Chapter Twenty-Four
Twenty-four
Instantly I wish I could take it back. Maybe I could handle my parents assuming I made a spontaneous decision in the name of love—but I’m not at all prepared for them thinking I’ve committed an international crime. Anneke and Roos are frantically translating for Maartje, and Phoebe’s and Maya’s faces are all concern.
And Wouter—I can’t even make eye contact with him as I stand there in his mother’s house, the ring in my trembling hand.
The guests in the backyard make no mystery of the fact that they’re listening in. Sanne and Evi have hands pressed to their mouths, and Iulia’s giving me a somber nod, this revelation confirming what she suspected all along.
That I am a huge fucking liar.
Roos is the one to speak first, in this shaky gut-punch of a way. “You mean…you and my brother aren’t really together?”
I want so badly to reassure her, to tell her there is something between Wouter and me, even if I don’t have the words for it—but my parents’ panic is more urgent. My mother scoops up her cracked phone and drops into a chair, like she just can’t take any more surprises while standing up, and my father shoves up the sleeves of his shirt, because he’s not used to a home without AC and it’s grown balmy in here with all of us yelling.
“I don’t understand,” he says. “Is this…some kind of immigration scam?”
“I…wouldn’t use those exact words.” I’m too warm in this dress, the lace and tulle too delicate for this conversation. “I lost my job. A couple weeks after I got here. The company went under, and I was here on a work visa. If I didn’t find another job, I wouldn’t have been able to stay in the country.”
“And you never told us?” There’s some amount of sympathy in my mother’s voice, the kind that drags me back to those dark moments when I imagined crawling home to them.
I didn’t want you to think I couldn’t handle it , I don’t say.
“Danibear. You know you could have come home. We would have paid for your ticket,” she continues, as though the cost of the flight was all that was holding me back. There’s no way to rationalize this in their minds, not when they’ve wanted to protect me from every bad thing that could be waiting for me out there.
Next to us, Wouter’s speaking in rapid Dutch with his family, so quick I can only catch a couple words here and there. Apartment and grandmother and wife . Anneke’s expression of shock, a hand held to her heart.
My mother turns to Phoebe. “Did you know about this?”
She grimaces, eyes flicking over to me as I shrug, giving her permission to tell them the truth. “I might have. Yes.”
“And you didn’t think to let us know that your sister was making such a careless decision?”
“It wasn’t careless,” I insist. “We didn’t just get drunk in Vegas and decide to get married because it sounded fun.”
My mother lets out a sarcastic snort. “Well, that’s a relief.”
Maya, who’s been watching everything from the Van Leeuwens’ couch, hoists herself to her feet, and Phoebe rushes to help her the rest of the way up. “Phee, maybe we should go for a walk? I could really use a walk.”
“Go ahead,” I say, and squeeze her hand to let her know I’ll be okay.
“I wonder—” My father pinches his lips together after my sister and her wife leave, as though unsure whether he wants to say this at all.
“Go ahead, Bill,” my mother encourages.
“I wonder if we should have put our foot down when she told us this cockamamie Amsterdam plan.”
This ignites a new flare of frustration. “I didn’t ask for your permission,” I say. “I’m thirty years old. Even if you’d chased me all the way to the airport, I still would have left.”
At that, Wouter extricates himself from the conversation with his family and faces my father. “With all due respect, sir,” he says. “Dani isn’t some kid who doesn’t know what she’s doing. Maybe it seemed ridiculous to you, but I think she’s truly happy here.” He meets my eyes, as though wanting to confirm it’s true, and I nod while my heart swells with affection for him.
“And with all due respect to you,” my father counters, because now he is no longer former host to an exchange student, he is the belligerent father of the bride, “you barely know her.”
“I’ve gotten to know her quite a bit over the past several months.” Wouter straightens to his full height, towering over both my parents. “She’s one of the most headstrong, spirited people I know—who I’m lucky enough to know—and she’s more than capable of making her own life decisions, no matter how big. In fact, maybe she needed to do this, to prove to herself that she always had this kind of independence in her. She didn’t do it on a whim, and neither did we.”
“I appreciate your sincerity. You obviously still care about her, but this isn’t your battle.”
Wouter’s jaw tenses, as though there’s more he wants to say but he knows he probably shouldn’t. “Let’s talk outside,” he says to Anneke instead. “Give Dani’s family some space.”
On his way out into the backyard, he grazes my arm with a few fingertips. I’m right here , that simple touch seems to say. You’re not alone .
I hear Wouter and his family in the backyard, telling the guests the party’s over. His friends don’t look angry, at least—just deeply perplexed as they file out through the gate.
Then it’s just me and my parents in a house that isn’t ours. Part of me is waiting for someone to tell us we’re no longer welcome here, but when my parents head for the kitchen table, I follow along. Once we’re seated, my mother fans herself with my father’s Dodgers cap while he pours everyone a cup of iced tea, and the three of us silently take a sip.
When I speak again, I attempt a level, rational voice. “It’s not as if we don’t know each other,” I say, and then with a grimace: “We…dated. When he lived with us.”
“You and Wouter?” My father is softer now, he and my mother exchanging an amused smile. “Kiddo, we already knew about that. You weren’t as sneaky as you thought you were.”
Heat rushes to my cheeks. I’m not sure if there’s anything more embarrassing than realizing your parents knew you were hooking up with your foreign exchange student.
“We were so sad that he never reached out once he went home. I always wondered if we’d done something wrong, or if life had just taken him in a different direction.” My mother takes another sip of tea. “But you’ve been in contact all these years? I didn’t know that.”
“Not exactly.” Another deep breath. “Not at all, actually. We ran into each other here right after everything fell apart for me, and he couldn’t inherit his apartment without a spouse. When he suggested that we get married to solve both of our problems…it just made sense.”
“You’re not together,” my mother says, as though needing to confirm it once and for all.
I shake my head. “No. We’re not. We’re…” I grasp for the right word. We might be sleeping together, but I’m not sure I have a parent-appropriate label for that. “He’s just a friend. A friend who did me a tremendous favor.”
“What I don’t understand,” my father says, “is why you didn’t just come home, if everything was going so wrong? What was so bad about that?”
“I wanted to get away. It just felt like—like LA was holding me back, maybe. And now that I’m here…I love it more than I ever thought I would.”
My mother looks hurt by this. “I had no idea.”
“Hold on,” my father says, his eyebrows shooting to his hairline. “Does this mean you’re not coming back to the US?”
“I—I don’t know yet,” I backtrack. “I haven’t thought about it beyond the next six months or so.”
My father sets his empty glass of tea down on the table with a little more force than he needs to. “This is just a vacation, Dani. You have to come back to reality sooner or later. Think of everything you’re missing at home—think of how much we miss you . Your sister’s about to have a baby, and the family won’t feel whole without you there.”
Maybe it’s the kind of manipulation only a family member can be good at, because it works. I imagine Phoebe and Maya’s baby growing up without an aunt, never recognizing me when I come home to visit. I imagine birthdays and Hanukkah and Passover with an empty chair at the table.
A vacation—is that what this has been? I haven’t been working. I’ve been indulging, making my way through tourist attractions and savoring my free time.
Maybe this isn’t real life at all.
“I miss everyone too. Obviously I do,” I say quietly. “But I have a final interview for a job next week. One that I’m genuinely excited about.”
“So what’s the plan?” my mother asks. “You’ll get a job and get divorced? The choices you make here have consequences. What you did is illegal , and in Amsterdam of all places…”
“What the hell is wrong with Amsterdam?” Now I’m on the defensive again, fist tightening on my glass. “It’s a beautiful fucking city! Every house in the city center is UNESCO protected!”
“It’s not about how beautiful the city is.” My mother holds up a hand in an attempt to get me to lower my voice. “Dani, what if—what if you have another episode?”
There’s something in her gaze I don’t recognize, and it takes me a moment to pin it down. Fear —that’s what it is.
She’s always seemed so strong to me, the person who would do anything to protect her kids, and it’s rarely manifested in emotional ways like this. When she visited me in the hospital a few years back, she was all business, sharing updates about work and pop culture, since I’d gladly handed over my phone at the beginning of my stay, certain it was doing more harm than good.
“You’d be so far away from us,” she continues, and I’m shocked when her voice breaks. “How could we be sure you’re okay?”
“You’d just have to trust that I could handle myself,” I say, a pressure building behind my eyes. “You knew I got a job here. You knew there was a chance I’d stay long-term.”
In one quick motion, my mother turns her head away, her shoulders shaking. She doesn’t want me to see how emotional this is making her. “We never thought you would.”
My father runs a soothing hand down her arm. “Sharon, maybe we should go back to the hotel. Give everyone a chance to cool off,” he says. “We can discuss this again tomorrow. I’ll call Stan and see if he has any ideas on how to get you out of this.”
Stan. Their friend who works in entertainment law and surely has a vast understanding of the Dutch legal system.
This seems to relax my mother. Stan is the solution. Stan can fix me. “Good idea.”
In the backyard, Wouter’s deep in conversation with Anneke and Roos and Maartje. I don’t want to disturb them, and I’m not sure I can bear any more judgment from the people I was growing to like so much.
My mother has a vise grip on her purse as we head out to the car, where I inform them I’m going to take the train back to Amsterdam. Phoebe and Maya are waiting in the front yard; they haven’t gone far.
“You’re sure we can’t drive you?” my mother asks. “Is that even safe, going by yourself?”
Of course they don’t understand that this is part of daily life here. That this is one of the safest countries in the world.
“I prefer the train.”
—
Phoebe keeps her arm around my shoulders on our walk to the station, Maya on my other side. I feel raw. Scraped out. I’m squinting into the sun because I left my sunglasses at the house, and I’m not about to turn back and get them.
“They can’t stay mad forever,” Phoebe is saying, doing her best to lift my spirits. “Remember that time I crashed Dad’s new car into the garage door? I’d never seen someone’s face turn that color red before.”
“I appreciate you. So much.” I pause to sniff, to run a hand over my eyes. “Even if that feels like a very different situation.”
Once we reach the station, a voice calls out from behind us.
“Danika—wait.”
An out-of-breath Wouter is running toward us, his tie flapping in the wind.
He came after me.
“We’ll give you two a moment,” Phoebe says gently before she and Maya find a bench on the other side of the street.
And then, before Wouter speaks—he hugs me, a soul-deep hug that could make me forget anything else exists. In our formalwear in front of the train station, I inhale him, trying my best not to cry into his chest and failing. He cups my head to his heart, strokes his fingers through my hair.
When we pull back, there’s a damp spot on his cornflower shirt. His face is beautifully flushed, glasses askew.
“I’m sorry I told everyone,” I say around a hiccup. “It just—came out.”
“I know, lief. I know. I’m not upset about that.” He touches a thumb to my cheek, my right cheek, to catch another tear. “I didn’t want it to end like that today. I don’t want to ask if everything’s okay, because obviously it isn’t, but…”
A humorless laugh tumbles out. “Pretty sure my parents would ground me for life if they still could. What about your family?”
“My grandmother didn’t understand why I’d do this just to inherit the apartment,” he says, turning sheepish. “She said I could have discussed it with her, and she would have transferred the deed to me. But they all understood that I wanted to help you out. They knew it was coming from a good place. And you saw them—they were ready to welcome you into the family.”
Guilt wraps around my heart and squeezes. “We lied to a lot of people.”
“Yeah. We did.”
“I thought it would feel like more of a relief to finally come clean, but…” I trail off, biting down hard on my lower lip until I taste copper. Anything to stop feeling numb.
“I need to know.” He glances down at his tie to straighten it—or to avoid my gaze. “What you said in there, about all of this being fake. Did you mean it?”
Oh.
I shut my eyes, trying to recall the exact words. I’d meant the marriage, didn’t I?
“Because yesterday,” he continues—and god , was that only yesterday?—“it felt like we were on the same page. And I don’t want to be the idiot who hasn’t realized you’ve changed your mind.”
The fierce vulnerability in his eyes is enough to tear me in half.
“You’re not—you’re not an idiot,” I say quietly. “I feel it too, okay? Whatever this is between us—I feel it too. And it’s really fucking terrifying. Because there’s too much we haven’t talked about, and I don’t know what we’re supposed to do right now.”
“Why can’t we be terrified together, then?” He reaches out to thread his fingers with mine. “It’s complicated, sure, but we’d figure it out, wouldn’t we?”
“And our families?” I ask, because it’s impossible to avoid the topic. “Maybe yours was quick to forgive, but I’m fairly certain mine isn’t going to do the same. I just…I can’t see a world in which they’d accept it.”
“We’d talk to them. I think if they got to know me again, they might realize I’m not actually that terrible.” One side of his mouth kicks upward, and while it’s adorable when he’s this optimistic, there’s no way he can be this naive.
I drop his hands and rake a frustrated hand through my hair, ruining all of Phoebe’s hard work. “Wouter, stop . It’s not a question of whether they like you or not. It’s that they treat me like I’m this doll who could break at any moment.”
“And you let them.”
“What?”
“Come on, Dani.” Now his arms are crossed, fabric straining over taut muscles. “Have you ever really stood up to them? I saw it when I lived with you, and I thought they were a little overprotective, but it seems like nothing’s changed. They might put you in bubble wrap, but you’re not exactly clawing to get out.”
You’re wrong , I want to spit back at him—but the gruesome truth is that I’m not sure he is.
I’ve ignored it for years, letting myself be quietly frustrated, pushing back only gently. Maybe I was worried there’d be nothing out there to protect me if I let them go. Maybe I didn’t realize I could protect myself.
Now I’m getting another surge of adrenaline, one that’s raw, ugly. We’re lucky this is a small town, that there’s no one else in front of the train station to watch this play out. “What would this relationship even look like?” I fire at him. I snatch up the hem of my dress so I can put more space between us without tripping over it. “We’d date for a while and eventually break up, and then what?”
“In my mind, I guess,” he says, “we wouldn’t break up.”
“Oh, okay, sure. We decide to stay married, because why the hell not, we like each other? And then it just magically works out?”
“Maybe! Is that so fucking awful to imagine? Someone loving you enough to want to stay with you long-term? Someone wanting to spend forever with you, because they never thought they’d see you again and by some miracle, you came back into their life?” His voice is hoarse now, and the amount of pleading in it could bring me to my knees if I’m not careful. “I’m sorry if that seems like the worst thing to you, Dani, because to me, it sounds pretty damn wonderful.”
Something foreign works its way up my throat, something I’m not sure I could name if I tried. Someone loving you enough . In all our late-night hookups and conversations, we never said that word. We haven’t, not for thirteen years.
“I don’t even know how long I’m going to be here,” I say at last, because maybe my parents were right. Maybe the smart thing would be to get a quick and simple divorce, just like we promised we would, and go back home. “Or if I’m going to get that job.”
“Then you’ll get a different one.”
“Because it’s that easy? I’ve been trying for months, and I’ve barely gotten further than a first interview. And maybe I needed that time to cope with burnout, but—I didn’t come here thinking this would be permanent. It was only ever supposed to be an escape. A change of scenery.”
“Ah. I get it. You got what you needed, and now you’re done?”
I don’t say anything. I want to rewind to ten minutes ago, when he was holding me to his chest and the rest of the world seemed to stop. I want to be able to take a breath before time starts back up again.
During the few months I’ve been here, I’ve gained so much. Learned so much. There are too many places I haven’t traveled, languages I haven’t heard. The idea of packing up my life again sounds absolutely brutal.
But so does the inevitability of this relationship falling apart, the way it was always meant to.
“You were right,” he continues. “There’s a lot we haven’t talked about. If you really want to go back to California, I won’t stand in your way.”
“Wouter.” I stop just short of telling him I’m not going back to California—because even if I know in my soul that I’m not, I can’t force the words up my throat.
I’m not sure what I want: for him to cling to my dress to keep me right here, or for him to let me go. Either way, he’d be making a decision for me that I’ve always needed to make on my own.
“What, Dani?” He yanks at his tie to loosen the knot, but there’s a resignation in the way he grabs at it. It takes a few tries before he can get it undone. “I’m not going to try to convince you to feel for me the same way I feel about you. If you don’t—it’s as simple as that. Even if you decide you want to stay here, we don’t have to be anything to each other. Just like you said.”
The hurt that knifes through my stomach is so intense, I have to fight the urge to clutch at it. I do feel the same , I try to say. I’m just scared of what it means. Scared of doing this again, when the first time went so horribly wrong.
“I don’t know what to say.” Somehow it’s the most honest sentence I’ve uttered all day, after a full afternoon of mistakes. The three words he must want from me are buried somewhere deep, rusty from lack of use. I want so desperately to be brave the way he told me I was—“a fucking fighter,” he said.
Maybe the truth is that I never have been.
He presses his mouth together in what might be surrender. The way his fingertips start fidgeting yanks me back in time. This is the guarded Wouter from when we first reunited, the man I barely recognized.
Then he reaches into his pocket to pass me the sunglasses I left at his mother’s house. “Let me know when you figure it out,” he says. “I’ll be here.”
The words are curt, but they’re not cruel. There’s only heartbreak on his face, that thing I thought I had full ownership of when it came to us.
This time, though—this time I’m the one who put it there, and it aches all the way down to my toes.
Fight , I urge myself. Fucking fight. Because I can still say it. I can keep him from leaving. Just I and love and you in exactly that order, and he’ll be mine again.
“I—I’m sorry I couldn’t be what you wanted,” I stutter out instead, mouth tripping over the words.
He looks at me for a long moment. “No,” he says before he turns around. “You were more.”