He forgot to tell her everything. He was terrified to. He is terrified now. The ominous silence hanging over the table isn’t helping. And Allyson having unraveled her feet from his ankle really isn’t helping.
Maybe they aren’t so in sync. Maybe what for him is good news, a reason to hope, is just too much too soon for her.
He vaguely hears people around the table offering congratulations.
But he can’t process it. He is looking at Allyson.
And Allyson is not congratulating him. She is crying.
• • •
Allyson sees Willem’s face, his panic, and she knows he is misreading her. But she is helpless to explain right now. Words have left her. She is emotion only.
And it is too much. Not Willem moving to American, not Willem moving a bus ride away from her. It’s that this happened at all. How it happened.
Allyson has to say something. Willem is looking so upset. The table is so quiet. The restaurant is quiet. It seems like all of Amsterdam is holding its breath for them.
“You’re moving to New York?” she says. She keeps it together for an entire sentence before her voice cracks and she dissolves into tears again.
It’s Winston who gently touches Willem on the shoulder. “Maybe you two should go now.”
Willem and Allyson nod, dazed. They offer halfhearted farewells. (It doesn’t matter; good-byes with these two aren’t to be trusted anyhow) and leave amid promises from Wren to call in the morning and Broodje to crash at W and Lien’s place tonight.
• • •
Silently, they walk to the bike racks outside in the narrow alleyway. Willem is desperately trying to think of something to say. He could tell her he doesn’t have to go. Except he does have to go.
This isn’t about her. It was catalyzed by her, and she’s woven up in it, but this is ultimately about him and his life and what he needs to do to make himself whole. He’s stopped drifting, he’s stopped being tossed around by the wind.
But he doesn’t have to see her. It doesn’t mean that. He’d like it to mean that. But it doesn’t have to.
Allyson is thinking about accidents again. Which aren’t accidents at all. Allyson’s grandma has a word for it: beshert. Meant to be. Allyson’s grandma and Willem’s saba could’ve had entire conversations about beshert and kishkes.
Except Allyson doesn’t know about Saba (yet) or about kishkes (officially speaking, though she knows what they are and how to listen to them and she will never ever stop doing this). And she doesn’t have the words to tell Willem what she needs to tell him.
So she doesn’t use words. She licks her thumb and rubs it against her wrist.
Stained.
Willem grabs her wrist, rubs his own thumb against it. Does the same to his own wrist, just to make it clear.
Stained.
They slam into the wall then, kissing so intensely that Allyson levitates off the ground. (It feels like the kiss that is making her airborne, but really it is Willem’s arms, which have grabbed Allyson’s hips, though Willem can’t even tell that he’s lifting her because she feels weightless. Or like part of him.)
They kiss, mouths open, tears flowing, tongues licking. It is a devouring, consuming kiss. The kind of kiss that never comes off.
Willem’s knees press between her skirt and he can feel the warmth under there, and things are about to get pretty crazy in this alleyway. Even for Amsterdam.
A cyclist passes by, ringing his bell, reminding them that they are actually outdoors, in public. Neither wants to stop. But there is an empty flat somewhere with a bed and somehow, while still kissing her, Willem manages to unlock his bike.
Allyson had thought riding sidesaddle with Wren was fun, but with Willem it is something else altogether. She remembers the illegal bike ride in Paris, when she sat in the seat and he pumped in front of her and how much she’d wanted to touch him. She hadn’t. She wouldn’t. And then they’d gotten pulled over by the police. But this, here, is perfectly legal. And there is a place for her to sit, and she can wrap her arms around his waist all she wants. She can nuzzle against his back and lick his vertebrae if she wants to. (She does, so she does.)
At the stoplights, she hops off the bike and he turns to her and they start kissing again and sometimes stay that way until the light turns green and cyclists and motos beep at them to get out of the way.
It is a torturously labored ride home like this. Allyson is desperate for it to end and would like for it to go on forever.
Willem is just desperate for it to end. He is so full of wanting that it is painful and Allyson keeps lifting his shirt and licking his back, which she shouldn’t do while he’s riding a bike because he might pass out. (But she shouldn’t stop, either.)