Page 47 of Here for a Good Time

SEVENTEEN

“Ms. Poe! Mr. Zwe! Leila!” Antonio practically wails when we’re close enough for him to make out who we are.

Dropping the giant rock he was holding as a precaution, he sprints across the wet sand at an impressive pace.

I’m expecting him to come to a stop when he’s near, but instead, he keeps charging forward with outstretched arms. Leila swiftly sidesteps right before Antonio barrels into us and all three of our bodies go down.

“Hey, kid,” Zwe laughs. He tries to shake the sand out of his hair, but it’s so caked there’s not really any point. His grin tells me that he doesn’t mind the tackle one bit.

I don’t care either that I can already feel sand slipping into crevices in my body where I’d rather there not be any sand. “I’m so happy to see you!” I exclaim, properly hugging Antonio. “Are you okay? How about everyone else? Your grandpa?”

“We’re all good! Are you okay? I thought you guys were goners!”

“I’m happy to see you, too,” Leila calls out. She’s hovering above us, arms crossed, one brow cocked and lips pushed to the side in an annoyed manner.

“Are you feeling left out?” Antonio stands up, wiping sand off of his trousers.

“Of being tackled by you?” Leila scoffs, but there’s a trace of softness in her voice, and I know she is feeling left out.

Antonio does, too, because he fully embraces her, hugging her so tight she emits a soft grunt. “I knew you’d be okay,” he tells her without letting go. “You’re the toughest person I know, Leils. You know how much I love you.”

That melts her exterior, and she smiles into his shoulder. “Ugh, I suppose I love you, too, you doofus. Glad to see you’re safe,” she says, although I have an inkling she’d made it clear to her cousins that not a single strand on Antonio’s head was to be harmed.

They don’t immediately let go after they pull apart. Leila ruffles his hair with affection, and Antonio beams. After a satisfying enough reunion, they reach down and help me and Zwe up.

“How’d you two get free?” Antonio asks us.

Zwe and I trade a look. “Well, funny enough,” I say with a nonchalant air, “an extremely smart friend of ours once gave us this great tip about how to position your hands when—”

Antonio gasps, his excitement propelling him ahead of me.

“When you’re being tied up!” he yells, and punches the air.

“See, and Grandpa’s always accusing me of knowing too little about too much, but wait until he hears about this!

” He’s moving away when something catches his attention.

“Leils—” He points at mine and Zwe’s bruised and torn wrists, and then at hers.

“How come your hands don’t look like they’ve gone through a shredder? Didn’t they tie you up?”

Leila stutters an “Well, uh, I—”

“Because she didn’t know about the trick,” I jump in. “Remember? She left to use the toilet when you were explaining it to us? Only Zwe and I knew to turn our hands, so hers were in the wrong position. Leila had to wait for us to free ourselves before we could undo her rope.”

Antonio raises a finger in an Ah manner. Behind his back, Leila mouths, Thank you .

“We were taking bets on which of you would make it out alive.” He waves at us to follow him toward the rest of the group, who are still waiting from a safe distance farther back.

“Well, to be honest, we were taking bets on which of you two”—he gestures at me and Zwe—“would make it out alive. We had no doubt Leila would survive.”

Leila places a hand on her heart. “Aww, thanks.”

“You didn’t think I would make it out alive?” Zwe scoffs.

“I thought you would,” Antonio replies instantly. He darts me a suspicious glance.

“Ye prick of little faith!” I go to hit him on the back, but he glides out of the way.

“Do you think we’ll be saved soon?” Zwe asks. He nods back up toward the resort. “We can gather everyone back indoors, or, well, what’s left of the indoors. Probably safer than just on the beach.”

“Good call,” Antonio says.

He and Leila walk ahead of us, talking and laughing and occasionally thwacking each other.

Zwe and I crisscross our arms around the small of each other’s backs. “We did it,” I say, leaning my head against his bicep. For the first time in days, I let out a full, satisfying exhale. “We’re going home soon.”

“Do you think you got enough inspiration for your next book?”

“Actually—” I gaze up at him, and even though I’ve known this face for most of my life, my breath catches. Because it’s just hit me that this is mine now. Zwe is mine now. “I do.”

He tucks his chin in. “Do tell.”

“Well, I haven’t figured out the whole story yet.

But it’s going to be a love story between two best friends.

” A grin overtakes his handsome face, and my love for him grows in an instant.

I already know that that’s how it’s going to be from now on—despite it feeling impossible, every day, I’ll love him just that much more.

“And the reader’s going to be told from the first page that this is a love story between two best friends. They just don’t know it yet.”

One boat ride and multiple police interviews later, Zwe and I are finally able to check into a hotel and take long, hot showers.

We had very momentarily toyed with the idea of taking a sexy shower together, but decided that it would be better if the first time we had sex with each other didn’t involve streaks of dirt and blood running across the bathroom floor.

So, I shower first, nearly crying with joy when the warm water hits my skin.

Stepping out of the bathroom, a damp Zwe pauses when he sees me sitting on the bed in one of the plush white hotel bathrobes.

The knowledge that I’m naked underneath hangs in the cool air-conditioned air.

Without so much as a nod, he retrieves the other robe from the wardrobe, wraps it around himself, ties the belt, then removes the towel that was covering his lower body out from under.

“Hi,” I say. I’m trying to start some kind of innocuous conversation since I don’t really know what we do now, but there’s an unending siren inside my brain that keeps announcing Zwe is naked under the robe, Zwe is naked under the robe, Zwe is naked under the robe .

“Hi” is all he replies.

I lie down on my stomach, nod at him to join me.

Once he’s beside me, I suck in my cheeks as I consider what to say next. “Wanna… watch TV?” If this were a scene in my book, I’d immediately make a note on the side that said Better dialogue.

“Is this how you always seduce men?” His cheeky smile is made all the more cheeky by his dimples. “No wonder you always have suitors kicking down your door.”

I kick his exposed shin, and he laughs, and I don’t remove my foot, and now my calf is on top of his and I’m embarrassed at how scandalous bare calves suddenly feel, like we’re in an Austen novel. “So, no TV? Okay, what would you rather do?”

“Don’t make me say it,” he says. His gaze slowly descends down to my chest, where there’s a small gap between my flesh and the robe. I swallow, heat roiling in my stomach.

“What if we’re bad at it?” I ask. I’m half joking, which means I’m also half not.

Judging by his short laugh, that’s a legitimate fear of his too, or at least, it is now that I’ve brought it up. “Then we try again tomorrow when we’re well rested,” he says.

I’m aware that in reality, there are still the occasional footsteps walking in the corridor past our door, and cars still honking away down on the pavement outside our window, but in my mind, there’s just us. Which scares me until it doesn’t, because that’s how it’s always been. Just us.

“I love you,” I say. When I inch closer, the movement widens that gap between my skin and the fabric.

Zwe’s jaw muscles flex, and I revel in the knowledge that he’s trying to remain a gentleman and not look down, even though I wish he would.

What an honor it is to be wanted so thoroughly by the best person you know.

“Even if you turn out to be the worst sex I ever have.”

“I’d say—” He moves in, too, so that our lips are almost brushing, but not quite, two boats floating just out of reach. “That if you telling me I might be the worst sex you ever have still isn’t enough to kill my erection, then we’re off to a pretty good start.”

A shiver races down my spine, and I abruptly feel as though I’m about to have sex for the first time. I want to stall with another quip, and I know that Zwe would let me take all the time I need.

Time.

We have spent so much time not doing what we wanted, not going for what we wanted—time that we thought we’d have an abundance of until we didn’t. He’s waited, and so have I, and we both nearly died mid-wait.

So—I cup his jaw and kiss him, and he kisses me back, and I set the tempo, except I can’t decide what I want.

We start off slow, my tongue teasing his lips, but then the rest of my body wants to move, too.

I lower my hand from his face, pushing the robe off of his shoulders, touching the dark hairs on his chest and then his arms and then even lower to the softness of his stomach.

“You are so beautiful,” he tells me, right before he nips my earlobe. “Just… beautiful.”

We undo the loose knots on each other’s bathrobes at almost the same time. “I’m going to see you naked,” I say with a gasp that’s sharper than I intended.

“Poe.” Zwe’s voice is teasing. “You’ve seen me naked.”

“Not since we went through puberty!”

“What, you think I grew a second penis during puberty?”

I bury a snort into his shoulder. “Great, now I’m imagining you with two p—” But I don’t finish the sentence, because Zwe has moved his fingers down my waist, and now he’s rubbing me in a way that makes my eyes roll back.

“Softer,” I tell him. “It’s very sensitive right now.

” He slows down his pace, lightens the pressure, and my back arches with pleasure.