Page 42 of Here for a Good Time

“That you weren’t over him.” My jaw drops at the statement.

“You still kept bringing him up,” Zwe explains.

“About how he didn’t think you could do this or that, how you wished he could see you now.

I was scared that you were still in love with him, and that even if we did get together, I’d always be the rebound or the…

second option. The guy you settled for because you couldn’t get the one you actually wanted. ”

“You’re an idiot,” I say without thinking, and Zwe laughs in surprise. “You are!” I repeat. “Settle? You think you’d be the second option? He was the second option! He was the one I would’ve settled for.”

Now it’s Zwe’s turn to look astonished. “Really?” he asks, sounding the most vulnerable I’ve ever heard him.

“Really,” I say. “The reason I keep bringing him up is because there’s a part of me that is still stuck on how little he thought of me, how little he believed in me.

And yeah, that’s clearly something I need to work on in therapy.

But how could you—” I swallow, unable to believe that this is what’s been going through his head this whole time.

“When Vik broke up with me and told me I was never going to become an author, I was heartbroken and I felt so small, but I also thought, I hope Zwe doesn’t secretly think this too.

But you always showed me that you didn’t, and that’s what kept me going. That you believed that I could.”

I smile, and he smiles back, and my god, the way my heart pinches in on itself. “That’s why it hurt so much that you tore my book apart,” I say. “Yours is the only opinion that ever matters to me.”

He shakes his head at himself. “I’m sorry. I was angry. I’m so, so sorry.”

“I’m sorry, too,” I say. Because this is our love: love that knows when to bend and bow in humility so it doesn’t break.

I can’t tell if the buzzing in my skull is from the adrenaline or the sensation of overwhelming love, the kind that would make you, I dunno, write about it.

“I want to write a romance novel,” I blurt out.

Zwe looks like he can’t tell if that’s the setup for a joke. “Okay?”

“If we’re admitting things,” I say, somewhat embarrassed, “I… I do want to write a romance novel. You’re right. A time-traveling manhole is so stupid.”

“It really is.”

“Okay, you don’t have to rub it in.” He meets my scowl with a chuckle. “It… it turns out I already knew more about love than I thought I did.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah,” I say, a fresh wave of tears blurring my vision. “It turns out everything I needed to know about love was sleeping on the other side of the wall every night. God, that’s cheesy, isn’t it? It’s all right, I’ll work on it.”

“I think love is built on a solid foundation of cheese,” he says with a wink.

“But… what if my agent hates it? What if my publisher hates it? What if no one takes me as a serious writer anymore?”

“Fuck all that. You do what you did before. What you’re doing now.”

“Which is?”

He smiles, and I already know that that’s all the encouragement I’m going to need. “You keep going. No matter what. No matter how long it takes, you keep going like you always do.”

“Little by little. Because good things take time,” I whisper.

A good book.

A good love.

When his gaze drops to the pendant around my neck, it’s like he’s set every inch of my skin ablaze. “They do,” he says.

“I love you,” he says. “You have no idea what you do to me.”

“And I love you,” I say. Because of course I do.

And this, this is the moment that snaps me out of it. This is the thought that drills through all of the rubble.

I am not going to die without having kissed you .

“No,” I say.

“No?” Zwe asks. I’ve already begun stretching my right thumb again, gritting my teeth at the hot friction between the jute and my flesh, too focused to reply to him. It’s not until he says tentatively, “No, you don’t mean it, or…” that I realize he’s waiting for an answer.

“What?” I shake my head. “No, of course not. No, fuck, not no like that.” I pause to take a deep breath. “Yes, of course I meant it . I’m saying no, we’re not dying like this.”

“We’re… not?”

“No, we’re not,” I confirm. “Because we still have a lot to do. We have a ton of sex to have and several fights to get into and makeup sex to have and a wedding to plan and a movie to produce. And did I mention we still need to have sex?” Zwe snorts, but I’m on a roll.

I can see it all now: the most breathtaking, beautiful story I could ever come up with.

In fact, it’s better than any story I could’ve come up with.

“And birthdays to celebrate and dogs to adopt and family holidays to go on together. And every morning, we’re going to sit down for coffee and look at each other and just think, Look at this beautiful life we’ve built together .

We can’t die right now, because I want a whole life with you.

” I swallow past the golf ball in my throat. “Okay?”

Zwe’s eyes are shining with tears, and despite the shittiness of it all, he’s grinning so hard that his joy radiates from the inside out.

He looks like a man in love.

A man in love with me.

A love so big and consistent and unconditional that it knocks the wind out of me.

“Okay,” he says.

“Now, maybe it’s a long shot, but when they were tying us up, did you remember Antonio’s—”

“Yes.”

Same wavelength. Always. “How’s your thumb?” I ask.

“In a lot of pain,” he says. He starts wriggling his shoulder more rapidly, no longer needing to hide what he’s doing. I’m doing the same. “Do you think this will work?” he asks.

“Yes,” I say, biting down on my lip as I’m pretty sure I feel flesh tear.

“How do you know?”

I shoot him a smirk. “Because, sir, I believe you owe me a kiss.”

His mouth curves to match mine. “That’s all the motivation I need.”