Page 34 of Good at Being Alive
I demolish my stroopwafel—two paper-thin, crunchy waffles with a layer of caramel between—the second the inside turns gooey from the heat of the latte. Theo watches with disdain, and then Lars asks if we can shoot the scene again with “Bex eating at a more civilized pace this time.”
We then head to a canal dock to film the boat-ride scene I’m pretty sure is mandated by some governing authority when in Amsterdam. While they’re setting up, I give LJ facts about the Enigma machine for his daughter’s paper, jumping in place to stay warm, and help Jon figure out what style engagement ring his girlfriend would like. At some point, Theo briefly disappears, then returns to dump a sweatshirt in my lap that has “Amsterdam” splayed across the front in big block letters. “You’re freezing,” he barks. “Put it on when we’re not filming.”
I normally wouldn’t be caught dead wearing this sweatshirt, but…it was unusually sweet of Theo. And I’m really freaking cold.
At long last, the boat leaves the dock, heading down the wide canal of Keizersgracht toward Prinsengracht.
Theo waves a hand in my direction. “I suppose you have a thousand bizarre facts in your head about Amsterdam that you’re dying to share.”
I scowl at him. Ididhave facts, but I’m not going to tell him now. I’m going to keep them all for myself.
He laughs. “Tell me your facts, Rebecca. It was a joke.”
I give in only because he got me the sweatshirt.
“These were all warehouses,” I tell him, pointing at the houses up and down the canal.
There are a million periods of time I’d love to travel to if I could, and this is one of them. The Dutch East India Company was terrible and ruthless and did awful things to people in many countries, but I’d love to just see Amsterdam back then, with its barges delivering precious goods from faraway lands. “At one point, Amsterdam’s houses held six million pounds of pepper.”
He raises a brow. “So no one lived in them?”
I shake my head. “They did, just on the upper floors.” I point across the street to a hook swinging from a gable roof. “That’s how they’d move furniture in. A pulley system. They still use them. Amsterdam was like central storage for everything in the fucking world.” I point across the street to a plaque above one of the doors. “A lot of the homes still have a drawing that kind of tells you what they stored.”
“Is that a fox?” he asks, squinting at the plaque.
It looks like it. I still want to time travel to Amsterdam in the 1600s, but I think I’d avoid the houses packed to the gills with foxes.
Following the canal ride, we wander through the shops and stalls in the Nine Streets section. Theo’s gaze lingers a moment too long on the window of a jewelry store. Is he hunting for a gift to bring hiscomplication? I’m not sure why that annoysme.
The shops get slightly cheaper. K-beauty I don’t need and jewelry shops where I’d buy something wildly unnecessary just because I can affordit.
I’ve got to come back with Bron—
I catch the thought midstream and stop myself with a wince. When will it stop feeling like a punch to the gut? When will I stop needing to remind myself she’s gone? It takes seven years for your body to regenerate new cells. I’m scared it’s going to take seven years until I stop picking up the phone to text her.
I’m lost in these thoughts, struggling not to cry, when Theo’shand slides to the small of my back, pulling me to the other side of him so that I’m not hurt by some boys shoving each other in the street.
I’ve noticed that he does this, and that he stays close when we’re in a crowd, as if I’mactuallyhis wife and he doesn’t want to loseme.
It’s the sort of nice I could get used to, could grow to like, if I allowed myself to do so…which I won’t.
“You don’t want to buy something for yourcomplicationhere?” I ask, lifting a small package of edibles aloft. “Is this something she’d like?”
He tenses and his eyes fall closed for a moment, as if it’s his way of keeping me from a room he lets no one enter. “You’re making too big a deal of that.”
“You were going away with her for the holidays, right? You don’t generally take a woman to Puerto Rico for a week if it’s not a big deal.”
“I’m not discussing this while wearing a microphone,” he says. “And actually, I’m not discussing it withyouat all.”
I swallow. Maybe itisserious with her. Maybe it’s so serious he can’t stand to sully it by sharing a single detail with me. It’s strange, the way my stomach drops. The way it suddenly feels like the words he’s not saying could matter one day.
That night, we have an early dinner, made unpleasant by the food we’re served—raw herring in its natural form, followed by sausage and mashed potatoes mixed with sauerkraut—and made awkward and dull by the presence of cameras and the fact that I haven’t slept since yesterday.
“This is ridiculous,” Theo finally says, halfway through our meal, watching me push the sausage around on my plate. He pulls off his mic. “Lars, she can barely keep her eyes open. You need to wrap it up.”
Lars frowns at Theo but reluctantly concedes the point, and suddenly it’s just me and Theo in the restaurant alone, waiting for the bill.
“I don’t do it on purpose, you know,” I tell him, too exhausted to hide my defensiveness. “I’d like to be able to sleep on a plane. I just can’t relax. I don’t feel safe enough.”
