"Are you sure they aren't going to be mad at us for being late?"
"Why would they? Cathelijn was always like thirty minutes late to everything, so I'm sure she could wait for two people she doesn't care about."
Erik squeezed Hanne's hand as they sat the backseat of the taxi. They were in Amsterdam for the wedding of Cathelijn van Waardhuizen and Thies Uiterwijk, their luggage and belongings at the hotel where they spent way too much time sleeping from the early morning flight. Now they were heading to the restaurant for what Cathelijn called "pre-wedding lunch" since the actual wedding was in two days. Hanne and Erik already missed the breakfast part of that, but it's not like it mattered to them. They decided to order room service for breakfast at their hotel this morning.
Dressed in a dark green shirt dress with sleeves, Hanne made promise to actually make the effort to look nice while in Amsterdam. And by the fact that she made a promise, she had promised her mother who wanted her daughter to look nice for the girl who she grew up with.
She laid her head on the shoulder of Erik as he kept his hand intertwined with her's. Honestly, even though she's been calling Cathelijn a bitch all this time, Hanne is absolutely terrified of seeing her.
The last time she saw her was when she was in Nijmegen for her twentieth birthday. And the two didn't really talk at all except for the occasional greetings out on the streets. Overall, it's like they haven't talked in years since Cathelijn has since relocated to Amsterdam for her modelling career. But the fact that she can get basically anything just scares Hanne that the blonde model might just do the same thing as she did to Thies with Erik.
When the taxi stopped in front of a nice and fancy looking restaurant minutes later, they paid and stepped out onto the paved sidewalk. Of course, Erik, who has no idea how to speak Dutch, was very confused when they walked up to the man in front and he started speaking to them in Dutch. But then Hanne spoke up and the man lead them through the decorative restaurant.
He held her hand as they followed the man, squeezing it ever so tightly there and there. "Hanne, we're like, forty minutes late."
"Yes, I know. But I look nice for once, so that's my excuse. If they don't believe it and Cathelijn tries to get in an argument with me, just remember she was over an hour late to my birthday party when I was fifteen, so it could be worse." Hanne smiled like she was fine, only that, she wasn't. She was a literal mess in the inside, and her mind was thinking way too much. And even she knew that thinking was already too dangerous for what she had experienced. "Everything is fine, everything is fine, everything is fine, everything is fine, I think."
"What about me?" Erik asked, a bit concerned for the wellbeing of Hanne from her constant sighs. "What do I do if they ask who I am and why I'm here?"
"Simple. You're my boyfriend."
"Ja, but what about on the actual wedding day? Like I have my tux and everything, but what do I do? I haven't been to a wedding before."
Hanne almost completely stopped in the middle of a fancy dining room in front of tons of people upon hearing those words. She muttered something along the lines of I'm taking my boyfriend to a wedding as my date and he hasn't even been to a wedding before and blinked to keep herself from fainting out of worry.
When they arrived in a hallway with a long dining table in the middle and a chandelier hanging above, Hanne nearly froze she saw the faces of people she hasn't seen in a few months look at her and Erik. She wanted to stop in her tracks, sit on the floor, and curl up into a ball.
And unfortunately, the first person to greet her wasn't anyone else but Cathelijn van Waardhuizen who was walking towards her with open arms that offered a fake welcoming. To make everything else even more difficult, for some reason, the blonde model decided to speak to the two in English rather than Dutch. "Hanneke! How are you? It's been so long! How's Germany and that cooking career—"
