Page 26 of Here for a Good Time
I let out a nervous laugh, wondering if he can feel the rate at which my heart is thumping right now. It feels like it’s asking for something new with every beat:Stay. Yes. More. Please. You. What. If?
Which is all so ridiculous. Zwe and I fit, but not like this. He’s numbers and logic, I’m all emotions, the kind of person who cries at YouTube videos of senior dogs getting adopted. He’s always held a steady job, and I want to be an artist even if it means I don’t know when or where my next paycheck will come from. He arrives at the bookstore at 8A.M. sharp every morning and leaves at 7P.M., seven days a week; I book spontaneous island getaways.
It’s not that I think I’m not good enough for him, but that if you merged our five-year plans, there would be very little overlap. We would be “quirky” together. But quirky can’t be sustained for a lifetime, and I don’twantto be his—or anyone’s—quirky ex. We’ve built a life that’s good and solid, and Zwe would be the first person to say that it’s not worth risking destroying something good and solid for something new and exciting that has a high likelihood of ultimately failing. One of us would need to find a new place to live, I wouldn’t be able to come to the bookstore anymore, our families would feel weird about staying in contact with one another.
And the thing is, even if I could convince myself that those are all things we could overcome, there’s also the embarrassing fact that if Zwe wanted to ask me out on a date, he would have by now. Because he knows. He knows how I feel, or at least felt. There’s a reason he never brought up my failed attempt at kissing him, that he never asked me out even after Vik and I ended. Maybe sometimes he wonders about all of these things too, but clearly, he’s reached the same practical conclusion I have.
Maybe in another lifetime, we make sense. Maybe in another lifetime, I’m as pragmatic as him and we meet in an accounting class, or he’s also an artist, a painter or a screenwriter. In that lifetime, people remark that they’ve never met two people who were so perfectly made for each other. In that lifetime, our biggest point of conflict is that I want a dog and he wants a cat, or we can’t agree on what color to paint our living room.
It’s the alcohol,I remind myself. Take alcohol and remote island paradise and a very long dry spell of the coital nature, and ta-da: you get horny Poe who very easily could’ve had a sex dream about Prince Eric.
“Is ‘little book nerd’ a compliment?” I ask.
“Of course it is,” Zwe says. “I’m really proud of you, you know.”
“For what? Not trying to sabotage my new literary nemesis?”
A shadow falls across his face, and it’s not from the lamplight. “You know, you’re… wrong. There’s no way Pim is your literary nemesis.”
“Feels like it.”
“You—” His finger pushes into my skin again, and again I trip over my breath, my body forgetting how to do anything on instinct. In this moment, Zweisthe instinct. “—are unmatchable. No one can be your nemesis because no one comes close. You’re just so…”
“So what?” I ask.
“So… you.”
For a fleeting moment, I wonder what would happen if I shot my shot a second time and leaned over, tried again. But even with the cushion of intoxication, I remember how deep that rejection cut the first time, the hairline fracture it created never having fully healed.
The way he’s looking at me now could almost convince me that he’s asking me to try again. Almost.
A needy part of me whispers that it doesn’t have to be anything serious, that it could only be for tonight, and then all of it—the good and the bad—will be erased in the blue light of dawn. But it feels terribly like cannonballing into the ocean from a cliff’s edge: a thrilling story if it works out the way you envision, an irreversible tragedy if it doesn’t.
Silly. Silly girl with her silly thoughts.
We’re both tipsy bordering on drunk right now, and I’ve never quite figured out if the things people say and do when they’re inebriated are what they truly want, or their biggest mistakes.
“What are you thinking?” Zwe asks, face illuminated by the soft yellow glow of the small table lamp.
Everything.
Toomany things.
“Nothing,” the coward lies.
SEVEN
Zwe is a light sleeper. I am not. I don’t wake up until he clamps a hand tightly on my mouth and whispers “It’s me, don’t scream” so close into my ear that each syllable is a hiss of air directly into my eardrum. My first instinct is to scream, because what else are you supposed to do when you wake up in the middle of the night with a large male palm pressed against your mouth (and not in a sexy way)?
I move just my eyes to make sure that itishim, although it’s hard to do when my eyes haven’t adjusted to the dark yet, and the only light source in the room is moonlight that’s being filtered through a gauze curtain. But I can smell him, can sense that itishim, and so I nod slowly. I try to open my mouth to ask a question, but feeling the movement, he shakes his head at me, then motions with his gaze outside.
“Gunshots,” he whispers, his mouth pressed right up against my ear.
It takes several long seconds for me to understand the singularword. The moment it hits, though, I feel a rush of blood to my head that’s so quick, I would need to lie down if I weren’t already doing so. That can’t be correct. He has to be carrying out some weird prank. Or hallucinating. Maybe his drink was stronger than he thought. Or night terrors. Yes, maybe hedreamthe heard gunshots, but that’s all it is… right?
“Gunshots?” I mumble into Zwe’s palm. I’m about to ask a garbledAre you sure?right as another shot goes off. One thatIhear, too.
“Do. Not. Panic,” he says, and I widen my eyes at the glass walls at the foot of our bed, walls that suddenly seem like aterribleidea on the architect’s part. “I’m not going to remove my hand until you promise me you won’t make a sound.” A pause. “So, promise?”
