Page 32 of Here for a Good Time

I’m mad at myself for tripping and injuring myself and slowing us all down.

For booking this trip at all and being the reason we’re in this mess in the first place.

I can’t stop pulling at the thread now that I’ve started.

I’m mad that while Vik was wrong that I was never going to be a published author, being a one-hit wonder doesn’t exactly put me in the right either.

I’m mad that I might have to go back to a life of selling books that other people have written, only this time, it’ll be with the knowledge that I let it all slip from the palm of my hand.

And I am so mad that I can’t write another book, that by the looks of it, I will never write another book, and all of this is because I couldn’t write one more fucking book.

But none of that even fucking matters, I realize. Because it really, truly doesn’t.

The thing I’m most mad about, as Zwe just pointed out, is that I’d become so engrossed in my own writer’s block—which, in the grand scheme of things, isn’t even a real problem—that I didn’t even know my best friend had been looking at buying a house, or that he’d gotten his heart broken.

That’s the thing that’s going to keep me up at night for the rest of my life.

“I’m sorry,” I whisper.

“Save it,” he says, and even though I should’ve been aware of this beforehand, for the first time, I register how cutting my words had been.

Zwe doesn’t really hate people, but he hates Vik, and I knew what I was doing when I compared the two of them.

He begins heading back toward the bungalow, and I fall in step behind him.

When we reach her, Leila looks at me, at Zwe, at me, back at Zwe, then away at some vague point on the horizon.

“I’m sorry to make things awkward, but we need to get moving,” she says slowly.

She points up at the sky, which has become the shade of dark that, if you didn’t have access to a working watch or phone (which we don’t), would leave you uncertain as to whether it was afternoon or evening.

“If they don’t catch us first, the storm will.

Add all of that water to all of that mud, and the ground turns dangerous real fast.”

“We need to weather the storm,” Zwe says.

“Literally,” Leila says with a small chuckle, but Zwe’s face remains as unmoving as the stone statues by the reception hall.

“Where?” I ask.

“One of the villas?” Zwe suggests.

“They might have access to the security system,” Leila says.

“All the rooms and villas have security cameras outside. There’s a tower on the other side of the island.

” She makes a half-circle gesture to her right.

“It’s where guests can go zip-lining. It’s a bit of a walk, but it’s not as long as the hiking path, and it’s all on flat ground.

If we hurry, we’ll make it right before the storm hits.

” As though proving to all of us that she knows what she’s talking about, a huge wave hits the shore right after her last word.

“The tide’s already risen some more,” Zwe notes.

“Do you think help will come before the storm arrives?” I ask.

She shrugs. “I don’t know. Communicating via radio channels is tricky around here at the best of times.

With the way the weather is right now, the supply boat’s comms system might be glitching and they might not be able to talk to anyone until they reach land.

By the time the boat gets back to the mainland and notifies the authorities, who assemble their own rescue operations, they might decide that it’s safer to wait until the storm’s over.

Either way, we need to shelter in place until then.

We might have a view of the pier from the tower, so we could keep an eye out. ”

“Then we should get going,” Zwe says, and, without so much as a glance at me, starts in the direction that Leila indicated.

I stay behind, watching him and Leila walk side by side.

Their mouths are moving but the wind has become louder, making them look like two actors in a silent movie I can only watch from my seat.

She says something, he replies, she says something else, and he smiles.

I had never been popular in school, but I’d also never cared because I never had to do anything—group projects, lunch, school dances—alone, because I’d always had Zwe.

This is the first time I’m seeing him from this perspective, up ahead with somebody else without even turning around to check that I’m still there.

I can only think of one time when we had a big blowout.

It was right after we’d moved into our current place—back when we were still renting—and, because it only came partly furnished, we went couch shopping.

After we sat and bounced on literally every single couch in the store, I voted for a smallish teal L-shape number.

It wasn’t the most comfortable one we’d tried and the quality wasn’t great, so I knew those cushions were going to sink in approximately six months, but I liked the color, and, as I pointed out to Zwe, the moderate price tag meant we wouldn’t have to feel too bad about eventually throwing it out.

He, however, wanted a larger brown one, the one that, admittedly, had been our collective favorite as soon as we sat down.

It was made with the kind of high-quality smooth, supple leather that would only look better over time, its accumulating creases and scratches adding to the overall character and evidence that this was a sofa that was loved.

It’s too expensive, I said.

We spend half of our time watching TV, reading, or writing on the couch, he’d said. It’s an investment, and it’s in our budget.

Just barely. And think of the hassle when one of us moves. What are we going to do, saw it in half? I pointed out, thinking about Vik and Julia, both of whom we’d been dating long enough to know that these were partners we could see ourselves with for the long haul.

Anger laced through Zwe’s features, and he told me that he didn’t want a shitty couch to be the centerpiece of our living room, and I said that it wasn’t shitty .

Neither of us are yellers so it’s not exactly that we got into a full-on screaming match, but we did start arguing right there, surrounded by couches and other customers who steered clear of our particular aisle.

I asked him why he was being so dramatic over a fucking couch and he said that it was his home too and we both had equal say, and round and round in circles we went.

In the end, we drew straws and ended up with the leather couch—the plush, criminally comfortable one that I write from every day to this day.

Sometimes I fall asleep mid-writing with my laptop still open, and when I wake up, my laptop is closed and on the coffee table, and I’m tucked under our pink knit throw, the brown leather so soft it feels like I’m sleeping on a cloud.

It’s the couch I was depressed and crying on when I got the idea for Give Me a Reason, and later, the one I was sitting on when my book auction closed, the one I was eating popcorn on when the Netflix offer came through.

I pointed it out to Zwe once—how almost every big milestone of my life has taken place while I’ve sat on that couch.

So it was a good investment? he said with a chuckle, the closest he’s ever come to saying “I told you so.”

I’ve never thought that our friendship would sever, but that afternoon, in a corner of Sofa, So Good, it stretched to an extent that I didn’t think it ever would.

In those twenty minutes, I saw an alternative version of us where we didn’t get each other the way we did and always had, and I thought, My god, what a terrible life that would be.

This time, though, it feels like I single-handedly overstretched us and now there’s a rip right in the middle of the fabric, the kind that you can patch up with time and patience and the right tools, but will leave behind a permanent stitch, a reminder that at one point, I tore it.

This trip was supposed to make us close again, and yet here we are, unable to even stomach walking alongside each other.

Way to go, Poe .

I add “pick a holiday” to the increasingly long list of things that should be easy for an adult, but, it turns out, I have no fucking clue how to do, right there under “be a half-decent friend.”