“Nope.” He popped thepand pulled out his phone, showing me a blog titled, “10 Sober Fun Things to Do in Amsterdam.”
“Sober fun,” I read, raising a brow.
He beamed. “We’re doing everything on this list.”
“Everything?” I glanced at the time. It was already mid-afternoon. “We don’t exactly have long.”
“As much as we can,” he said with a shrug. “We’re free till your soundcheck tomorrow. Might as well distract ourselves, right?”
He had a point. Amsterdam was a city built on temptation. Legal highs, neon sex windows, booze at every turn. Alone, I’d be terrified of slipping. With Iggy... I wasn’t sure if he made it safer or worse, but at least we had each other. At least together, there was another set of hands to pull me back from the edge.
“Sober fun,” I repeated. “Alright. Let’s do it.”
“Fuck yeah!” Iggy clapped once and tugged me towards the nearest metro stop. “Let’s find fun that doesn’t hurt.”
CHAPTER
SEVEN
IGGY
Who knew soberfun could actually be... fun? I wasn’t sure if it was the activities themselves or the fact I got to do them with Bodhi, but we ended up having a genuinely great time.
Our first stop was a museum full of optical illusions, upside-down rooms, and far too many selfie stations. Bodhi willingly took photos of me posing in a fake train carriage, sinking into a giant neon ball pit that looked like a swimming pool, and on the steps of a pink private jet that gave off Barbie on acid vibes. Then, under the excuse that the label would want fresh content for Noctis’s Instagram, he surprised me by posing for a few himself.
By the time we stumbled back outside, we were starving, so we devouredfrikandelandbitterballenand took more pictures withstroopwafelsbigger than our faces. From there we rented a tandem bike, which turned out to be a mistake, since I... did not know how to ride a bike.
Given that my dad was a Conservative MP and my mum was the CFO of an international bank chain, they weren’t exactly the sort of parents who’d taught their children normal childhoodthings. My brother, Jethro, and I were raised by a nanny who’d had two replaced hips and the mobility of a Victorian ghost, but I like to assume she would’ve taught us if she physically could.
Anyway, people rode bikes everywhere in London. I’d watched them for years, and it looked simple enough. So, once I convinced Bodhi to give the tandem a go, I climbed onto the front seat with the blind optimism of someone who clearly didn’t value his own life.
Shockingly, it was not simple. At all.
“Why didn’t you tell me you couldn’t ride a bike?!” Bodhi screeched from behind me as we swerved like a drunken cartoon character.
A car honked on our left. I jolted so hard the entire bike jerked towards the vehicle. “I didn’t think it mattered!”
“It definitely matters!” he yelped as we narrowly dodged a pedestrian who shouted at us in Dutch. “If I’d sat up front, we might’ve lived to see another year!”
At one point, we hit a curb, bounced into the air, and I genuinely thought we had died. Bodhi shouted something that sounded like a prayer and clutched my waist like I was the last life raft on the Titanic.
By the time we returned the bike, I was sweating like I’d run a marathon and Bodhi looked paler than usual. He made me promise never to operate anything with wheels ever again, and looked relieved when I admitted I didn’t have a driving license.
We ducked into a cat-themed museum next—an absolute wet dream for Gloria—and I bought her a fridge magnet of a fluffy orange cat playing piano and smoking a cigarette.
“Are you a cat person?” Bodhi asked as I paid.
“Not really. My roommate is obsessed, though.” I took the paper bag from the cashier and slipped it into my pocket. “I’m not anti-cat or anything, but I think I’m more of a dog guy.”
“I never had a pet growing up,” Bodhi mused as we strolled towards the Red Light District. Seeing sex workers leaning out of glowing windows felt like an Amsterdam rite of passage I couldn’t skip.
“My mom and I had this tiny-ass apartment,” he went on. “Barely enough space for the two of us, let alone a dog. But there was a dog park a few blocks from our building. Riff and I used to sit there for hours begging people to let us pet their dogs.”
I laughed. “So you and Riff have known each other forever?”
Bodhi shoved his hands into the pockets of his dark denim jacket, and I slipped my hand into the crook of his elbow. He glanced down at the contact but didn’t pull away.
“Yeah,” he said. “His mom and mine went to high school together. They’re best friends, so we were around each other a lot.”
