Page 16 of Here for a Good Time

Zwe’s eyes are unreadable behind his sunglasses. I can’t even tell if they’re open or closed as he lies on his back, face tilted right up at the sun. “If there’s anyone who doesn’t need to prove themselves to anybody, it’s you,” he finally says, delivering a gut punch of a reply.

“How did you do it?” I ask.

“Do what?”

“Always believe in me. Believe that one day my books would lead to—” I throw my arms open.

“—this. You’re the most level-headed person in the world.

How did you keep on believing that I’d actually do it when all the evidence was pointing to the contrary?

When even my own fiancé eventually viewed it as a pipe dream? ”

Between the two of us, I’m the dreamer, the one who believes in Manifestation with a capital M, who grew up blindly pointing at my bookshelf and declaring I’m going to have copies of my own book one day .

In contrast, Zwe has always, always been a numbers guy, had become an accountant because he didn’t trust anyone else to look after his parents’ money.

I’ve always thought it was more than slightly unfair that his younger brother got to move to Hong Kong to try to become a fine dining chef there while Zwe was stuck looking after the family business and their parents, but Zwe’s never given any indication that he dreams of a life more similar to his brother’s.

I don’t know how much of it is because he’s genuinely happy where he is, and how much is because he feels that it’s his eldest son duty.

“Who the fuck cares what Vik thought?” Zwe props himself up on his elbow, and I’m startled by the way his tone has stretched, like my last sentence has left him a millimeter away from snapping.

Seeing my expression, he raises a hand to apologize.

I forgive him, because I know how he feels about Vik.

“It wasn’t difficult to believe in you, Poe,” Zwe says.

He pushes his sunglasses on top of his head, as though he wants me to see in his eyes that he’s telling the truth.

“I read your drafts. Of course it was always going to happen. It was just a matter of time,” he says as he leans forward and reaches for my pendant, swiping one thumb across the words.

The back of his hand makes contact with my chest, and on instinct I look down at where his hand is resting between the turquoise triangle cups of my bikini top.

Zwe nudges my chin back up with his thumb but doesn’t move his hand, and when I raise my head again, I’m looking straight into his brown eyes.

Most of his hair is dry now, but the roots are still slightly damp, making him look like he’s just been done up for a swimsuit photo shoot.

There’s some sand stuck to his right shoulder that I wonder if I should brush off.

“You did great today,” he says. “Maybe we can graduate to paddleboarding tomorrow.”

“Baby steps,” I say. “I’m glad you came on this trip with me.”

“Would you have done it with anyone else?” He retracts his hand, and my skin burns where his had made contact. I tell myself that I should’ve put on more sunscreen.

“No,” I answer truthfully. “It was you or no one else.”

Without saying anything else, he smiles, as though that’s exactly the answer he was hoping for.

After dinner that night, we make our way to the cliffside bar, and I text Leila to ask if she, Antonio, and Eka can join us. Almost instantly, three dots appear.

“What’d they say?” Zwe asks.

“She says they’ll sit this one out. I think they feel weird about getting a drink with us.”

“You know, I get it, but it also makes me feel…” Zwe looks around at the warmly lit open space.

“Uncomfortable?” I offer.

He nods. “I’d like to think we’re friends by now. Or at least pals.”

“Eh, we’ll rope them into more activities tomorrow. Oooh, maybe we can go paragliding.”

Zwe raises his Moscow mule at me. “Now there’s a plan.”

Silence settles into the air between us, inserting itself into the crevices between the sound of the waves below.

Smooth jazz is playing on low via the speakers near the bar, and there’s a random clinking of glass whenever the bartender shifts bottles around.

Neither of us says a word until we’ve finished our drinks and order a second round.

“It’s like another world out here,” I murmur over my glass. “It feels like… anything’s possible.”

“What do you mean?” Zwe’s voice is also low, as though there’s an unspoken rule that we can’t be louder than the sea.

“It feels like… none of the messes we have waiting for us back home ever existed.”

“Like what?”

I swallow, guilt pulling at a tender nerve as I ruefully think, Here she goes again ; it’s a broken record by this point, but I can’t make it stop.

I sound like that friend who won’t quit moaning about her breakup, but when you are the person who’s going through the breakup, it feels like your lens has shrunk into this tiny pinhole and it’s the only thing through which you can process the world.

“Like my next book. Like… like the fact that I read an early copy of Pim Charoensuk’s book, and it’s good . ”

It’s the first time I’ve said it out loud. Every single emotion I’ve been trying to keep at bay washes over me as soon as the words leave my mouth: anger, jealousy, shame, fear.

“I didn’t know you’d read it,” Zwe says quietly.

“I was asked if I’d consider blurbing it.” My chuckle makes the line sound menacing, as though this whole time, I’ve been plotting to sneak a bad blurb onto Pim Charoensuk’s cover.

“Are you?”

“I… don’t know,” I tell him honestly. I don’t tell him that it’s not a matter of whether or not I like the book, because I actually love it; I don’t tell him that I’m still not sure because of more terrible, selfish reasons. “I’m still considering it.”

“That’s good,” he says.

I wrinkle my nose, confused. “ Good? What do you mean ‘good’?”

Zwe smiles at me, the alcohol already painting his cheekbones the lightest shade of pink.

When I catch myself thinking How does every single color look so good on you?

, I know the liquor has entered my bloodstream, too.

“I mean that I know you don’t have to blurb it, and that a part of you doesn’t want to.

” My lips have parted a mere millimeter when he reaches out, his forefinger already hushing my protest of a white lie.

“It’s okay that you don’t want to. Competing for survival is a human instinct.

But the fact that you didn’t outright refuse is proof that somewhere deep down, she’s still there. ”

His finger, still on my lips, smushes my words together as I ask, “That who’s still there?”

With zero warning, Zwe’s finger slides down the middle of my chin, my neck, makes a sharp left turn on my chest, stopping at the spot between my collarbone and where my breast technically starts.

When he presses the skin there, it’s as though he’s pressed right into the center of my heart, causing my body to stand to attention, the cool metal of the stool’s back pressing into my own.

“That little book nerd I became friends with.”

I let out a nervous laugh, wondering if he can feel the rate at which my heart is thumping right now. It feels like it’s asking for something new with every beat: Stay. Yes. More. Please. You. What. If?

Which is all so ridiculous. Zwe and I fit, but not like this.

He’s numbers and logic, I’m all emotions, the kind of person who cries at YouTube videos of senior dogs getting adopted.

He’s always held a steady job, and I want to be an artist even if it means I don’t know when or where my next paycheck will come from.

He arrives at the bookstore at 8 A.M . sharp every morning and leaves at 7 P.M .

, seven days a week; I book spontaneous island getaways.

It’s not that I think I’m not good enough for him, but that if you merged our five-year plans, there would be very little overlap.

We would be “quirky” together. But quirky can’t be sustained for a lifetime, and I don’t want to be his—or anyone’s—quirky ex.

We’ve built a life that’s good and solid, and Zwe would be the first person to say that it’s not worth risking destroying something good and solid for something new and exciting that has a high likelihood of ultimately failing.

One of us would need to find a new place to live, I wouldn’t be able to come to the bookstore anymore, our families would feel weird about staying in contact with one another.

And the thing is, even if I could convince myself that those are all things we could overcome, there’s also the embarrassing fact that if Zwe wanted to ask me out on a date, he would have by now.

Because he knows. He knows how I feel, or at least felt.

There’s a reason he never brought up my failed attempt at kissing him, that he never asked me out even after Vik and I ended.

Maybe sometimes he wonders about all of these things too, but clearly, he’s reached the same practical conclusion I have.

Maybe in another lifetime, we make sense.

Maybe in another lifetime, I’m as pragmatic as him and we meet in an accounting class, or he’s also an artist, a painter or a screenwriter.

In that lifetime, people remark that they’ve never met two people who were so perfectly made for each other.

In that lifetime, our biggest point of conflict is that I want a dog and he wants a cat, or we can’t agree on what color to paint our living room.

It’s the alcohol, I remind myself. Take alcohol and remote island paradise and a very long dry spell of the coital nature, and ta-da: you get horny Poe who very easily could’ve had a sex dream about Prince Eric.

“Is ‘little book nerd’ a compliment?” I ask.

“Of course it is,” Zwe says. “I’m really proud of you, you know.”

“For what? Not trying to sabotage my new literary nemesis?”

A shadow falls across his face, and it’s not from the lamplight. “You know, you’re… wrong. There’s no way Pim is your literary nemesis.”

“Feels like it.”

“You—” His finger pushes into my skin again, and again I trip over my breath, my body forgetting how to do anything on instinct. In this moment, Zwe is the instinct. “—are unmatchable. No one can be your nemesis because no one comes close. You’re just so…”

“So what?” I ask.

“So… you.”

For a fleeting moment, I wonder what would happen if I shot my shot a second time and leaned over, tried again. But even with the cushion of intoxication, I remember how deep that rejection cut the first time, the hairline fracture it created never having fully healed.

The way he’s looking at me now could almost convince me that he’s asking me to try again. Almost.

A needy part of me whispers that it doesn’t have to be anything serious, that it could only be for tonight, and then all of it—the good and the bad—will be erased in the blue light of dawn.

But it feels terribly like cannonballing into the ocean from a cliff’s edge: a thrilling story if it works out the way you envision, an irreversible tragedy if it doesn’t.

Silly. Silly girl with her silly thoughts.

We’re both tipsy bordering on drunk right now, and I’ve never quite figured out if the things people say and do when they’re inebriated are what they truly want, or their biggest mistakes.

“What are you thinking?” Zwe asks, face illuminated by the soft yellow glow of the small table lamp.

Everything.

Too many things.

“Nothing,” the coward lies.