Page 36 of Here for a Good Time
“Okay, fair enough.” He shakes his head. “Why?”
I shift my weight to my other foot, remember that that’s mybadfoot, and promptly re-shift to my original foot. “Because it’s supposed to be a dark ironic ending. She spends all this time tweaking her present-day life bit by bit so that she forgets to actually live in the present, but after she makes the final tweak that will give her her dream life in ten years, she… dies.”
Wordlessly, he scrutinizes me in that way that makes me feel like I’ve been shoved under a magnifying glass. “I see” is all he says at last.
“What?” I demand.
“Nothing. It… sounds like an intriguing story.”
“Just say what you’re really thinking,” I snap, surprising myself. Zwe flinches, not having expected that reaction either.
“Okay, fine, you want the truth?” he asks, eyeing me like he doesn’t think I can handle it. I nod, but my shoulder muscles pull back, readying myself for whatever his truth is. “It… feels like it could be more fleshed out. A person who exploits their newfound time-traveling powers? It feels… clichéd.”
The word feels like a kick, the exact kind that I delivered yesterday to that woman: forceful, out of left field, hitting me dead center.
“But this is a first draft,” he backtracks as soon as I react. “Noneof your first drafts are fleshed out. Sorry, I shouldn’t have said clichéd. That was shitty of me.”
“Yeah, it was.”
He scrubs his face in frustration. “I’m sorry. I didn’t sleep well last night. I kept having nightmares where you tripped and…” He cuts himself off and turns toward the sea, the angle of the sun not letting me make out his expression from just his profile. “I’m sorry,” he repeats. “I don’t know what I’m saying. Look, can we make a deal that we can’t hold the other person accountable for whatever they say in the next forty-eight hours, give or take? I think you were onto something back there about the exhaustion and dehydration already getting to us.”
My anger all but melts the moment he turns back to me with his patented puppy face. He’s right. We’re both cranky. I can’t think too hard about how badly I want a shower because I’m positive that, best-case scenario, I’ll start crying on the spot, and worst-case scenario, the delirium will make me take off all my clothing and run down to the beach so I can skinny-dip in the ocean. “Deal,” I say, holding out my hand.
His demeanor visibly relaxing, he strides over and shakes it.
For a few seconds, we stay grinning at each other.
Reset.
I move to drop my hand, but Zwe doesn’t let go. Or maybe I don’t let go. I don’t know, but we’re just… holding hands now. And it feels… nice. Comforting. He is the closest thing to home I have right now, and I wish we could call it for the day and sit down and read our books and try again tomorrow.
“I’m tired,” I say, restating the obvious.
I expect him to sayI knoworMe tooorIt’s just a couple more hours.But instead, he closes the gap between us and, one hand stilllaced with mine, moves the other under my hair so he can rub the back of my neck. It feels so good, his skin on mine. I close my eyes and try to sync my breathing to the up-and-down motion of his hand. I’m so focused on the movement that I don’t notice him letting go of my fingers until he’s pulling me into him for a hug, arms completely enveloping me around my shoulders, his chin lightly resting atop my head as I bury my face in his chest.
“We’re going to be okay,” he tells me.
“You are not allowed to try to convince me to go on any more hikes for the rest of our lives,” I mumble into his shirt. “I get an indefinite number of plays with this card.”
He laughs, the action causing friction between my face and his chest. “That sounds fair. Now come on, let’s get you to that village so we can get some lunch.”
I smile but don’t move. Neither does he. “Do you think they’ll have cake?” I ask.
“No,” he says. “But I’ll phone my parents once we get cell service, and I’ll make sure they have a cake waiting for us when we get home. I’ll even tell them to write a message on it. Something like—”
“WE’RE HAPPY YOU’RE NOT DEAD?”
“HOPE YOU HAD A GOOD HOLIDAY,” he says.
I snort. “They would do that. Ugh, they’re going to give us a proper Asian-parent scolding for this, aren’t they?”
“‘You wanted to run away to a remote island? Was that remote enough for you?’” Zwe asks in a dead-on imitation of his mom. “‘Or should I drive you out to another forest and leave youthereovernight? I’ll only charge half of what that resort charged you.’”
I snort again, my voice still muffled by his shirt. “They are never ever going to let us live this down.”
“Never,” he agrees.
I take a long inhale and pull back. “Right. Shall we—”
