Page 56 of Here for a Good Time
She shrugs. “I don’t know. Communicating via radio channels is tricky around here at the best of times. With the way the weather is right now, the supply boat’s comms system might be glitching and they might not be able to talk to anyone until they reach land. By the time the boat gets back to the mainland and notifies the authorities, who assemble their own rescue operations, theymightdecide that it’s safer to wait until the storm’s over. Either way, we need to shelter in place until then. We might have a view of the pier from the tower, so we could keep an eye out.”
“Then we should get going,” Zwe says, and, without so much as a glance at me, starts in the direction that Leila indicated.
I stay behind, watching him and Leila walk side by side. Their mouths are moving but the wind has become louder, making them look like two actors in a silent movie I can only watch from my seat. She says something, he replies, she says something else, and he smiles. I had never been popular in school, but I’d also never cared because I never had to do anything—group projects, lunch, school dances—alone, because I’d always had Zwe. This is the first time I’m seeing him from this perspective, up ahead with somebody else without even turning around to check that I’m still there.
I can only think of one time when we had a big blowout. It was right after we’d moved into our current place—back when we were still renting—and, because it only came partly furnished, we went couch shopping. After we sat and bounced on literally every singlecouch in the store, I voted for a smallish teal L-shape number. It wasn’tthemost comfortable one we’d tried and the quality wasn’t great, so I knew those cushions were going to sink in approximately six months, but I liked the color, and, as I pointed out to Zwe, the moderate price tag meant we wouldn’t have to feel too bad about eventually throwing it out.
He, however, wanted a larger brown one, the one that, admittedly, had been our collective favorite as soon as we sat down. It was made with the kind of high-quality smooth, supple leather that would only look better over time, its accumulating creases and scratches adding to the overall character and evidence that this was a sofa that was loved.
It’s too expensive,I said.
We spend half of our time watching TV, reading, or writing on the couch,he’d said.It’s an investment,andit’s in our budget.
Just barely. And think of the hassle when one of us moves. What are we going to do, saw it in half?I pointed out, thinking about Vik and Julia, both of whom we’d been dating long enough to know that these were partners we could see ourselves with for the long haul.
Anger laced through Zwe’s features, and he told me that he didn’t want a shitty couch to be the centerpiece of our living room, and I said that it wasn’tshitty. Neither of us are yellers so it’s not exactly that we got into a full-on screaming match, but wedidstart arguing right there, surrounded by couches and other customers who steered clear of our particular aisle. I asked him why he was being so dramatic over a fucking couch and he said that it washishome too and we both had equal say, and round and round in circles we went.
In the end, we drew straws and ended up with the leather couch—the plush, criminally comfortable one that I write from everyday to this day. Sometimes I fall asleep mid-writing with my laptop still open, and when I wake up, my laptop is closed and on the coffee table, and I’m tucked under our pink knit throw, the brown leather so soft it feels like I’m sleeping on a cloud. It’s the couch I was depressed and crying on when I got the idea forGive Me a Reason,and later, the one I was sitting on when my book auction closed, the one I was eating popcorn on when the Netflix offer came through.
I pointed it out to Zwe once—how almost every big milestone of my life has taken place while I’ve sat on that couch.
So it was a good investment?he said with a chuckle, the closest he’severcome to saying “I told you so.”
I’ve never thought that our friendship would sever, but that afternoon, in a corner of Sofa, So Good, it stretched to an extent that I didn’t think it ever would. In those twenty minutes, I saw an alternative version of us where we didn’tgeteach other the way we did and always had, and I thought,My god, what a terrible life that would be.
This time, though, it feels like I single-handedly overstretched us and now there’s a rip right in the middle of the fabric, the kind that you can patch up with time and patience and the right tools, but will leave behind a permanent stitch, a reminder that at one point, I tore it.
This trip was supposed to make us close again, and yet here we are, unable to even stomach walking alongside each other.
Way to go, Poe.
I add “pick a holiday” to the increasingly long list of things that should be easy for an adult, but, it turns out, I have no fucking clue how to do, right there under “be a half-decent friend.”
TWELVE
“So Poe, what book are you working on now? Or do you not want to talk about it?” Leila adds quickly.
It’s the first time either of them has directly addressed me, but I suspect that for her, it’s more because she’s worried she’ll accidentally say the wrong thing. We’re weaving through the trees on the coastline, and every now and then, I look around and continue to be stunned by the picturesqueness of this place. It seems wrong to feel so miserable here.
“No, I don’t mind,” I say. I can’t tell if she’s genuinely interested or making small talk, but I don’t look at her, staring down at the path as I have for the past however many minutes. I don’t want to trip over something again, and more importantly, I don’t have to worry about accidentally making eye contact with Zwe. “It’s about time travel.”
“No way!” Leila gasps. “That sounds incredible!”
She sounds so sincerely excited that I break my own “no lookingup” rule. Leila’s face is split into a grin, and she begins gesticulating with her hands to prompt me to tell her more.
“Thanks,” I laugh. Fleetingly, I’m annoyed that she’s one of those people that you can never stay mad at for too long.
“What’s the plot? Sell me this book.”
Automatically, I look back down. It’s humiliating, but I’m worried that if I maintain eye contact while I tell her, she’ll see it written in 12-point font across my face that I don’t actually know how to “sell” this half-baked “plot.”
“It’s about this manhole that allows the main character to time travel. She becomes obsessed with it and keeps making changes in her present-day life and then travels to the future to see that’s brought her closer to curating her perfect life,” I say, almost by rote at this point.
“How does she discover the manhole?”
“Oh, um, she was just… walking one day. To… work.” Which sounded like afineidea when I wrote it, but now that I say it out loud, it’s embarrassingly clear that I need a more exciting inciting incident. Which is something that I should know. It’s something that Idoknow.
“Where does she time travel to first?” Leila continues. “Does she arrive at, like, whatever point in time she’s thinking about? How does she get back to the present?”
