Page 24 of Here for a Good Time

My screen opens to the page with the 12-point font, but every time I try to type a sentence, my vision goes blurry. The only thought going through my head is terrible and macabre and makes me want to curl up into the fetal position: What if this is my last night alive?

I stare at my laptop, suddenly wanting to laugh at myself for thinking I’d be able to work on a book while hiding in the forest. I know it’d have killed me to just leave it behind, but right now all it’s doing is making me feel stupid and more useless. Once again, I can’t do anything right.

The thought pops up before I can usher it away: Should I write a goodbye letter to my parents?

As though the words could jump out and attack me, I slam my laptop shut, not even worrying about the screen.

It’s been in the back of my mind this whole time: What will happen to my parents if something happens to me?

Thankfully, I don’t mean in a financial sense, but mentally.

Emotionally. Besides Zwe and Soraya, my mom is my best friend.

And I promised my dad that next time I was in Bangkok, we would go see this Green Day tribute act he’s obsessed with.

And we were all going to go visit my cousins and aunts and uncles in Mandalay next Thingyan.

The realization that I might not be able to do any of that would bring me to my knees if I weren’t sitting down already.

I wipe away a stray tear from my cheek.

Positive thoughts. Manifesting an escape safe and unharmed.

I put my laptop to the side, and because this is the only other thing I can do besides write, I take the book I was reading, flip to my earmarked page, and pick up where I left off.

“How was writing?”

“Jesus,” I exhale. “You scared me. And I… wrapped up writing for the day. It was fine.”

“Uh-huh,” Zwe says, his tone hinting at suspicion. “How’s the book? Do you know who she was sent to assassinate yet?”

“What?”

“Your book.” He gestures at the book I’m holding. “The main character. Who was her target?” he asks, confused that he’s having to explain the plot of the book I was reading to me. “Do we know yet?”

“Oh. No, not yet,” I say, recomposing myself. “It’s hinting that it was the main guy, the love interest. But I dunno, it feels like too obvious of a plot twist.”

Zwe sits down, and I notice that both of the reusable shopping bags that I’d dug out from my backpack and gave him are full. “Good job,” I say, nodding down at them. “Leila would be proud.”

It’s not meant as a dig, although I’m not sure if I mean it as a compliment either. But he smiles as though it is a compliment, and says, “Thanks, it actually wasn’t as difficult as I was worried it would be.” Then, “Who would you make it?”

“Huh?”

“If you were writing that book, who would you have her as signed to assassinate? What would be a good plot twist in your opinion?”

“I’d change the whole plot,” I say immediately, because I’ve been pondering this exact question for the last few chapters.

Zwe’s face morphs with surprise, and he nods at me to explain.

“They’re rival assassins from rival organizations, and they don’t realize that they’ve both been assigned to kill the same target until they see each other on the plane.

And their mutual target is this big deal in their industry, and they each want to be the person to kill him, so they also keep preventing the other one from killing him. ”

Zwe nods slowly as he considers it. “Would yours still be a romance? Where’s the romance plot?”

“They have history. They went to the same assassin training program where they used to date or were best friends who—” I pause to swallow, my eyes instinctively flitting away for a beat.

“—had a whole will they, won’t they thing.

But they had a huge falling-out and eventually got recruited by different organizations.

And they’ve spent the last few years circling in and out of each other’s orbits. ”

“Does the whole book take place on the plane?” He tilts his head up, squints like he’s playing it out like a movie in his head.

“That’s a small setting. How would you maintain enough action in such a confined space?

” This is why I love talking to Zwe about my writing, because he always keeps pushing, keeps asking How?

and Why? and What next? and forces me to expand the story.

It’s like having a second editor. It is having a second editor.

“That’s a good point.” I chew on my bottom lip as I consider.

“It could open at the airport. The check-in counter. The narration is from the main character’s point of view, so she spots the other assassin first, quickly works out why he’s on this plane as well, and then maybe pulls some strings so they’re seated near each other so she can keep an eye on him.

And the majority of the book would be on the plane, but I think that’d be good for me. ”

“In what way?”

“It’d push me. Like, as a writer. But I could also insert flashback chapters to when they were in the training program together to break things up a bit.”

Like I’ve aced a test I didn’t realize I was taking, Zwe leans forward at my answer, smile stretched, dimples deep. “Has it worked?”

I blink. “Has what worked?”

“Have I distracted you from whatever catastrophic thought you were having when I found you? After all, nothing distracts you like a good book, right?”

His words are a stun gun right to the center of my heart. “Thank you,” I say, now wanting to cry for a new reason.

“Anytime. But also, I think you should write a romance novel. You’re clearly great at it.”

I barely register that this is the second time he’s made this same ridiculous suggestion.

His face is so close to mine that I can see the specks of dirt on his cheeks and nose, probably from his food foraging.

For a few minutes there, I forgot that we were stranded in the middle of nowhere with no food, water, or shelter; instead, it felt like we were back home, me tossing out a plot, him asking the questions that will help round out the story so I can see it better.

That’s the thing—we’ve done this so many times, and yet, right now, this time, it feels different. For various reasons.

You make everything better, I think. Whenever there is a terrible, awful, shitty situation, you are the person I want to get through it with.

“I think you’re trying to project your real-life horniness onto my books,” I finally say, but not without having to swallow past a star that’s become lodged in my throat.

Zwe shifts back, like he accidentally got zapped by an invisible electric fence. “I’m sorry? You think I’m horny right now?” he asks, but I note how he diverts his gaze.

“I think—” I raise my brows up and down in the general direction where Leila and Antonio went. “—the feeling’s mutual.”

Zwe follows my gaze, looks back at me, back at the woods, at me, and finally barks out laughing.

Except I know his laugh. And this isn’t a genuine You are so off base, it’s hilarious laugh.

This is his defensive laugh. The one that he’d used to laugh around the kids at our high school who made “friendly” jokes about his weight.

“Leila?” he asks, but not without glancing around to make sure that he didn’t accidentally summon her.

“Leila,” I confirm. “Promise me something?”

“No,” he says.

“Promise me that if you two are going to do it tonight, you’ll go off somewhere far away so that Antonio and I won’t be awakened in the middle of the night and be scarred for life.”

“I’m not going to do it with Leila tonight.”

“Ah,” I say, lifting my head in understanding. “Building up the tension so that you can have celebratory sex when we’re rescued? I get it. Make her wait for it, tiger.”

With just the last rays of sun illuminating him from behind, I can’t discern the contours of his face as well as I’d like to, but I think I catch the flexing of his jaw, or at the least, a slight tightening of his muscles.

The dimples are gone. “Fine, you wanna play this game? I’ll play.

” His reply takes me by surprise. “Would it be the worst thing in the world if I did have a, let’s say, crush, on Leila? ”

The star in my throat pushes deeper, its edges even sharper than I initially thought. “If you did, ” I say, and clear my throat to get rid of the hoarseness. “No, it wouldn’t. I would be very happy for you. Because she’s great, and you deserve someone who’s as hot and smart as you are.”

“At least I’m not texting Julia anymore,” he remarks.

“That is a very good point.”

“What’s a good point?” Antonio asks.

“Noth—” Zwe starts.

“We were talking about dating,” I jump in. Zwe throws me a glare, and I give him a subtle I’ve got this nod.

“What about dating?” Antonio asks. “And how does that relate to a good point?”

“Before we came here, Zwe was in this on-off relationship with his ex,” I say. “But now they’re very much off, which was the ‘good point’ I was referring to.”

“What happened?” Leila asks.

Zwe does not like talking about his personal life.

Even his parents never got the full story about him and Julia.

In fact, I don’t think anyone in his life—apart from me, and that’s only because we live together—would know if he was in a serious relationship until the day he announced his engagement.

“We made sense until—” Zwe shrugs. “—we just… didn’t. We had… different perspectives on things.”

Leila starts digging the pit, but I notice that she’s not showing us her face, and I would bet my last granola bar that it’s deliberate. After all, who among us hasn’t busied ourselves with a fire pit in order to hold back our unbridled interest in our new crush’s last relationship?