Page 33 of Here for a Good Time

TWELVE

“So Poe, what book are you working on now? Or do you not want to talk about it?” Leila adds quickly.

It’s the first time either of them has directly addressed me, but I suspect that for her, it’s more because she’s worried she’ll accidentally say the wrong thing.

We’re weaving through the trees on the coastline, and every now and then, I look around and continue to be stunned by the picturesqueness of this place.

It seems wrong to feel so miserable here.

“No, I don’t mind,” I say. I can’t tell if she’s genuinely interested or making small talk, but I don’t look at her, staring down at the path as I have for the past however many minutes.

I don’t want to trip over something again, and more importantly, I don’t have to worry about accidentally making eye contact with Zwe. “It’s about time travel.”

“No way!” Leila gasps. “That sounds incredible!”

She sounds so sincerely excited that I break my own “no looking up” rule. Leila’s face is split into a grin, and she begins gesticulating with her hands to prompt me to tell her more.

“Thanks,” I laugh. Fleetingly, I’m annoyed that she’s one of those people that you can never stay mad at for too long.

“What’s the plot? Sell me this book.”

Automatically, I look back down. It’s humiliating, but I’m worried that if I maintain eye contact while I tell her, she’ll see it written in 12-point font across my face that I don’t actually know how to “sell” this half-baked “plot.”

“It’s about this manhole that allows the main character to time travel. She becomes obsessed with it and keeps making changes in her present-day life and then travels to the future to see that’s brought her closer to curating her perfect life,” I say, almost by rote at this point.

“How does she discover the manhole?”

“Oh, um, she was just… walking one day. To… work.” Which sounded like a fine idea when I wrote it, but now that I say it out loud, it’s embarrassingly clear that I need a more exciting inciting incident. Which is something that I should know. It’s something that I do know.

“Where does she time travel to first?” Leila continues. “Does she arrive at, like, whatever point in time she’s thinking about? How does she get back to the present?”

It’s not that Leila’s done anything wrong.

In fact, being earnestly excited about their latest work in progress is one of the greatest gifts you can give a writer.

However, in a matter of seconds, I’m transported back to my last signing at Sar Oat Sin where that girl—what was her name?

Cho? Chu?—asked me about my next book with the same enthusiasm, and I really, really wished she hadn’t.

I also don’t want to talk about my book right now. In fact, I don’t want to talk about anything with anybody. But I don’t want Zwe to think that I’m brushing off Leila, so I force myself to hold the conversation.

“I’m… still working out the details,” I mumble.

“How did you come up with the idea?” she asks.

This, I can answer. “I tried to think of the kind of plot and themes my readers would like and arrived at this. I mean, time travel is always fun, right?”

“It sounds really interesting,” she says. “I’m even more sorry now that we had to leave your backpack behind. Did you already have a lot written?”

“Nah, just a couple of chapters. Like I said, I’m still figuring out the details, it’s all a mess. Honestly, they weren’t even that good.” I mean it as a semi-ha-ha self-deprecatory statement, but the edges feel too raw on my tongue.

She gives me a cursory “I’m sure that’s not true,” to which I return a polite nod and tight smile.

“Have you read any of it?” she asks Zwe.

“No,” he replies instantly. Without realizing, I wait for him to elaborate; my stomach pinches when he doesn’t.

Because with Zwe, it’s typically No, but .

No, but I’ve been pestering her for ages to let me.

No, but only because I haven’t successfully hacked into her laptop yet.

No, but I already know it’s going to blow everyone’s minds.

“I see,” is all Leila says.

We resume walking in quiet until Zwe asks, “Hey, do you think your family heard the shots? Earlier?”

“Not sure,” Leila says. “Even if they did, they might just assume it’s some new resort activity. Guests ask for the weirdest things sometimes.”

“Oh yeah? What’s the weirdest request you’ve ever received?”

She blubbers air through her lips. “Off the top of my head?” After considering for a bit, she says, “Oh shit, how could I forget? We were once asked to host a, wait for it, dog wedding. As in, two dogs got married.”

A shocked, hearty laugh comes out of Zwe. “You’re kidding. Did you guys actually do it?”

She shrugs and rolls her lips in a What can ya do expression. “Here at the Cerulean, our job is to curate your perfect getaway.”

Zwe waves both hands, and then makes a time-out signal.

“Walk me through this. Did you know this dog wedding was happening beforehand, or was it a case of guests bringing their dogs and springing it on you last minute that they wanted to marry their dogs? Was it two different guests, or did both dogs belong to the same guest? Were there other dogs in attendance? I have to know everything.”

Leila explains that yes, they did know in advance, because the whole event had a wedding planner behind it, and yes, there were other dogs in attendance, all of whom belonged to the betrothed dogs’ owners’ friends and “carpooled” across two private jets.

The two dog newlyweds belonged to a couple of human newlyweds who, on their honeymoon, had the brilliant idea that their canines should also be joined in holy matrimony.

“Do I want to know how much all of that cost?” Zwe asks.

Leila’s grimace speaks for itself. “There was a wagyu wedding cake. The ‘guests’ could pick between salmon and lamb chops. Oh, and some of the dogs in attendance, naturally, had food intolerances, so we had to prepare special plates for them. Our head chef has worked in multiple Michelin-starred kitchens, and this was the closest I’ve ever seen to her almost quitting. ”

“Your job is turning out to be both the weirdest and most interesting role I’ve ever encountered,” Zwe says. “Do you like it?”

I’ve inconspicuously put myself behind the two of them again, and from my angle, I notice a slight straightening of Leila’s spine. Her gait slows, like she’s really thinking about this. “If I answer honestly, do you promise not to report it back to Sandra?” she asks at last.

“Promise,” Zwe says.

She gives a dark chuckle. “It depends on the week. I mainly took the job to stay close to my family, and the majority of the guests we get are great, but every once in a while, you get some real pieces of work. But it pays well, and my parents rely on me for most of their money, so—” She finishes on another What can ya do shrug.

Zwe nods. “That’s really admirable of you.” His tone shifts with concern. “Wait, what if your family goes down to the pier? Like, to get to the mainland—”

She shakes her head. “I appreciate the concern, but it’s okay, they don’t use the pier.

They’re not allowed on resort property, so they have their own makeshift dock.

It’s closer to the trail that connects the village to the beach.

Or at least, it was. That’s a whole thing we’re having to sort out. But they’ll be okay, they always are.”

“Okay, that’s good,” he says on a sigh of relief, and she shoots him a grateful smile.

“You work at your parents’ bookstore, right?” she asks. “What do you think you’d do if they didn’t own that store? Or sold it? Do you think you’d still be selling books?”

Without taking a beat, he replies, “I’d do a PhD,” and the speed at which he says it makes me jerk back.

Since when has Zwe wanted to do a PhD? Sure, sometimes we’ve joked that his dream job would just be “Statistics,” but I didn’t think he was serious about it.

“Oh, yeah?” Leila’s asking. “In what?”

“Statistics. It’s what I did my undergrad in.”

“Ew, you want to do math?” she says, wrinkling her nose. “You were giving off hot nerd vibes, but I didn’t realize the nerd part of your whole schtick was that strong.”

“Hey, stats isn’t just math!” Zwe shoots back.

He’s grinning like a teenager on a first date, and I feel the overwhelming need to climb up a tree and give them some privacy.

“It… makes sense. It helps everything, anything, make sense. But ideally, I’d do a PhD and become a teacher.

I know it’s corny, but I’d love to show kids how exciting math is. ”

“That’s not corny. Do your parents know you want to go back to college and get into teaching? What did they say?”

He slaps a mosquito that landed on his arm. “They don’t know. If they did, they’d make me go, but I wouldn’t feel good about leaving them on their own. Especially now that they’re older.”

“Family, right?” she says quietly. He nods, and when they look at each other, there’s a silent exchange of understanding that makes me return to staring at the ground.

It was one thing to feel the emotional distance increase between me and Zwe.

But to feel that and see him actively get closer to somebody else?

I feel like I’m going to be sick. “And how did you two meet?”

I look up right as Zwe glances back at me. Something jolts me from the inside when our eyes meet, because it’s like I’m looking at someone I don’t know. Because I don’t know this Zwe. I’ve met so many versions of him over the years, but never this one. He still looks so… angry? No, that’s not it.

Passive.

He looks passive, like I’m another guest at the resort he just met today. Like he forgot I was even walking two feet behind him this whole time.

“School,” I say. “Elementary.”

“Aaawww, so since you were babies!” Leila gushes. “Who approached whom?”