Page 21 of Here for a Good Time
“Don’t ever have kids. They’ll suck at the teat of your will to live.” I laugh, she gives a weary sigh. “I don’t want to think about diapers and sore nipples. Distract me. How’s your tropical getaway?”
“Good,” I say. “It’s so gorgeous here, I keep looking around and being like,This has to be some sort of simulation.”
“Mm-hmm. And Zwe?”
I take a sip of iced tea and pop a triangle of dragonfruit in my mouth. “What about Zwe?”
“Oh come on, don’t play dumb, you’re one of the smartest people I know. You know what I’m asking.”
“I keep telling you it’s not like that,” I say. She snorts, and I swear she can somehow see me rolling my eyes. “Besides, he’s talking to his ex again.”
“So? People talk to people all the time,” Soraya counters. “Last week, I was talking to Jeremy Strong at the Oxford Union. Does that mean we’re riding off into the sunset together? Unfortunately, no,” she answers herself.
“I heard that!” yells a male voice, presumably her husband, Alex.
“He’d be a midlife crisis. You know I’d come crawling back to you after a whirlwind month-long fling.You’rethe love of my life, sweetheart!” Soraya shouts.
“The chances of me being with Zwe are as high as the chances of you being with Jeremy Strong,” I say.
Soraya goes silent, the only sound coming from my speaker that of her baby gurgling. “Fine, fine, I won’t push it,” she says. “How’s everything else? How’s your book? Are you inspired and shit?”
“I don’t know about inspired, but it’s definitely shit,” I say with a self-effacing laugh. “Do you ever have moments where you’re, like,What the fuck am I doing?”
“Oh, all the time. At work, with this baby, with the garden we’re remodeling.”
“What happened to us?” I sigh. “We used to be so cocky. The world was our oyster.”
“Because we were young. We had all the time in the world.”
“The good old days,” I muse. “Sometimes I wish we could go back to that.”
“I dunno,” Soraya says. “I kinda like the present days. I mean, yeah, I’m older and jaded and it feels like I pull a new muscle every morning, and sure, at least once a day I think about leaving all of this behind and fleeing to some island in the Bahamas to become a surf instructor, but then I take a deep breath, and it’s like, actually, I’ve wanted this life for a very long time. I worked really hard for a really long time to get it.”
That tugs at something between my ribs, and I smile. When we were teenagers, I would dream about becoming a bestselling author, and Soraya, of being the first Asian woman to lead an Oxford college’s geography department.
“You get what I mean, right?” Soraya asks. “Poe… youarehappy, right?”
“I think—” I pause, inhale, know that Soraya will detect even the smallest of fibs. “I think I’m too stressed to be happy right now. I’m just so…” I exhale as I fall back into the plush seat cushion. “Tired.” As though on cue, the sound of a wailing child pierces the speaker. “I think that was your son’s way of reminding me that I am in no position to tell his mother about ‘being tired.’”
“I will tell both my son and you that you have every right to betired. Look, try not to think about your book for a bit. You’re on holiday.Beon holiday.” Soraya’s in what we call her “Mom Mode,” which was a thing way before she became an actual mother. “Have Zwe change your laptop password. If I can go on maternity leave for ten months, you can put your book away for two weeks. It will still be there at the end of the trip. I want to live vicariously through you, and I can’t do that if you’re sitting there in paradise just as bloody tired as I am.”
“I know, I know,” I huff.
“I—fuck, sorry, I got to go. This stupid son of mine just sucked me dry and then threw all of my milk back up on me and… fuck, that’s going to stain. Hey, you’re not in the market to buy a baby, are you? Because I might have one going.”
“I don’t think you’re legally allowed to say that,” I say. “Go take care of your child. And remember that you love him.”
“Yeah, yeah,” she says, a glimmer in her voice. Before I can press the red button, I hear her call out, “Alex! Come take your offspring!”
I think about Soraya’s question, turning the words like they’re lines in a Rubik’s Cube. Of course I’m happy. The problem isn’t that I’m unhappy; like Soraya,Ihave my dream life now, too. The problem is that if I want tostayhappy, I have to write this book.
Zwe’s still not back by the time I’m showered. Still floating on a cloud of facial treatments and massages, I decide I want to dress up a bit tonight, and pick out the one “fancy” outfit I packed: a sleeveless red lace jumpsuit with a low-cut neckline. I put my hair up in a messy bun, put on gold hoops, and for the final touch, swipe on a rich layer of Elson 4 by Pat McGrath, the vivid red a perfect match to my outfit’s fabric. I’ve spent the last few months in an exclusiverotation of the unofficial work-from-home writer’s outfit of slouchy jeans and baggy sweatpants; tonight, I look hot. It’s nice to remember that I have boobs and a waistline.
I decide to head to the restaurant early with my laptop and get some writing done before dinner. Taking a seat outdoors—it would feel like a disservice to this view and weather to sit indoors—I order a yuzu cocktail, put on my headphones, and start writing. I’ve powered through approximately five hundred words (not great, but notawful) when my peripheral vision clocks a figure walking in my direction.
Zwe is wearing a light pink button-up shirt tucked into black trousers, the outfit finished off with a navy blazer and sneakers—all of it a far cry from the T-shirt, shorts, and flip-flops he was wearing this morning.
One side of his mouth tips up into a lopsided smile when I stand, his head also cocking ever so slightly as though a random thought just popped into it.
