Page 25 of Here for a Good Time
“You did great today,” he says. “Maybe we can graduate to paddleboarding tomorrow.”
“Baby steps,” I say. “I’m glad you came on this trip with me.”
“Would you have done it with anyone else?” He retracts his hand, and my skin burns where his had made contact. I tell myself that I should’ve put on more sunscreen.
“No,” I answer truthfully. “It was you or no one else.”
Without saying anything else, he smiles, as though that’s exactly the answer he was hoping for.
After dinner that night, we make our way to the cliffside bar, and I text Leila to ask if she, Antonio, and Eka can join us. Almost instantly, three dots appear.
“What’d they say?” Zwe asks.
“She says they’ll sit this one out. I think they feel weird about getting a drink with us.”
“You know, I get it, but it also makes me feel…” Zwe looks around at the warmly lit open space.
“Uncomfortable?” I offer.
He nods. “I’d like to think we’re friends by now. Or at least pals.”
“Eh, we’ll rope them into more activities tomorrow. Oooh, maybe we can go paragliding.”
Zwe raises his Moscow mule at me. “Now there’s a plan.”
Silence settles into the air between us, inserting itself into the crevices between the sound of the waves below. Smooth jazz is playing on low via the speakers near the bar, and there’s a random clinking of glass whenever the bartender shifts bottles around. Neither of us says a word until we’ve finished our drinks and order a second round.
“It’s like another world out here,” I murmur over my glass. “It feels like… anything’s possible.”
“What do you mean?” Zwe’s voice is also low, as though there’s an unspoken rule that we can’t be louder than the sea.
“It feels like… none of the messes we have waiting for us back home ever existed.”
“Like what?”
I swallow, guilt pulling at a tender nerve as I ruefully think,Here she goes again; it’s a broken record by this point, but I can’t make it stop. I sound like that friend who won’t quit moaning about her breakup, but when youarethe person who’s going through the breakup, it feels like your lens has shrunk into this tiny pinhole and it’s the only thing through which you can process the world. “Like my next book. Like… like the fact that I read an early copy of Pim Charoensuk’s book, and it’sgood.”
It’s the first time I’ve said it out loud. Every single emotion I’ve been trying to keep at bay washes over me as soon as the words leave my mouth: anger, jealousy, shame, fear.
“I didn’t know you’d read it,” Zwe says quietly.
“I was asked if I’d consider blurbing it.” My chuckle makes the line sound menacing, as though this whole time, I’ve been plotting to sneak a bad blurb onto Pim Charoensuk’s cover.
“Are you?”
“I… don’t know,” I tell him honestly. I don’t tell him that it’s not a matter of whether or not I like the book, because I actually love it; I don’t tell him that I’m still not sure because of more terrible, selfish reasons. “I’m still considering it.”
“That’s good,” he says.
I wrinkle my nose, confused. “Good?What do you mean ‘good’?”
Zwe smiles at me, the alcohol already painting his cheekbones the lightest shade of pink. When I catch myself thinkingHow does every single color look so good on you?, I know the liquor has entered my bloodstream, too. “I mean that I know you don’thave toblurb it, and that a part of you doesn’t want to.” My lips have parted a mere millimeter when he reaches out, his forefinger already hushing my protest of a white lie. “It’s okay that you don’t want to. Competing for survival is a human instinct. But the fact that you didn’t outright refuse is proof that somewhere deep down, she’s still there.”
His finger, still on my lips, smushes my words together as I ask, “That who’s still there?”
With zero warning, Zwe’s finger slides down the middle of my chin, my neck, makes a sharp left turn on my chest, stopping at the spot between my collarbone and where my breast technically starts. When he presses the skin there, it’s as though he’s pressed right into the center of my heart, causing my body to stand to attention, the cool metal of the stool’s back pressing into my own.
“That little book nerd I became friends with.”
