What Happens in Amsterdam

Chapter Twenty-Five

Twenty-five

The first time Wouter and I broke up, it felt like a betrayal.

That text arrived the week after summer vacation started, a sun-drenched day like so many other sun-drenched days. I’d meticulously planned out the whole week, determined to keep myself occupied with Wouter gone: beach, bowling, movies, parties. I was going to be a social fucking butterfly.

Instead I read the message over toast and eggs, dropped my phone into the butter dish, and got into the car in my pajamas. I drove straight to Phoebe’s USC dorm, where she was staying for summer term, every minute I was stuck in traffic feeling like a personal attack.

“That asshole ,” she said after she wiped butter off my phone, rubbing my back, letting me cry. “You deserve so much better.” At seventeen, a miserable mess of self-esteem and forehead acne, I wasn’t sure if I did.

She said all the right things, those things you’re supposed to say during a breakup that the person who’s been broken up with might pretend they understand but never actually believe.

This time she doesn’t say any of them, but she still holds me while I cry on the train.

I think we both need some space to process everything , Wouter texted when I got back to Amsterdam. I’ll stay in Culemborg this week. Take as long as you need.

I wondered if it was implied that the space he’s giving me is to move out. If that’s the case, I’m not sure why I haven’t been able to start packing.

This isn’t a breakup, not exactly, and only in part because we made such a mess of the marriage, never putting a label on our relationship. And yet I let him know me in a way I haven’t done since…well, since him .

The apartment is too quiet without Wouter and George, and I can’t understand how he lived here on his own for so many years. We’ve marked every square inch—centimeter—of it, all the places where we laughed and drank tea and shared our deepest secrets. The places where we touched and moaned and murmured each other’s names.

I convince myself that if I go to bed early, the memories won’t be able to find me. But they keep me awake half the night anyway, because my brain is cruel and there was never a timeline in which Wouter would make anything less than the deepest imprint.

It isn’t that I don’t know what he wants from me.

It’s that I’ve never been able to successfully give it—to anyone.

There’s nothing I want to do less than see my parents the next morning. I texted Phoebe, begging her to help me with an excuse. Rip off the band-aid, babe , she wrote back. The anticipation is much worse than whatever you’re picturing. I promise.

I meet them in their hotel lobby, praying she’s right.

Despite the shock of yesterday, they look much more well- rested. My mother’s in a patterned shirtdress and isn’t gripping her RFID-blocking purse nearly as tightly. My father, still in his Dodgers cap—which I should probably tell him is a dead giveaway for a tourist—gives me a tentative smile as he adjusts the strap of his camera bag. Because of course he brought a real camera, certain his phone wouldn’t be able to do Amsterdam justice.

They flew all this way , I remind myself as we awkwardly hug hello.

“How’s the jet lag?” I ask.

“We’ve been up since four,” my father admits, fighting a yawn. “Do you know what they have on the TV at four in the morning? Phone sex commercials!”

I’m fully prepared to defend the city by saying this surely can’t be just an Amsterdam thing, but the two of them just laugh, like it’s another quirk on a long list of them.

We head for breakfast at a nearby café with terrace seating, tables propped up along a canal. There’s no better way to dine in Amsterdam, and if we’re going to have this conversation, we might as well have it somewhere beautiful.

“Isn’t this picturesque,” my mother remarks once we’re seated, and then asks the server, “Could we get three glasses of tap water, please?”

“I remember that from our last trip to Europe,” my father says. For their thirtieth anniversary, they went on a Danube River cruise. “They don’t always give it to you when you sit down. Maybe California could learn a thing or two, what with all the droughts.”

We fall into silence while three glasses and a carafe of water are placed on the table.

“So,” I begin after taking a sip, “yesterday did not go well.”

“It’s possible we all could have handled some things better.” My mother reaches across the table, brushing her fingertips along my arm. “How did this happen, Dani? That’s what I want to understand. Not just the marriage—all of it.”

They’re less combative today. Ready to listen.

I take a deep breath. “I guess…I guess it started a long time ago. You remember all those articles that came out when I was born?”

I swear I see the headlines, the photos play across my mother’s face. No matter how fierce a mask she puts on, that trauma has never quite left her. “Yes,” she says quietly. “I don’t think we could ever forget. You were our miracle baby.”

“Right. And for the longest time, I’ve just felt like…I had to do something great in order to live up to that.”

Her brow furrows. “That’s not what anyone meant at all. The fact that you’re alive, that you’re here with us—that’s always been more than enough.”

“Theoretically, I understand that. But those follow-ups that happened, the reporters checking up on me, looking for a feel-good story—it was overwhelming,” I say. “Everyone around me seemed to find what they were good at so easily. It felt like I could never find it, and that created all the more pressure to achieve something. Even in college, I really just fell into UX design, and sure, I liked it…but I always expected I’d have this great passion. Something so uniquely Danika .”

When I say it out loud, I can hear the ego in it. Because isn’t that what everyone wants, really? To be lucky enough to spend their lives doing something that makes them happy?

On the bridge in front of us, a group of college-aged girls ask a stranger to take their photo. “Make sure you like it,” the stranger says after snapping a few. “I can take more if you want!” The wholesomeness of it reminds me of Roos, her lack of judgment when it would be so easy to roll her eyes at scenes like this.

Sometimes you’re the tourist; sometimes you’re the photographer.

“You felt that pressure from us?” my mother wants to know.

“Not directly,” I say. “But your jobs have always seemed so meaningful—public health, teaching. And Phoebe adores her bookstore. It was impossible not to wonder…why not me?”

With the hem of his shirt, my father polishes the lenses of his sunglasses before putting them back on. “You know it took me a while to find teaching, right? I had plenty of aimless years, plenty of jobs that didn’t lead where I thought they would, until I went back to school for a teaching degree. For those people who find their passion immediately, that’s fantastic. But it doesn’t happen that way for many, many more of us.”

“I guess I’m starting to understand that. The company I’m interviewing for—it’s a boat tour company.” I wait for some kind of outraged response, but it doesn’t come. “I’d be a tour guide. It doesn’t have to be my forever career—just something I’d like to do right now.”

Neither of them answers right away—but only because the server’s returned to take our order.

Once she leaves, a slow smile spreads across my mother’s face. “That sounds like a lot of fun,” she says. “Think of all the different people you’d get to meet every day, from so many different places. And I’m sure you’d learn even more about Amsterdam, too.”

“It is a beautiful country,” my father agrees. “Don’t get me wrong—a weird country. I still can’t get over all the bicycles! They really are everywhere, aren’t they?”

“So fast, though,” my mother says. “Like they could come out of nowhere. I hope you’re careful when you’re crossing the street.”

Here we go. “That’s another thing we should talk about.” I straighten in my chair, though I’m surprised to discover I haven’t been slouching through this conversation. I’ve said exactly what I’ve wanted with as much confidence as I can muster—I can’t backtrack now. “I know you think I’m still that fragile baby who wasn’t supposed to survive, but I’m not. I don’t need to be coddled. I don’t need to be protected from the big, bad world. I might be flailing sometimes, but I’m figuring it out. At my own pace.”

My mother’s jaw tenses. “It’s just hard,” she says, with that unfamiliar wobble in her voice that I’ve now heard twice in twenty-four hours. “You were so tiny, Danika. When I saw you on that ventilator, I thought— I’ll do whatever it takes to protect her. Anything at all. And we tried our absolute best. Now, well…you’re an adult. You don’t need as much protecting, even if that’s always my first instinct.”

“I’m grateful for all of it,” I say, my heart squeezing, and for the most part, I mean it. I believe that they did their best. “I know my health has been precarious, but I’m in a much better place than I was four years ago. I take my medication, and I’ve started researching therapists, and…I can talk about it now. I’m not in denial about it, and I can breathe easier than I ever have.” They don’t protest any of this—they let me keep speaking. “There’s more. We can keep having regular phone calls—maybe every other week once you get home. And obviously we can text. But I don’t want the constant check-ins about my health, or where I am, or how long I’m going to be there.”

“I think we can handle that,” my mother says, and my father echoes his agreement.

“I need to learn how to be truly independent,” I continue. “And that’s part of why I moved here. I know it was drastic, and that I probably didn’t need to go this many miles to do it—but I wanted to do something fully on my own for the first time. Whatever does or doesn’t happen with Wouter…that’s completely different.”

They fidget uncomfortably in their seats, as though this is the part of the conversation they’ve been dreading the most. Our plates of eggs Benedict and pancakes and French toast arrive, but no one makes a move to dig in.

“We didn’t realize it was so serious between you and Wouter,” my mother says. “When he was living with us, I mean. We thought it was just a teenage infatuation—not that those can’t be strong. Maybe we should have intervened, but it seemed innocent enough, especially with him eventually going back to Amsterdam, and we trusted you to be safe.”

A teenage infatuation. That’s what it was, in the plainest terms, but even looking back from over a decade later, it never felt that way. We were young and overly optimistic, but the love was real. Weighty, like something you could hold in your palm.

“We thought we could make it work after he went back. But obviously it didn’t, and then now…” I trail off, my throat tight, trying to keep the emotion from shuddering out of me.

“Oh, Dani.” My mother starts to get out of her chair. “You still have feelings for him, don’t you?”

I nod into her shoulder, welcoming the comfort of my mother hugging me—even in public, in another country, after I just told her I don’t need her protection. Turns out, I still need this .

And that’s okay.

“We were always going to get divorced,” I say. “It was never supposed to be long-term. I know it was impulsive, but I don’t think it was a mistake. And if it was a mistake—then it’s my mistake. Our mistake.”

“Now that we’ve all had some time,” my father says, “I guess we’ve all probably done some absurd things in the name of love.”

Love .

There’s that word again, the one that shouldn’t be as foreign as it was when Wouter said it yesterday.

I think back to all the times he called me “lief” when no one was around. At first I thought it was a slip of the tongue, but it happened too frequently, didn’t it? Was that his way of telling me, even then?

“I don’t know what I’m going to do yet,” I tell my parents once we’ve started eating, and I’m irrationally proud of my city when they rave about the food. “If I’m going to stay, or for how long. There’s obviously a lot I have to figure out, both with him and on my own. But I want you to know that whatever choice I make, I’m serious about it. And it doesn’t mean I won’t come back and visit as much as I can.”

They exchange a long glance, communicating in that silent way couples do when they’ve known each other for years and years.

“Then that just means we’ll have to come back and visit, too,” my father says.

My mother gestures toward the canal with her fork, because of course this place has captivated her, too. It would be impossible for it not to. “Already looking forward to it.”

—

I spend the rest of the week playing tour guide for my parents and Phoebe and Maya, showing them my favorite spots, the best stroopwafel that isn’t the overpriced Instagrammable one with the long line but the one at an open-air market, the blink-and-you’ll-miss-them museums hidden in old canal houses.

Then we spend hours browsing Amsterdam’s bookstores. We go see the tulips, and Phoebe and Maya pose for some pregnancy photos in the vast fields of red and yellow that are entirely too lovely.

I still haven’t taken out any of my suitcases, and I find every excuse to stay out of the apartment. When I’m home alone, I try to relax with a bubble bath. A mug of tea. My breathing exercises.

And then I make an appointment with a new therapist.

“How are you holding up?” Phoebe asks gently as we lock our bikes in Vondelpark. They rented a couple and thought I was kidding when I showed them Little Devil. My parents are flying back early in the morning, and Phoebe and Maya leave tomorrow night. I’m still in denial about all of it.

I’m not quite sure how to answer her question. No matter how many times I try to picture it, my vision of Amsterdam without Wouter is all gray scale. I should be moving on, shouldn’t I? Preparing for my interview and viewing apartments?

“Do you think it’s ridiculous for me to stay here?” I ask, realizing I’m not answering her question. “Indefinitely? Assuming I get a job and can fully support myself?”

The three of us accept cones of gelato from an ice cream truck. “Why would that be ridiculous?” Maya says. “I studied in Edinburgh for a year during undergrad, and it wasn’t enough. If I ever had the chance to live there again, I’d hop on it right away. No looking back.”

Phoebe nods her agreement as she dodges an e-bike, a guy steering haphazardly while a girl clings to his back. “We’ve talked about it, how we might want to do something like that one day. Seeing you here makes it seem all the more possible.”

The truth is, it was ridiculous when I first got here. A complete disaster. I may have fucked things up with Wouter and his family, but before that…it was good .

“Then I think about everything I’d miss out on if I stay. Like the baby being born. I want to be there, okay? No matter where I’m living, whenever you want me—I’ll get on a plane, and I’ll make it happen.”

Phoebe licks her own cone, then tries Maya’s, and without even discussing it, the two of them swap. “We appreciate that. Maya’s mom is going to be living with us for the first month, but after that, if you wanted to…we wouldn’t say no.”

I take out my phone, already searching flights. Phoebe laughs. “You don’t have to do it right now!”

“It’s just different, not being able to see each other whenever we want to.”

Over her gelato, Maya lifts her thick eyebrows at Phoebe, who sighs.

“Dan, that was always going to change once we had the baby. You know that. I’m not going to disappear, obviously, but it’s unavoidable,” she says. “Think about it this way. When you were in LA, we’d have dinner, or coffee, or we’d go to a yoga class. A few hours, tops. When you come to visit, that’s a week of solid, nearly uninterrupted time. Maybe it won’t be as consistent, but it can be just as deep and just as meaningful.” I do love the sound of that. Then she dabs her gelato on the tip of my nose. “And now we have to figure out what’s going on with Wouter.”

“If he wants to see me again.”

Maya snorts at this. “The moment I saw you two together, I knew he was down bad. That doesn’t go away overnight. I was silently pining for Phoebe for a year —”

“Eleven months!”

“—before I got the courage to tell her,” Maya finishes. They met through mutual friends, in a book club Phoebe started and Maya kept going to, not because she liked the books Phoebe selected but because she liked her. Only once they were together did she finally admit she wasn’t a huge reader, and Phoebe made it her mission to find something she’d love. Turned out, that thing was audiobooks, and now they often listen together while driving or cooking dinner.

“I like him so much,” I say in a small voice after polishing off my hazelnut cone. “But I’m not sure that’s enough for him. Obviously, it didn’t end well the first time, and I don’t know what it looks like, being in a relationship with him as adults.”

Phoebe tosses her napkin in a trash can with a little too much force. “Bullshit.”

“Excuse me?”

“You think anyone automatically knows how to be in a healthy relationship? No. You fucking practice. You communicate. You figure out the hard shit together,” she says. “Some of those guys you dated in LA? They were really into you, Dani! They wanted to take you to brunch and meet your parents and go on weekend trips with you. But you ended it because you decided you didn’t do relationships. Couldn’t do relationships. And you know what? It’s a self-fulfilling prophecy. You tell yourself enough times that you don’t do something—eventually you can’t.

“You think we’re not afraid of bringing a kid into the world? An entire human with a whole set of needs and wants?” Phoebe shakes her head. “Just last week, I learned that newborns don’t have kneecaps. Kneecaps!”

“Not until around six months,” Maya confirms.

“Just because it’s scary doesn’t mean it’s the wrong thing. Just because it’s hard—doesn’t mean it’s not worth doing.”

When my sister finishes speaking, she’s a little out of breath, her cheeks pink, to the point where Maya has to give her a pat on the back.

Maybe it’s not the reassurance I wanted but the tough love I needed. The older-sister wisdom.

“I— wow .”

Phoebe calmly clears her throat. “I can’t tell if you want to slap me or hug me.”

“Both at the same time?” I say, and she laughs.

“It’s okay to let yourself want this.” She places her hands on my shoulders, looks me straight in the eyes. “I promise you.”

That permission slowly works itself through my bloodstream. Rearranges my molecules. I didn’t need it from her, but maybe I needed it from me . If I allow myself to truly want this, to peel back the layers of I don’t do and I’m not ready , then maybe what I’m afraid of most is that all my uncertainty will have pushed him away.

Now I’m picturing it, the two of us living in that apartment I’ve come to think of as my home, too. Staying up too late and not even regretting it when we need to wake up early. Taking George on long walks. Making fun of Wouter’s complicated tea process when I’ve loved it from the very beginning.

I want all of it.

It was wrong to expect Amsterdam to change me, as though I could sit back and let it happen when I had to be the one making the first move. I am not the girl I was when I landed here, and it’s a relief to realize that the process doesn’t have to be over.

I can change. I can find myself a thousand different times, and I’m not done yet.

“Amsterdam looks good on you,” Phoebe says at the end of the day, giving me a tight, linen-scented hug. “I love you and miss you to pieces—but I really hope you decide to stay.”

After I drop them off at their hotel, a family of tourists flags me down.

“Do you know how to get to the Albert Cuyp Markt?”

And I can’t help grinning as this time, I point them in the right direction.