share with anyone else.
I squint up at the clouds. “Should we get back on our bikes, or—”
It’s at that moment the sky opens up, unleashing a torrent of rain unlike any I’ve seen before.
People shriek as they snatch up their belongings and head for shelter. We jump to our feet, Wouter collecting the blanket and stuffing it into his backpack.
“You okay to ride back in the rain?”
The ground is soggy beneath my feet, and even though I’m already soaked, I’m not in any rush to leave.
I tilt my face toward the sky, letting the rain wash over me. “In a minute?” I ask, and he laughs.
His hair is already slicked back in a way that makes me want to run my tongue from the hollow of his throat down to his navel. Rain dots his glasses, but I can still tell he’s watching me as the downpour renders my thin T-shirt absolutely useless.
The pure yearning in his expression is enough to undo me. I can’t resist—I crush myself against him, tipping up my head to catch his lips.
I don’t think it’s closure at all. It’s something else, something scarier, and yet I can’t help running straight toward it.
His mouth is wet and wanting. If I’m shivering, I’m not sure if it’s from the weather or from him , the way he clutches my soaking body to his, the rumble in his throat sounding like thunder. I can’t see with the rain in my face, but it doesn’t matter—all I need to do is feel.
I don’t know how long he kisses me there, urgent and unafraid.
“What do you think?” I ask when the rain starts to let up. He’s still holding me by the waist, both of us breathless. “Should we keep biking, or…” I hook a thumb to one of his belt loops, hoping my intention in the or is clear.
A shake of his head. A crooked smile. “What I want right now,” he says, fingertips splayed on my hips, “is to go home and fuck my wife.”