Page 75 of Crosswind

Jan's apartment, I mean. Which is, I stand on the pavement outside Schiphol and catch myself doing the correction and decide not to correct it. Jan's apartment is home. That is a fact. I don't need to qualify it.

I go home. I change. I go to the gym, which I have not done properly in three weeks between Bali and the simulator and which my body has opinions about. An hour. The particular good of using myself fully, the quiet afterwards.

Lars texts while I'm stretching.

Dinner tonight? Mia and Tom are in town.

I look at the message. Then again. There is something that unclenches slightly — the relief of being asked, of being included, of someone reaching across the quiet that has settled over my Amsterdam social life in the last year. I type back yes before I've finished thinking about it.

Lars has been there since the beginning, one of the people who were simply present when I arrived in Amsterdam six years ago and stayed. I don't blame him for not calling more, and I haven't been trying either. Jan is the point. The social life contracted and I was busy being happy. Both things true.

It still stings a little, which I have not said to anyone.

The restaurant is in De Pijp, good Dutch food, the kind of place Lars picks because Lars is consistently right about restaurants. I arrive first, which I always do, and order water and sit and look at the canal through the window and think about Jan in Madrid and feel, quietly, that things are mostly fine.

Lars arrives. Then Mia. Then Tom.

It is easy in the way of old friendships — the rhythms still there, the shared references, the ease of people who have known each other long enough that the conversation doesn't need warming up. They ask about Jan. I tell them about Bali. Tom says he watched the A350 video on YouTube. Twice. He's very dry, I like him. Mia says you look disgustingly happy, Patrick, it's revolting. Lars says nothing for a moment. Then, into his wine: "Now I understand why you were checking me out in the shower in that hostel in Cusco."

I stare at him. "I wasn’t…”

"Peru, 2018. The one with the broken hot water. We shared a room for three nights."

"I was not checking you out."

"You looked," he says, with complete serenity. "I remember thinking it was strange. I should have known." He takes a sip. "For what it's worth, I'm flattered."

Mia is laughing. Tom is looking at the ceiling.

"I wasn't checking you out," I say again.

"Patrick." He puts the glass down and looks at me warmly. "I'm joking. Mostly." A pause. "Ten percent not joking."

I look at my plate.

"Jan seems wonderful," Lars says, returning to normal tone. "Bring him next time."

I am, I realise, happy. Sitting at this table with these people on a Wednesday evening in September while Jan is in Madrid and coming home tomorrow. This is fine. This is good. I am fine.

Then I see Maya.

She comes in at eight-fifteen, while we are on the main course.

I notice her before she notices me — the familiar quality of her, the dark coat, the way she moves through a room. And then I notice the group she is with. The man beside her, his hand on her back. And behind them: Sander and Lotte. And Joris and Femke.

People I know. People I used to have dinner with, years of dinners, the group that gathered and dispersed and gathered again. People who chose Maya's side after April… the natural thing to do, and I never blamed them for it. They still stopped calling.

They find their table across the restaurant. Sander sees me first, a moment of recognition, a beat of something, and then a nod. Brief, not unfriendly, not warm. The nod of someone acknowledging a person they once knew well and now know at a careful distance. Lotte does the same. Joris looks at the table. Femke gives a small wave that is mostly politeness.

Maya looks across the restaurant last. Our eyes meet.

A moment.

Then she smiles genuinely, not performed, the Maya smile that has always been real, and gives a small wave. I raise my hand back. She turns to her table and that is the whole of it.

I look at my plate.

I am… I sit with this for a moment, trying to be precise about it the way Jan would be, I am not upset. That is the accurate word. I am not jealous, not in the way that matters, not the way I was at the pool in Bali with Bram from Rotterdam. I love Jan with a completeness that leaves no room for doubt about that. That is a settled fact.