Page 6 of Here for a Good Time

“Zwe,” I say, more softly.

In return, his own tone hardens, like our voices are seesawing. “What?” he repeats.

“Why didn’t you tell me you two were back together?”

He shakes his head. “We’re not. We’re… texting.”

“Who…” I try to pick my words delicately, searching my mental dictionary for the softest, most innocuous ones. “… initiated it?”

“Her.”

Of course she did, I think, and guilt immediately stabs me right in my carotid.

This is why Zwe had been keeping this from me, because he knew this was how I’d react.

You’re going on this trip to be a better friend, I scold myself.

Besides, what right do I have to be passing judgment on Julia when I haven’t talked to her in months?

“What… have you been texting about?” I ask. I want him to know that I care and I’m not just being nosy.

He shrugs as he takes a drink of water. “Just stuff. Memes. The news. When we ended, things had been off for a long time. Bad, even. But now it’s like we’re starting with a blank slate, and I… like it. I really like it. It’s like I’m texting the woman I first fell in love with.”

It’s not that I hate Julia, or even actively dislike her.

Or at least, I didn’t until Zwe refused to tell me why they broke up, which is how I know that she did something really shitty.

Zwe generally keeps private things private, but if he’s keeping something from me, then I’m certain whatever happened between them was nothing short of catastrophic.

He’s not a petty or hateful person, and he won’t tell me what went down because he doesn’t want me to hate Julia for whatever it is that she did to him, even if (as I said to him at the time) that’s Best Friend Code 101.

Thou shalt inherit each other’s nemeses and wrongdoing exes.

It still gnaws at me from time to time, though, the fact that I still don’t know why they broke up.

“Does she want to get back together?” I venture, unsure if this is going to turn out to be a “curiosity killed the cat” situation.

He shrugs again. “We agreed that we’d see how we felt when I got back.”

“How long have you two been texting?”

“I dunno, a couple of weeks or so.”

I gasp, although inside, I feel more hurt than shocked. This isn’t who we are. We don’t keep it from each other that we’ve gotten back in touch with an ex. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

He opens his mouth, but then waits for a family with three screaming toddlers—triplets, by the looks of it—who are being shepherded by their frazzled parents as the latter try to frantically divide six tiny hands and two carry-on suitcase handles between the two of them, to pass.

“Because,” Zwe says, chuckling to himself as the children’s throat-scraping screeches continue down the hall, well away from the lounge’s doors. “Like I said, it’s just been texting.”

“I… wish you’d told me. Wouldn’t you have wanted to know if I was texting Vik?”

Zwe freezes mid-sip. “Are you?” he asks quietly. His gaze is locked on me, waiting to catch the slightest hint of dishonesty.

“No,” I say, and fidget, not because it’s a lie, but because of the intensity flashing in his eyes. “It was a hypothetical.” I force myself to meet his gaze, and he returns the smallest of nods.

I want to ask more about Julia, but perhaps (definitely) sensing just that, Zwe takes out his book from his backpack, a biography of some famous statistician.

Taking the hint, I retrieve my own current read, an early proof of a debut novel that’s being edited by my editor.

It’s called Not Like This, and it’s a love story between a man and a woman who find themselves seated next to each other on a flight and hit it off, and when the plane goes down over the ocean mid-flight, they’re the only survivors and have to figure out how to get back to land.

I’m not a massive romance reader, bar the Meg Cabot novels I read growing up, but I’d made an offhand comment to my editor, Tracey, that I was thinking of reading in a new genre to help me with my writer’s block.

She’d suggested that the pace of the ro mance genre might help stimulate some ideas, and had insisted that I would love this particular book.

She was right. I only started a couple of days ago, but on more than one occasion, I’ve found myself flipping through with one hand while stirring my coffee with the other.

The language is precise, the humor unexpected and cutting, with characters that feel like real people on whose lives you’re eavesdropping.

It’s the kind of book that makes me simultaneously thrilled to read it (especially before the majority of readers), and envious that I didn’t write it.

It’s on the longer side for the genre, but I’m already wishing it was longer.

When the two protagonists have their first make-out session on their lifeboat that they built together from spare plane parts, I put a fist over my mouth to muffle my screech.

“You okay there?” I look up, and find Zwe staring at me in bemusement. “Do I need to find a doctor? Your face is so red, you look like you’re having trouble breathing.”

Only then does it register that my cheeks are burning, which makes me flush even harder. “It’s this book,” I say, gesturing down at the unassuming ring-bound copy in my hands. “I think this might be the best thing I’ve read all year.”

“It’s that romance book you were telling me about?” I nod. “Didn’t think you were such a big romance fan.”

“Me neither,” I say, already itching to finish the chapter.

“But I’m obsessed. Okay, shush, I have to find out what happens next,” I get out in one breath, already mentally clocking out from this conversation.

This rush to keep reading feels like when I was fifteen and read Jane Eyre (my first-ever favorite book) for the first time, inhaling my dinner so I could excuse myself from the table and get back to where I’d left off.

Like when I’d stayed up until 3 A.M . with a flashlight and my copy of Breaking Dawn, quickly shoving both under the pillow whenever one of my parents came into my bedroom to check on me.

In my experience, a good book is one of the very few things in life that can be solidly relied upon to speed up time. Because even though it feels like it’s only been ten, maybe fifteen minutes, a lounge employee is tapping me on the shoulder to inform us that our flight is starting to board.

Zwe and I make one last bathroom pit stop before heading for our gate. There are a handful of other business-class passengers already in front of us, as well as an elderly couple, both in wheelchairs, in the priority boarding lane, and, seizing the opportunity, I take my book back out.

“You’re—” Zwe starts with a laugh.

I halt him with a quick “Ssshhh!,” holding up a finger with my free hand. “I have one and a half pages left in this chapter and I’ve got to know what happens.”

Silently, Zwe gives me a small nudge whenever we have to move forward. I finish the chapter right as it’s our turn to hand over our boarding passes.

“Have a safe flight!” the agent chirps at us as she scans our passes.

“Uh-huh,” I mumble, too stunned by that chapter ending to register her words.

Zwe takes both of our passes from her—I didn’t realize she’d been handing me mine and I was staring at it as though she was handing back a bag of dog poop—and says a polite “Thank you.”

As we make our way down the slight slope of the boarding bridge, Zwe gently shoulders me. “You look like you saw a ghost.”

“Worse,” I say to him, shaking my head. “Or better. I can’t tell.”

“Good chapter?”

“She’s an assassin . She was on that flight to assassinate someone!” Zwe’s cheery expression transforms into shock, and I fling my arms open. “I know!” I exclaim.

“Who was she going to assassinate?”

I wave the book in the air before putting it back into my bag. “We’re going to find out in the next chapter. I hope.” I clutch Zwe’s shoulder as an epiphany strikes me. “Oh my god, what if it’s—”

“Him!” Zwe says. Without meaning to, my hand curls into a fist and I punch him in the arm.

“Sorry, sorry,” I say when he gives me a What the fuck expression. “That was an excited punch. Exactly! What if it’s him?”

We press pause on our conversation while we hand the smiling flight attendants our boarding passes and settle into seats 3A and 3C.

As always, I take the aisle seat because I have a persistent fear that after takeoff, I’ll suddenly develop a medical condition in which my bladder shrinks to a quarter of its current size and I’ll have to pee every twenty minutes.

“That book sounds ridiculous,” Zwe says as I peruse the little free toiletry-packed pouches that were waiting for us at our seats (again, I could get used to this life).

“In a good way, I mean. It sounds so… fun. I mean, a plane-crash romance with a trained assassin? It sounds like it wouldn’t work, but—”

“But it does!” I say with a loud, satisfied sigh.

Despite my clear enthusiasm, I still feel like I’m not doing the book enough justice.

If I could, I’d shove a copy into the hands of every single passenger on this plane, babies included.

“You’re right that the plot is ridiculous, but it’s so fun, Zwe.

I’m already sad about finishing! I wish I’d written this thing! ”

“Huh,” he chuckles.

“What?”

He gives a tentative shrug. “What if… you did write it? Or something like that? Or just tried?”

“What? Romance?”

“Yeah. Something… fun. And ridiculous. Maybe that’s what you need to get past this writer’s block. A genre switch.”

I give him a Yeah, right look. “Sure, my agent and publisher will absolutely go for me pivoting to romance out of the blue. Afterward, what, I try my hand at sci-fi for the next one?”

Zwe’s smile doesn’t reach his eyes. The dimples aren’t there. “Why not? Is it written in your contract that you can’t?”