Page 1 of Here for a Good Time

ONE

“Are you up?”

A dry, ragged grumble comes out of my phone’s speaker before Zwe’s empty shell of a voice mumbles, “No.”

“Can I come in?”

Another grumble. “It’s… one forty-seven.”

Whirling my chair around, I jump to my feet and, still feeling the buzz from my two post-dinner iced coffees, practically skip out of my office. “I know. But you won’t believe what I just did.”

“Unless it’s set the kitchen on fire, I don’t—” He pauses. “That better be a masked intruder knocking at my door.”

“I’m coming in! Be decent!” I say, hand already turning the doorknob. “And if you’re not, get under the covers.”

I leave Zwe’s bedroom door ajar behind me so that the living room light can stream in.

Shirtless, he hauls himself up into a sitting position, both knuckles rubbing at his barely open eyes.

“Please tell me you found out that the apocalypse has arrived and you’ve come to say a final goodbye. Because otherwise—”

I plop myself down at the foot of his bed, facing him. “What are you doing next Friday?”

“Obviously now hosting interviews for a new roommate,” he mutters, shoulders hunched. I can just make out the utter contempt that flashes across his eyes. Still grinning, I scoot myself closer across the duvet.

“Well, you’re going to have to push those auditions back three weeks, baby, because we’re going away!”

“My god, you are loud at two A.M .”

“That’s what all my lovers have told me!” I yell, even louder.

His shoulders vibrate with his chuckle. “Okay, okay, I’m awake. Now, run this by me again? Is this the plot of your next book?”

I shake my head. “No, but it’s book-adjacent.

I, your best friend on this whole entire planet, in this lifetime and the next, have booked us a two-week-long, all-inclusive trip to—” I scrunch my gaze up at the ceiling, concentrating to make sure I get this right.

“— Sertulu. It’s this tiny island located near the Philippines, like somewhere to the right.

” I point to my own right to really solidify my geographical description.

“What—” Zwe scrubs one hand down his face. “—is that? Are you sure that’s even a real place? Is this some PR trip Netflix invited you on? Or did you fall for an online scam where this place promised you that, I dunno, Michael B. Jordan regularly holidays there?”

“How dare you, I’m not that gullible. And no, it’s very cool, I promise.

” I unlock my phone, the contrast between the room’s darkness and the suddenly lit screen making me feel like I’m staring into the sun.

“You’re not ready for this, I swear.” When the resort’s home page loads, I thrust the phone in front of Zwe’s face.

On reflex, he shields his eyes with the back of one hand.

“Oh my god, have you never heard of dark mode? What are you, a boomer?” Through squinted eyes, he takes my phone, and pulls the brightness bar to its lowest before actually reading anything.

“Since when did Ms. City Girl want to vacation on a remote island?”

“It’s at the sweet junction of ‘remote enough to feel peaceful’ and ‘not so remote that we’re wiping our asses with leaves we’ve foraged ourselves in the jungle,’” I explain.

“And naturally, I have booked us a suite at the island’s most exclusive resort.

Well, it’s the island’s only resort. But it’s still the most exclusive! Doesn’t it look incredible?”

He’s still scrolling through the Cerulean’s website. Even when he’s 80 percent asleep, Zwe’s poker face is inscrutable. He scrolls, clicks, scrolls some more, clicks, clicks, scrolls, clicks, scrolls, scrolls—and finally hands the phone back.

“Poe, it’s three in the morning.”

I blink. “Yes.”

“You booked us a trip to—” He nods at the now-black screen. “There. At three in the morning.”

“Yes. I was inspired .”

“By what? Did you start watching Lost ?”

I put the phone down and smooth the front of my T-shirt. I’m on a high, and I will not be yanked back to reality by Zwe’s quips. “Ironically, by my writer’s block.” When I glance back up at him, a small smirk is toying with the corners of his lips. “What?”

“Nothing,” he says, but as soon as he opens his mouth to speak, the smirk reveals itself.

“What?” I ask, determined to get it out of him.

“You know I love you.”

“Mm-hmmm.”

“I just…” He chuckles and shakes his head. “Over the past four months, I have watched you take up a lot of hobbies to, you know, be inspired. Obviously, some of them have been less, um, logical than others—”

“Are we still on about the Legos? Because I would say that, to an extent, constructing a quarter of a Taj Mahal did get some of the creative juices flowing. I wrote a full two hundred words that first night. It’s the most I’ve written in…

in…” Four months. I don’t need to say it out loud, though, because Zwe knows.

Because he’s lived it, right alongside me in our two-and-a-half-bedroom (the half is our converted office space) fourth-floor walk-up.

There were the aforementioned Legos, which came after the violin, but before the cross-stitching. There has also been the ukulele, pottery making, jigsaw puzzles, friendship bracelets, an eight-week planting class that I attended a whopping two times, and bird-watching.

And I know this trip is (arguably) more radical than jigsaws and misshapen “mugs,” but at this point, I need radical.

“Maybe we sleep on it,” Zwe offers. If you looked up “the voice of reason” in the dictionary, you’d find a picture of him, clean-shaven face with a small mole on his right cheek and all, two dimples tacking up either end of his smile.

I press my lips and look down at the comforter.

“It’s nonrefundable, isn’t it?” He sighs.

“Maybe.”

“There was a refundable option and you deliberately picked the nonrefundable one, didn’t you?”

At that, I look up and hold a finger to stand my ground. “Between flights and accommodation, that would’ve been close to an extra five hundred dollars. Five. Hundred.”

He flicks the tip of my finger. “You realize I know the exact number of your book advance, not to mention your film deal,” he counters, but without much conviction.

Zwe is the most careful person I know when it comes to anything, including money, and I know that he knows that I know he would’ve had a small aneurysm if I’d paid that much extra for the refundable option.

“We haven’t had a best-friend trip in ages!” I point out. Despite his admonishing side spiel, I’m still grinning. “It’s going to be, as the kids say, epic .”

“What kids?” he asks, bemused, and I know he’s beginning to tip over to my side.

“The TikTokers.”

“When did you say we were leaving?”

“Our flight is next Friday at ten thirty-two P.M .”

“And what do we do with the bookstore for—” He glances around as though there’s an invisible calendar on his nightstand. “How long did you say the trip was?”

“Two weeks. Well, sixteen days. But basically two weeks.”

“The bookstore—”

“Will be fine.” I rush to speak first. “I would bet money your parents will agree that you deserve a holiday, and that they can handle the bookstore on their own for two weeks. It was theirs first, remember? Last time I checked, it still is.”

He glares at me. A real glare, not a sleep-shrouded squinting of the eyes. “You are the worst.”

“Oh no, how dare I,” I say, flattening my voice. “I’m sorry I booked us on a two-week luxury island getaway with first-class tickets.”

“First-class—” He takes in a deep breath, and I bare my teeth in an innocent grimace. “You know first- and business-class tickets are the products of a capitalist, classist system.”

“Yes, but it’s a nine-hour flight. I would like to be cozy in a horizontal bed for a nine-hour flight. We don’t have teenagers’ backs anymore, old man.” I poke one of his biceps. “These bones be creaking.”

A ridge forms between his brows, and I still, knowing he’s doing that Zwe thing where he comes at it from angles, making sure he’s two—better yet, ideally three—steps ahead of any possible mishap.

It’s why he’s my favorite beta reader—there hasn’t been a single plot hole that Zwe Aung Win has missed.

That, and the fact that even with my shittiest drafts, he always knows how to deliver criticism with kindness.

I haven’t been the best best friend lately, I know this.

Between the editorial meetings and Netflix production meetings and publicity meetings and the cumulative meeting-induced panic attacks and the erratic writing schedules and habits and my “weird” hobbies, I haven’t been there for Zwe like I need to be.

To be honest, if we didn’t live together, I don’t know how often I’d have seen him over the last few months.

He’s taken point on all the cleaning and cooking and general keeping-the-apartment-in-a-livable-state-ing, and although Zwe has never been someone who explicitly complains about anything, I know it must be taking a toll.

For instance, at one point I realized that his morning jogs were about twenty minutes longer than usual, which was strange because Zwe likes to divide up his daily routine into as specific time increments as possible.

When I asked him about it, he’d murmured something along the lines of Have I?

Didn’t notice. My stamina must be building up, which was a lie because I know Zwe runs to de-stress, upping his exercise whenever he needs to really work through lingering tension.

It stung to know that, by process of elimination, I was the thing in his life that was causing him stress.