Page 74 of Here for a Good Time
“What… about Vik?”
“You were so in love with him. I never thought he was good enough for you, but then again, I never thought anyone would be good enough for you, not the way I would be. Cocky, I know,” he says. He’s trying to play it off with a rueful smile, but I see how difficult this is for him. Zwe Aung Win doesn’t put his heart on display.
“You could’ve brought it up again. After we broke up.”
“I thought—” He stops himself.
I frown at his hesitation. “Thought what?”
“That you weren’t over him.” My jaw drops at the statement. “You still kept bringing him up,” Zwe explains. “About how he didn’t think you could do this or that, how you wished he could see you now. I was scared that you were still in love with him, and that even if we did get together, I’d always be the rebound or the… second option. The guy you settled for because you couldn’t get the one you actually wanted.”
“You’re an idiot,” I say without thinking, and Zwe laughs in surprise. “You are!” I repeat. “Settle? You thinkyou’dbe the second option?Hewas the second option!Hewas the one I would’ve settled for.”
Now it’s Zwe’s turn to look astonished. “Really?” he asks, sounding the most vulnerable I’ve ever heard him.
“Really,” I say. “The reason I keep bringing him up is because there’s a part of me that is still stuck on how little he thought of me, how little he believed in me. And yeah, that’s clearly something I need to work on in therapy. But how could you—” I swallow, unable to believe that this is what’s been going through his head this whole time. “When Vik broke up with me and told me I was never going to become an author, I was heartbroken and I felt so small, but I also thought,I hope Zwe doesn’t secretly think this too.But you always showed me that you didn’t, and that’s what kept me going. Thatyoubelieved that I could.”
I smile, and he smiles back, and my god, the way my heart pinches in on itself. “That’s why it hurt so much that you tore my book apart,” I say. “Yours is the only opinion that ever matters to me.”
He shakes his head at himself. “I’m sorry. I was angry. I’m so, so sorry.”
“I’m sorry, too,” I say. Because this is our love: love that knows when to bend and bow in humility so it doesn’t break.
I can’t tell if the buzzing in my skull is from the adrenaline or the sensation of overwhelming love, the kind that would make you, I dunno, write about it.
“I want to write a romance novel,” I blurt out.
Zwe looks like he can’t tell if that’s the setup for a joke. “Okay?”
“If we’re admitting things,” I say, somewhat embarrassed, “I… Idowant to write a romance novel. You’re right. A time-traveling manhole issostupid.”
“It really is.”
“Okay, you don’t have to rub it in.” He meets my scowl with a chuckle. “It… it turns out I already knew more about love than IthoughtI did.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah,” I say, a fresh wave of tears blurring my vision. “It turns out everything I needed to know about love was sleeping on the other side of the wall every night. God, that’s cheesy, isn’t it? It’s all right, I’ll work on it.”
“I think love is built on a solid foundation of cheese,” he says with a wink.
“But… what if my agent hates it? What if my publisher hates it? What if no one takes me as aseriouswriter anymore?”
“Fuck all that. You do what you did before. What you’re doing now.”
“Which is?”
He smiles, and I already know that that’s all the encouragement I’m going to need. “You keep going. No matter what. No matter how long it takes, you keep going like you always do.”
“Little by little. Because good things take time,” I whisper.
A good book.
A good love.
When his gaze drops to the pendant around my neck, it’s like he’s set every inch of my skin ablaze. “They do,” he says.
“I love you,” he says. “You have no idea what you do to me.”
