Page 52 of Here for a Good Time
About a month after we’d settled in Oxford, while I was flossing my teeth (of all things), I marched into our bedroom and told Zwe that I had a new idea for a book—another love story, about a woman who is eternally twenty-nine.
Given that being one age forever doesn’t exactly lend itself to long-term relationships, the woman applies her decades of wisdom to her job, which is counseling men who are in their late twenties/early thirties and need help figuring out how they can become better boyfriends and make the switch from dating around to committing to a life partner.
When she starts falling for her newest client, however, she has no idea how to guide herself through the process.
It’s (tentatively) titled The Agency of Open Hearts .
Zwe, of course, was the first person to read a draft of the first five chapters. “Will they still end up together in the end?” he asked afterward.
“Of course they do,” I said.
“How does that work, though?” he asked. We were in bed, propped up on our elbows, facing each other. He brushed some hair out of my face, and I turned and kissed his palm. “You know, since she stays twenty-nine forever.”
“Because she realizes that she’d rather go through that eventual heartbreak than never find out what kind of life they’d have together.
And they end up having the best, most beautiful life, and as she’s holding his hand during his last breaths, they agree that they’d do it all over again,” I said, and Zwe smiled, and it set off that warm feeling in my chest.
I’m nearly done with the very rough first draft, and I have a good feeling about this one.
Despite the unending queue of employees who keep coming up to her for approval or her opinion on one thing or another, Leila personally shows us to our room.
“Oh my god, you didn’t!” I exclaim as we pull up outside the beachfront suite, the same one that I’d booked a year prior.
“You didn’t fully get to enjoy it during your last stay,” she says with a cheeky wink. “It’s the best one in the whole resort.”
After she leaves, I plop down on the bed. Zwe joins me, and we lie like that in silence for a while, holding hands.
“It’s weird to be back, right?” he asks.
“Yes,” I say. “But I love what they’ve done with the place.”
He laughs. “I do, too.”
“I love you,” I say. I flip onto my stomach, leaning my chin on my elbow as I take him in. All this time, and I still feel like I can’t look at him for too long or else I might get drunk on it all and do something stupid, like—“Marry me.”
Zwe’s eyelids flip open. “What?” he asks after a long silence, even though I know he heard me.
For a second, my stomach drops, and the urge to backtrack surges to the front of my brain. But I’ve been wanting to do this for nearly a year now, and nothing has ever felt more right, the kind of right that settles deep down in your bones, than the idea of spending the rest of our lives together.
“You’re my best friend.” I brush my thumb against his cheek, and he leans in to kiss my palm, and when that one tiny act still sends shivers down my spine, I know I don’t want to take this back.
“And to be honest, I’ve felt married to you for a long time, but I want to make it official.
I want to get in front of a room of all of our friends and family and tell them just how much I love you and just how long I’ll love you, which is with everything I have for the rest of my life. Zwe Aung Win, will you marry me?”
He doesn’t try to blink away the tears in his eyes. His mouth pulls into a grin, opens—and a low, drawn-out “Fuuuck” comes out.
“Huh?” comes out of mine.
With a groan, he pulls himself up and leaves the bed. “I love you,” he calls out, his back turned to me as he shuffles through our pile of bags. “But sometimes I also hate you.”
“Uhhh—” I’m unsure what I want to say right now. What do you say when your proposal is met with a Fuck ?
His figure is blocking me from seeing what he’s doing in front of his backpack. “This”—I practically spring upright when he turns around—“was going to be a surprise for tonight. You literally couldn’t wait, what”—he checks his watch—“eight hours?”
There’s a maroon velvet ring box in his palm. He returns to me, only opening it when he’s sitting down beside me again, and the second he does, the dam breaks and I burst into tears. “How long have you had that?” I ask.
“Since our second date,” he answers.
“No, you didn’t,” I scoff, unbelieving.
But he gives a single thoughtful nod, and I know he has.
“Got it the week we returned to Yangon from, well”—he chuckles, looking around at the room—“here. I figured that if I’m still getting regularly distracted by how hot you look even while I’m being chased down by armed women, getting tied up, and nearly dying in a fire, then you must be the woman for me. ”
My laugh comes out in a wet snort. “Thank you for calling me hot.”
“Thank you for being hot.” He lifts the box a couple of inches higher.
I notice that his hand is shaking, and it makes this whole moment even sweeter.
“It’s always been you, Poe. You’re the only person who’s ever made me think that forever isn’t nearly enough time.
I want to be your cheerleader, your best friend, your first reader, your tea and coffee maker, your personal accountant, whatever you want, every day for the rest of our lives. ”
“That’s a long time,” I point out with a sniffle. “Will you still think I’m hot even when I’m, like, eighty?”
“When we’re eighty—” He removes the ring from the box. “—you will be the hottest woman in that nursing home. And I’ll wake up next to you every morning, and I’ll think, Look at this hot woman I get to call my wife. Poe Myat Sabei, will you marry me ?”
“Only if you agree to marry me,” I say. “Remember, I asked you first.”
He rolls his eyes. “Can you please put me out of my misery? Yes, I’ll marry you. Of course I’ll marry you. Who else would I ever want to marry?”
“Yes, of course, yes.” My voice comes out in a straggly whisper, which is incongruous with the fireworks going off inside my chest. “There’s nothing I want more than to be your hot wife in a nursing home.”
We’re both laughing as he slips the ring on my finger.
A perfect fit.
I take his face with both hands and kiss him then, knowing that no matter how hard I try, I will never write a story as utterly perfect as ours.