Page 7 of Here for a Good Time
“How are they doing? Been a while since I spoke to them,” Zwe says like they’re old friends with whom he’s missed the last couple of catch-up brunches. Then again, he does text them as regularly as I do so I guess they kind of are.
“Good,” I say, finishing the last of my tea. “May May went up a level in her Thai language class, and Phay Phay joined this group of aunties who do tai chi in the park at six every morning.” At their collective bemused reaction, I hold up a hand. “Don’t ask. Apparently he saw them during one of his morning walks and decided to give it a go. Most of them are Thai, but despite the language barrier, they all get along great.”
“I miss them,” Auntie Eindra says with a soft chuckle.
“You know, you could retire and live that life, too. What do you say, Phay Phay?” Zwe nods over at Uncle. “Feel like doing tai chi in the middle of Bangkok with Uncle Thura every morning?”
Uncle Arkar gets to his feet, and leans over to take the now-empty mugs. “Maybe one day.” He looks around the bookstore, gently nodding to himself as he surveys the spines that fill the built-in oak shelves—shelves that he’d made with his own hands in his previous career as a carpenter. He’d literally built this store from the ground up. “I’m not quite ready to walk away from all of this just yet. This is—” He motions, two mugs in each hand.
“Too good,” I finish.
He nods at me in aNailed itgesture, an emotion I can’t put into words but that I’m familiar with, dancing in his eyes.
Because it is. Too good, I mean. Growing up, this is where Zweand I would do our homework on the weekends. Where I speed-read all of Jane Austen’s novels. Where I held my book launch. Where… where Vik proposed to me, right in front of the romance section, and, three months later, where I showed up after closing time, soaked in rainwater and heartbreak, and used my key to open the door and hug Zwe from behind before he could even drop the mop. And yet, even with that memory still looming like a specter that refuses to leave, this place issogood. If I owned it, I wouldn’t want to retire until I absolutely had to either.
Back at ours, after ten seconds—or maybe thirty—of me trying to put the key in the door, Zwe takes over.
“Blame the Pen Claw. I need a hand massage,” I say. “Just from the wrist up. A… finger massage?”
“That sounds incredibly inappropriate.”
“Sounds like you just have an incredibly dirty mind.”
He chuckles. “Thank you for today. You helped bring in a nice chunk of cash. It was a good one,” he says, swiftly putting the key in and turning the lock in one go.
“They’re always good ones,” I reply, meaning it. I might not always have the time or energy to do signings, but when I do, I always love it, especially at Sar Oat Sin. “Oh, Soraya says hi, by the way. I was texting her yesterday about our trip.”
“Tell her hi back from me. I feel like it’s been ages since I eavesdropped on one of your four-hour-long FaceTime calls,” he says, and I try to ignore the acute stab of guilt in my gut from the knowledge that the reason he hasn’t eavesdropped on one of our calls in a while is because it’sbeena while since we had one.
After opening the door, Zwe makes a dramaticYou firstgesturewith one hand. I roll my eyes and go to take a step when he murmurs a soft “Hey” and his other hand comes to rest on the small of my back, causing my body to lock up. It’s not that I feel a spark or a warmth or any of those traditional descriptions, but something more intangible and far more potent that I still can’t pinpoint, like the sole millisecond before a candlewick catches on fire.
This happens sometimes. He’ll do something inconspicuous that, nonetheless, makes me forget how tobe.
I’ve always loved Zwe as a friend, and sometimes,sometimes,often in the dead of night following a day where I’ve had a moment like this, I wonder if I could love him more. Differently. But then I take a step back, recognize that I’ve had a lifelong habit of dramatizing real life, and ask myself if this is me simply romanticizing our friendship as well (it worked out well that I turned out to be a novelist in the end).
And then there isthe incident—the still-somewhat-mortifying fact that it’s not like Zwe doesn’t know how I once felt about him. The summer after our first year in university, when neither of us came home all year long—me from Oxford, him from Brown—because we couldn’t afford it, we promised each other dinner on the first night that we were both back in Yangon.
I can remember that night so vividly, like a framed Polaroid that I permanently keep on the shelf at the front of my mind’s eye. We had dan pauk that he cooked from his mom’s recipe paired with wine that I picked up at the supermarket, and my parents were on a trip to Mandalay so we had the apartment to ourselves.
When I reached the bottom of my second glass, through the lens of nostalgia and love and cheap alcohol, I had thought,Wait, how have I never noticed how handsome you are?Because he was. He’d shaved his beard, and he was wearing a yellow T-shirt whosefabric was slightly thinner and tighter than anything he’d have worn in high school when he refused to wear any shirt that might draw attention to his soft, round stomach, and I had thought that this new confidence looked good on him. He loved studying maths, he told me. Statistics, specifically.
Why?I’d asked.
Because with numbers, everything makes sense. Ithasto.
And instead of askingHow?or sayingI’m happy you’re happy,I’d leaned in, close enough to smell the scent of his aftershave, two centimeters separating our lips at first, then one, then none, my bottom lip brushing against his, my whole body feeling like an army of Pop Rocks was ricocheting against my insides.Can I kiss you?I’d asked, suddenly feeling like I would positively implode if I couldn’t.
I’d thought the worst thing he could do was say no. Well, actually, I figuredtheworst thing he could’ve done was physically recoil backward. But instead, he’d smiled, pushed a lock of hair behind my ear, and then, oh so gently, raised his mouth to kiss my forehead before saying,We should go to sleep. And if it weren’t for the cushioning that only two glasses of wine can provide, my heart would’ve shattered right then and there on the tabletop.
The next morning, I did what anyone does with mortification of that kind—I shredded it and set it on fire, never again acknowledging it, even in spite of the small Z-shaped scar that it had scorched into a corner of my heart.
“Hey what?” I ask, still frozen.
“Just… I know you were anxious about today, and I’m really proud.”
“Thanks. Love you,” I say, and step inside so I don’t have to look at his reaction, if there is one.
When he drops his hand, I exhale silently, my blood recirculating in the right directions. “You’re tired,” he calls out from behind. “I’ll make us some dinner. What do you want?”
