Page 65 of Here for a Good Time
“Because it’s her home,” I say. “That must be it.”
He nods. “That tracks. But what about the rest of them? Why dothey—”
“Because it’s… their home, too.” I gasp as it dawns on me. “Remember when we came this close to getting ‘101’ tattooed after I bought the apartment? To commemorate our first place?Together?”
“Um, yeah? But what does that—”
“That’s why they all have that tattoo! They all have a connection to the island. They know each other. Clearly, she’s an inside man. Sorry, woman.”
“Ohhh-kayyyy,” Zwe says slowly. “But I’m… still not seeing the whole picture.”
“It’s right there,” I say. “We have all the puzzle pieces.” Mentally, I take each metaphorical piece, turning it this way and that to figure out how they slot together.
“You’re plotting.”
“What?” I look up to find Zwe with an amused expression. “Why are you smiling?”
He shrugs. “Is it cheesy if I say that I was smiling because you’re plotting? You’ve got your plotting face.”
I arch a puzzled brow. “What’s my plotting face?”
“This,” he says, and he turns sideways to stare at a spot on the wall. The muscles in his face relax as he zones out like he’s going on a shrooms trip. “And then when you’ve thought of something very specific, you do this.” His brows scrunch together, and his front teeth bite into his bottom lip. I snort, and he turns back to me, returning to his normal state.
“That’s my plotting face?” I ask, unable to stop giggling.
“Yep.”
“Oh my god, I write in public all the time,” I say, equal parts mockingly and genuinely mortified. “You let me make that face in public? People must have thought I was seeing a ghost. Or on drugs in the middle of the day. Or both.”
“Oh, absolutely. You’ve scared more than one customer while you were sneaking in some writing behind the cash register,” he says. “You can tell because they immediately scan the store for an employee whodoesn’tlook like the drugs just kicked in and it’s a particularly bad trip.”
“If we were closer, I’d kick you.”
“I know.”
Reset.
And just like that, it feels like we’re us again. There’s a small voice in the back of my head saying we’re not, that even if Zwesayshe didn’t mean everything he said, we both know he did, at least a little. That our relationship will never be able to go back to how it was. That the conversation we’re going to have “later” will traverse new grounds that we haven’t covered before.
But that’s all later.
For now, it’s us. Him and me.
“What did you figure out?” he asks.
“I think… okay, so this might be a bit bonkers—”
“Poe, look around.” He makes a circular motion with his head. “All of this is bonkers.”
I make a finger gun, only to remember that he can’t see it. “Good point,” I say. “So I think Leila and those women are… friends? Maybe they’ve been plotting this whole attack for a long time, and the last missing piece was an inside person. Enter Leila.”
“But the tattoos. You don’t get matching tattoos with a random accomplice.”
We’ve been keeping our voices down in case someone is stationed out the door, but I unintentionally yell it once the light bulb goes off. “They’re her cousins!”
Zwe goes silent. “Her… cousins,” he says, stretching each syllable.
“Holy shit, it’s been in front of us all along.” I race through my thoughts, more pieces sliding into place, the puzzle’s vague patches of color turning into real scenes. “Of course they have matching tattoos of the island. It’s their home. They’re family.”
