Chapter 7: Amsterdam

The train from Paris to Amsterdam takes three and a half hours.

Sush sits by the window, watching the French countryside blur into Belgian fields and then Dutch flatness. Everything is green and gray and wet.

She's traveling alone, but the train is full. Families, couples, backpackers like her.

She thinks about Liam. About the bartender. About the way she's been moving through this trip — collecting experiences, collecting touches, collecting proof that she's more than the small, stuck girl she was in Pune.

Her phone buzzes.

GP: kunal says you're in goa

GP: send pics

She stares at the message.

She's in a train to Amsterdam. She's had sex with a stranger. She's lying to everyone.

She opens her camera roll. Finds a generic photo of a beach she downloaded from Google. Sends it.

Sush: beach day

GP: nice. have fun.

The lie is getting easier.

She's not sure how she feels about that.

---

Amsterdam is different from Paris.

The hostel (ClinkNOORD) is across the river from the city center, in a converted industrial building. It's bigger, louder, younger than the Paris hostel.

Sush checks in, drops her bag in the female dorm (eight beds this time), and goes out to explore.

The city smells like water and weed and fried food.

She walks along the canals. Watches the boats and the bikes and the people. Everything here feels more relaxed than Paris. Less formal. More chaotic.

She goes to a coffee shop (not the weed kind — just a regular café) and orders a stroopwafel and coffee (€6.50). The waffle is sweet, sticky, perfect.

She's starting to understand why people travel.

It's not about the places. It's about the distance. The way you can be someone else when no one knows who you were.

That night, the hostel organizes a pub crawl.

Sush almost doesn't go. She's tired. Her body still aches from Liam. She's not even sure she likes drinking.

But she goes anyway.

The group is twenty people — backpackers from everywhere. Australia, Canada, Brazil, Japan, Germany. The guide is a Dutch guy in his twenties with a man bun and an aggressively cheerful attitude.

They go to four bars. Sush drinks beer, then a shot of something that tastes like licorice (disgusting), then more beer.

By the third bar, she's drunk.

Not falling-down drunk. Just loose. Warm. Brave.

A guy starts talking to her. He's Brazilian, maybe twenty-four, with dark eyes and an easy smile.

"You're Indian?" he asks.

"Yeah."

"I love India. I went to Rishikesh last year. Did a yoga retreat."

Of course he did.

But she doesn't care.

They talk. They drink. They dance.

And then they're kissing.

It's easier this time. She knows what to expect. She knows what she wants.

When the pub crawl ends, he asks if she wants to come back to his hostel.

She says yes.

---

His name is Rafael.

His hostel is in the Red Light District, in a building that smells like old wood and beer.

His room is a four-bed dorm, but his roommates are out.

They don't waste time.

He kisses her against the door. His hands are rougher than Liam's, more confident.

He pulls off her clothes. She pulls off his.

They fall onto his bunk.

This time, she knows what to expect. The condom, the positioning, the initial discomfort.

But it's different with Rafael.

He's more vocal. He tells her what he wants. Tells her what to do.

"Touch yourself," he says.

She hesitates.

"Come on. I want to watch."

She's never done this in front of anyone.

But she's drunk, and she's in Amsterdam, and she's not the same girl she was two days ago.

She slides her hand between her legs. Touches herself while he watches.

It's humiliating.

It's exhilarating.

He pushes inside her while she's still touching herself, and the combination — his cock, her fingers, the way he's looking at her — makes her come harder than she did with Liam.

She cries out, and he grins.

"Fuck, you're hot," he says.

She doesn't believe him.

But she likes hearing it.

When they're done, he falls asleep immediately.

She lies there, staring at the ceiling of a stranger's hostel room in Amsterdam.

She's had sex with two different guys in three days.

She should feel ashamed.

But she doesn't.

She feels powerful.

---

The next morning, she leaves before Rafael wakes up.

She walks back to her hostel through the early-morning streets. The city is quiet. The canals are still. The air smells like rain.

She showers. Changes clothes. Sits on her bunk and stares at her phone.

Ma: how is the workshop going?

Kunal: you're being weird. are you ok?

Rahul: sush seriously text me back

She doesn't know what to say to any of them.

So she doesn't say anything.

She spends the day at the Van Gogh Museum (€20). Stares at paintings she doesn't fully understand. Reads the placards about his life — the loneliness, the madness, the way he created beauty out of pain.

She thinks about her own pain. The job that stifles her. The ex who won't let go. The way she's been living half a life for so long.

Maybe that's what this trip is. Her own kind of madness.

That night, she goes to another bar.

Meets another guy.

Goes back to his place.

Fucks him.

Leaves.

She's starting to see a pattern.

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