I love the bicycles in Amsterdam.
As the taxi swerves through the cobbled streets, I see them all. Some black, some brown, some with baskets. I once read there are more bicycles than people here.
When we arrive at our hotel room it’s small, but the view is fantastic. From our window, the canal glistens in the sunshine breaking through the thick white clouds. It’ll rain soon, just like it does back home. But I bet it’ll feel different here when it does.
I open the window, the chimes from the tram singing, announcing the whimsical potential of the day. Behind me, my suitcase lies unopened on the bed. I’ve brought my nicest clothes, the ones Eleanor—Mum—would approve of. Along with lipsticks in shades of plum, velvet and crimson. The best tools to construct my best self.
I hear the shower cut off. Walking to the bathroom door, I hesitate and stand in the tiny hallway. The light from inside peeks through and stains the wooden floor. There’s the movement of a shadow on the other side.
I feel like a child, sneaking up on my fiancé. Another footstep. A twist of the door handle. Light flooding through the opening.
And there he is.
Seb is tall and broad-shouldered, his eyes the colour of milk chocolate with green specks that sparkle even when it’s dark.
“Hi,” he says, locks of his chestnut hair wet. There’s a towel wrapped around him, the fabric damp against his thighs.
My face cracks open in a grin. “Hi.”
“Someone’s excited to go explore,” he says.
“Is it that obvious?”
“A little,” he says as he walks toward me, one hand clenching his towel and the other wrapping around my lower waist as he pulls me close. “I like it when you’re excited.”
I smell the hotel soap still fresh on his skin as his lips find my earlobe. But my mind wanders outside again, to the tram and the tourists.
“We should get going,” I say.
“We should do a lot of things,” Seb whispers, and inside, a part of me lights up like a bulb. But when Seb’s eyes meet mine, he must see my eagerness to leave, because he pulls away.
“Okay, okay,” he says with a grin. “I’ll get ready.”
I watch him walk to his suitcase, drop the towel and find his underwear. As he changes, my eyes find the intricate finishings on the ceiling, the copper lamp next to the bed. The mint green armchair in the corner.
I hate changing in front of Seb. Sometimes I can avoid it, sometimes not. Even when we have sex, I never fully relax. I suck everything in and hide what I can.
Some nights when we’re high on the evening air—coming back from some or other dinner—I allow myself a moment to imagine letting my guard down with him. He would discard his clothes like they were made of silk, urging me to do the same. He’d pull me in and I’d be so close to showing him everything about me. My body, my heart.
And then I’d think of you—of when we were together. And I’d close up again.
“Anywhere you want to go first?” Seb says, smiling in his Levi jeans and polo shirt. We have two days in Amsterdam before we leave for Spain—for our new life.
“We could just walk around,” I offer. “Find somewhere to eat?”
In a few minutes, we’re out the door and on the street.
Seb takes my hand and we cross the road to the waterfront. We walk down a narrow street, merging with the crowds as we walk within a bigger ring of the city. We walk towards De Pijp and cyclists pass us by, some in a hurry, some not.
Ahead of us, a woman dismounts from a bright blue bike, her blonde braid flicking against her back as she adjusts her shirt. I look at her slender arms and legs, feel my hand edge towards my thighs. But I remind myself that I’m wearing my nice jacket today. The one Mum said was deceiving to the eye.
We sit in a small bar. I lean back in my chair, eating a fried meatball—the Dutch kroketten—whilst Seb sips his beer.
“We needed this,” he says.
I breathe in. “We did.”
Our trip to Heathrow felt awkward—forced—like being dropped off at a sleepover where you know no one. It was our first international trip as a couple. As we strolled towards the check-in counter, we smiled at each other hopefully, holding our breath.
This would be a new chapter for us. Our new relationship thrust into deep, challenging waters, the current deciding if it sinks or swims.
“It’s fun,” he says, eyes hidden behind sunglasses. “Holidaying with you.”
I met Seb on campus a few days into my final year. He was attending a guest lecture on Real Estate Finance and Investment. I was interviewing anyone I could grab hold of for a piece I was writing, my notepad and pen glued to my hand.
“Excuse me,” I called, trying to grab his attention when I saw him. “Can I ask you a question? It’s for a piece in the student newspaper.”
“Sure,” he said, with a look of amusement.
I puffed out my chest. “Do you think alcohol needs to be limited at parties to protect men from being accused of rape?”
His eyebrows shot up. “Say that again?”
I repeated it, adding more context. “They say that male university students are twice as likely to be accused of rape at parties if they were drunk. By limiting the amount of alcohol at parties, do you think this will protect them against these accusations? And as a guy, would you feel offended or supported by this?”
“That’s more than one question.”
I flushed. I’d been so focused on gathering answers that I didn’t register his face. And I liked what I saw.
“So, are we removing the girl from this theory?”
“That’s debatable,” I said.
A pause. “Tell you what,” he said. “How about we meet at that coffee shop in two hours?” He pointed across the lawn. “And I’ll give you my full opinion.”
“Deal.”
A few hours later, we were discussing rape culture over lattes and a sandwich.
“I think blaming the parents for a guy’s actions is wrong,” Seb told me. “There are so many things that indoctrinate a person. We’re like clay, constantly being moulded. Everything is mixed. Desires, entitlement.”
His voice was warm, kind. And his words lined up in perfect order. “The feeling of entitlement towards a body that rejected you.”
We never concluded on the topic. I left the newspaper soon after, spending my evenings with Seb at the local pub, discussing everything from the fleshiness of olives to my desire of becoming a novelist.
On those nights, Seb’s face came into focus like pieces of a puzzle. He told me his family owned a vineyard in the La Rioja region in Spain. Having grown up amongst people that knew everything about the craft, he had been a wine connoisseur since he was young. After his father died, he took over the business. Like me, Seb was used to a family with expectations of continued legacies.
“My father spent his life building this. It’s up to me to continue it,” he said one evening as we sipped wine in a pub.
“So why come here? To the UK?”
“I believe that to know something well, you need to do two things. First, you need to travel to places where winemaking is an art,” he said. “France, Chile, South Africa, Italy. It’s important to visit these places and understand how others master the technique.”
Picking up his drink, he peered into it and grinned. “Second, you need to understand your market.”
“So where do the Brits fit into this?”
“We have a lot of British that travel to Spain every year. It would be stupid to ignore the numbers. Why not understand them better?”
“Well, we’re a cheap bunch,” I said.
He laughed. “My father was traditional. He knew a lot about making wine. But with marketing, he needed some help.”
And so Seb took over his father’s legacy and prepared to build an empire. Travelling around the world, he sought insights about the art of winemaking, soaking up information wherever he went, ready to live his dream of taking the wines of La Rioja to the world.
I knew very little about wine, and he knew even less about literature. But we connected. Where our aspirations and ties to family legacies came together, that’s where we were.
“What’s wrong?” Seb asks me now, sliding his sunglasses up onto his head.
I stare at the red battery icon on my phone screen. “It’s my battery again. It’s already flat.”
“You need to replace that phone, babe. I’m sure there’s an Apple store here.”
I sigh, willing the phone to recharge on its own.
“There’s one ten minutes away,” Seb says, showing me the map on his phone.
A smile forms. I can get used to this, I think. Having someone look after me.
It didn’t take long for our relationship to take full flight. Seb flew between Spain and the UK for months, seeing me and exploring the British market.
“I want you to meet my mother,” he announced one day. We’d been dating for ten months, my graduation approaching. The relationship felt big and daunting. Enough to swallow me whole. It scared me how dependent I felt.
“But I need to make things right first,” he said. I didn’t know what that meant, but a few days later he ushered me through the door of one of London’s top restaurants. As we sat down, I sensed there was something different. It wasn’t a normal date night.
“Lisa,” he started, air accumulating in his chest, “I’ve spent so much time looking for answers. But there was something I didn’t even know was missing. It was you.”
My heart raced as he continued. “Now, when I think of doing anything, nothing is as fun if you’re not around.”
He said the words as if he’d rehearsed them all day. And then it came.
He took the black box and placed it on the table, opening it. A ring sparkled. “Will you marry me?”
I said it before I could think. “Yes. Yes, yes, yes.”
“Ready?” Seb asks me now, and I’m brought back to the present, the Dutch sunlight flooding down on us.
“Ready.”
We empty our beers and walk toward the Apple store. As I take Seb’s hand, there’s a stir in my stomach. When the engagement was new, I was on a high. The prospect of living with him and meeting his family felt unreal. Like it was too far away for me to wrap my head around.
But now we’re here, together. And I’m terrified that history will repeat itself. That I will make a mess of things again, like I’ve done before. I gulp the fear of it down and focus on the cyclists, the houses along the canals adorned with flower beds. You’re in it now, Lisa, I can hear Mum say. This is your first test.
As we walk along a canal, I smell the earthy mix of the water and soil. We were never water people. Eleanor hated what the ocean did to her hair. My father hated the fear it brought up inside of him. He never explained why. And so we avoided oceans, lakes, rivers and places with pools, frequenting mountain chalets and hotels in cities instead. I never learnt how to swim.
But as we walk, I feel there’s a whole other life I haven’t lived.
“Is your house next to the ocean? The one in Basque?” I say.
Seb nods. “It is. We have water coming inland from the ocean. It’s a beautiful view in the morning. You’ll love it.”
And I really think I will.
When the Apple Genius shows me my new phone, I beam. It’s gorgeous, with no chipped corners and no drained battery. The Genius asks me if I want to trade in my old phone and I shake my head. “I still need to back it up.”
The Genius moves my sim card to the new phone and we leave the store with both in my handbag, lying side by side.
“I’ll just throw it away when I’ve backed it up. Not worth much now,” I say to Seb. I’m trying to rationalise it. To act like it’s not a big deal. Because throwing away my old phone means throwing away the memory of you. All our messages, our photos and videos. The only evidence I have that we existed together, once upon a time. I know I should do it, but I can’t. At least not yet.
There’s still time to pass the first test, I convince myself. There’s still time to make this work with my soon-to-be husband.
“New phone, new adventure,” Seb says, placing his arm around me.
We walk through the city, running into a shop to purchase an umbrella as thick droplets fall from the sky. Seb holds it over us as we walk, my hand curled around his arm. The droplets are surprisingly loud as they hit the water next to us.
“They say thousands of bikes are fished out of the canals every year,” I say, willing the muggy water to reveal its secrets. It’s a pandora’s box of possibilities and mysteries, just like my future.
“If we ever need a bike, we can get one out,” Seb says.
We laugh, our eyes marvelling at our surroundings. Seb’s free arm finds my waist, and his voice is soft and flirtatious in my ear. “Are you still feeling excited?”
I grin. It might be the beer talking, but I am excited. Absolutely giddy, really. Giddy to be here with him, to make love to him. This time, hopefully, with no negative thoughts holding me back.
I turn to face Seb and whisper through a smile. “Very excited.”
The hotel is a few blocks away, and we quicken our pace. We pass canal after canal, and I try to hold on to my feeling of freedom. Of knowing that I’ve found a partner I don’t have to hide myself from. But the closer we get to the hotel, the more that feeling fades, and the old anxiety creeps back in.
When we’re at the hotel entrance, I take one last look at the outside and think of those bicycles at the bottom of the canals. Their metal structures rusting in the deep unknown. Lost potential.
I say a little prayer for them, and for Seb and I. For the future that awaits us.