ONE
“Are you up?”
A dry, ragged grumble comes out of my phone’s speaker before Zwe’s empty shell of a voice mumbles, “No.”
“Can I come in?”
Another grumble. “It’s … one forty-seven.”
Whirling my chair around, I jump to my feet and, still feeling the buzz from my two post-dinner iced coffees, practically skip out of my office. “I know. But you won’t believe what I just did.”
“Unless it’s set the kitchen on fire, I don’t—” He pauses. “That better be a masked intruder knocking at my door.”
“I’m coming in! Be decent!” I say, hand already turning the doorknob. “And if you’re not, get under the covers.”
I leave Zwe’s bedroom door ajar behind me so that the living room light can stream in. Shirtless, he hauls himself up into a sitting position, both knuckles rubbing at his barely open eyes. “Please tell me you found out that the apocalypse has arrived and you’ve come to say a final goodbye. Because otherwise—”
I plop myself down at the foot of his bed, facing him. “What are you doing next Friday?”
“Obviously now hosting interviews for a new roommate,” he mutters, shoulders hunched. I can just make out the utter contempt that flashes across his eyes. Still grinning, I scoot myself closer across the duvet.
“Well, you’re going to have to push those auditions back three weeks, baby, because we’re going away!”
“My god, you are loud at two A.M.”
“That’s what all my lovers have told me!” I yell, even louder.
His shoulders vibrate with his chuckle. “Okay, okay, I’m awake. Now, run this by me again? Is this the plot of your next book?”
I shake my head. “No, but it’s book-adjacent. I, your best friend on this whole entire planet, in this lifetime and the next, have booked us a two-week-long, all-inclusive trip to—” I scrunch my gaze up at the ceiling, concentrating to make sure I get this right. “— Sertulu. It’s this tiny island located near the Philippines, like somewhere to the right.” I point to my own right to really solidify my geographical description.
“What—” Zwe scrubs one hand down his face. “—is that? Are you sure that’s even a real place? Is this some PR trip Netflix invited you on? Or did you fall for an online scam where this place promised you that, I dunno, Michael B. Jordan regularly holidays there?”
“How dare you, I’m not that gullible. And no, it’s very cool, I promise.” I unlock my phone, the contrast between the room’s darkness and the suddenly lit screen making me feel like I’m staring into the sun. “You’re not ready for this, I swear.” When the resort’s home page loads, I thrust the phone in front of Zwe’s face.
On reflex, he shields his eyes with the back of one hand. “Oh my god, have you never heard of dark mode? What are you, a boomer?” Through squinted eyes, he takes my phone, and pulls the brightness bar to its lowest before actually reading anything. “Since when did Ms. City Girl want to vacation on a remote island?”
“It’s at the sweet junction of ‘remote enough to feel peaceful’ and ‘not so remote that we’re wiping our asses with leaves we’ve foraged ourselves in the jungle,’” I explain. “And naturally, I have booked us a suite at the island’s most exclusive resort. Well, it’s the island’s only resort. But it’s still the most exclusive! Doesn’t it look incredible?”
He’s still scrolling through the Cerulean’s website. Even when he’s 80 percent asleep, Zwe’s poker face is inscrutable. He scrolls, clicks, scrolls some more, clicks, clicks, scrolls, clicks, scrolls, scrolls—and finally hands the phone back.
“Poe, it’s three in the morning.”
I blink. “Yes.”
“You booked us a trip to—” He nods at the now-black screen. “There. At three in the morning.”
“Yes. I was inspired.”
“By what? Did you start watching Lost?”
I put the phone down and smooth the front of my T-shirt. I’m on a high, and I will not be yanked back to reality by Zwe’s quips. “Ironically, by my writer’s block.” When I glance back up at him, a small smirk is toying with the corners of his lips. “What?”
“Nothing,” he says, but as soon as he opens his mouth to speak, the smirk reveals itself.
“What?” I ask, determined to get it out of him.
“You know I love you.”
“Mm-hmmm.”
“I just…” He chuckles and shakes his head. “Over the past four months, I have watched you take up a lot of hobbies to, you know, be inspired. Obviously, some of them have been less, um, logical than others—”
“Are we still on about the Legos? Because I would say that, to an extent, constructing a quarter of a Taj Mahal did get some of the creative juices flowing. I wrote a full two hundred words that first night. It’s the most I’ve written in … in…” Four months. I don’t need to say it out loud, though, because Zwe knows. Because he’s lived it, right alongside me in our two-and-a-half-bedroom (the half is our converted office space) fourth-floor walk-up.
There were the aforementioned Legos, which came after the violin, but before the cross-stitching. There has also been the ukulele, pottery making, jigsaw puzzles, friendship bracelets, an eight-week planting class that I attended a whopping two times, and bird-watching.
And I know this trip is (arguably) more radical than jigsaws and misshapen “mugs,” but at this point, I need radical.
“Maybe we sleep on it,” Zwe offers. If you looked up “the voice of reason” in the dictionary, you’d find a picture of him, clean-shaven face with a small mole on his right cheek and all, two dimples tacking up either end of his smile. I press my lips and look down at the comforter. “It’s nonrefundable, isn’t it?” He sighs.
“Maybe.”
“There was a refundable option and you deliberately picked the nonrefundable one, didn’t you?”
At that, I look up and hold a finger to stand my ground. “Between flights and accommodation, that would’ve been close to an extra five hundred dollars. Five. Hundred.”
He flicks the tip of my finger. “You realize I know the exact number of your book advance, not to mention your film deal,” he counters, but without much conviction. Zwe is the most careful person I know when it comes to anything, including money, and I know that he knows that I know he would’ve had a small aneurysm if I’d paid that much extra for the refundable option.
“We haven’t had a best-friend trip in ages!” I point out. Despite his admonishing side spiel, I’m still grinning. “It’s going to be, as the kids say, epic.”
“What kids?” he asks, bemused, and I know he’s beginning to tip over to my side.
“The TikTokers.”
“When did you say we were leaving?”
“Our flight is next Friday at ten thirty-two P.M.”
“And what do we do with the bookstore for—” He glances around as though there’s an invisible calendar on his nightstand. “How long did you say the trip was?”
“Two weeks. Well, sixteen days. But basically two weeks.”
“The bookstore—”
“Will be fine.” I rush to speak first. “I would bet money your parents will agree that you deserve a holiday, and that they can handle the bookstore on their own for two weeks. It was theirs first, remember? Last time I checked, it still is.”
He glares at me. A real glare, not a sleep-shrouded squinting of the eyes. “You are the worst.”
“Oh no, how dare I,” I say, flattening my voice. “I’m sorry I booked us on a two-week luxury island getaway with first-class tickets.”
“First-class—” He takes in a deep breath, and I bare my teeth in an innocent grimace. “You know first- and business-class tickets are the products of a capitalist, classist system.”
“Yes, but it’s a nine-hour flight. I would like to be cozy in a horizontal bed for a nine-hour flight. We don’t have teenagers’ backs anymore, old man.” I poke one of his biceps. “These bones be creaking.”
A ridge forms between his brows, and I still, knowing he’s doing that Zwe thing where he comes at it from angles, making sure he’s two—better yet, ideally three—steps ahead of any possible mishap. It’s why he’s my favorite beta reader—there hasn’t been a single plot hole that Zwe Aung Win has missed. That, and the fact that even with my shittiest drafts, he always knows how to deliver criticism with kindness.
I haven’t been the best best friend lately, I know this. Between the editorial meetings and Netflix production meetings and publicity meetings and the cumulative meeting-induced panic attacks and the erratic writing schedules and habits and my “weird” hobbies, I haven’t been there for Zwe like I need to be. To be honest, if we didn’t live together, I don’t know how often I’d have seen him over the last few months. He’s taken point on all the cleaning and cooking and general keeping-the-apartment-in-a-livable-state-ing, and although Zwe has never been someone who explicitly complains about anything, I know it must be taking a toll. For instance, at one point I realized that his morning jogs were about twenty minutes longer than usual, which was strange because Zwe likes to divide up his daily routine into as specific time increments as possible. When I asked him about it, he’d murmured something along the lines of Have I? Didn’t notice. My stamina must be building up, which was a lie because I know Zwe runs to de-stress, upping his exercise whenever he needs to really work through lingering tension. It stung to know that, by process of elimination, I was the thing in his life that was causing him stress.
Hell, I didn’t even know his now-ex-girlfriend Julia had broken up with him until I looked up from my laptop one evening last month and found him walking around with a cardboard box in hand to collect her belongings. The memory of that afternoon still hurts, because by the time I’d realized, he’d already gone through the worst of his heartbreak—by himself. My tunnel vision over this next draft has only worsened as I approach my deadline, but this trip will help me become both a better writer and a better friend.
No, scratch that—it will help me go back to being a better writer and a better friend.
It has to.
“I’m still not—” he begins.
“I need this,” I say quickly. And when I meet his eyes, he knows what I mean.
Please, I beg through best-friend telepathy. We need this.
“I thought you liked those two chapters you started last week.”
“I did, but now I don’t,” I say, feeling as deflated as I sound. This has happened so many times over the last few months that I’m not even particularly sad about throwing those chapters out into the ether. What’s two more chapters anyway? You can’t be precious about killing your darlings if you don’t have any.
The writer’s block started out as any author’s routine case of Book Two-induced Writer’s Block, but now it’s … more. It’s more prominent, more consuming, has transformed into something that alternates between keeping me up in the middle of the night and giving me nightmares when I do manage to fall asleep. But the harder I try to get over it, the worse it gets, like when you try to remember a dream but the more you concentrate, the faster the picture fades away.
Frankly, as absurd as it sounds, it increasingly feels like a moral failing, like I’m not working hard enough, like I’m being flippant with all the opportunities that have landed right at my doorstep. On my worst days, I view it as proof that I got lucky with my first book. That I have only ever had one good book in me, and it’s only downhill from here. If I really wanted to, I could follow the steps of my anxious spiral even farther down: my book was the “ethnic” card, the big newspapers needed to throw in a “diverse” book into their Hot Books column, and mine just happened to be pitched at the right time, and of course those white reviewers only wrote good reviews because no one wants to be accused of being a racist. I was never good enough, maybe never even good, period.
“How do you always manage to bully me into doing exactly what you want?” Zwe’s voice snaps me back to the now.
“Hmmm,” I say, swinging my legs on the side of his bed. “By being so funny and charming that you have no choice but to love me. Oh, and by buying this place from our shitty landlord so that we wouldn’t have to keep giving him our money.”
“Now you’re my shitty landlord.”
“Excuse me,” I say and get to my feet. “I’m your shitty landlady.”
“Okay, landlady, get some sleep, will ya?” he calls out behind me as I head for the door. “Despite this late-night detour, you still need to be at the store by eleven for the signing! I can’t just reschedule a hundred people!”
Without turning around, I hold up a peace sign above my head. “Yes, boss. Anything for my fans.”
I return to the office with the sole intention of turning off my laptop (it is 3 A.M. at this point), but I’m feeling too giddy to sleep. Giddy and buoyant and possibly inspired.
So instead, I sit down, open a blank Word document, and set a timer on my phone for fifteen minutes and a mental goal of one hundred words. I can write one hundred words in fifteen minutes, no problem.
The island was—
It was what? Bigger than she imagined? Smaller than she imagined? The most beautiful thing she’d ever seen? Something out of her worst nightmare?
It’s just a first draft, I remind myself, a mantra that has echoed in my brain so often that by this point, the letters are etched into my brain cells.
The island was massive.
I tap my phone screen to see how much time is left, and then wonder if I’d actually set fifteen minutes because apparently I’m down to nine minutes and fifty-three seconds, and counting. There’s no way the only words I wrote in five minutes were “The island was massive.” It would be comical if the embarrassment weren’t so searing that I felt like I was going to disintegrate into ashes. The cursor taunts me with each blink: You. Suck. You. Suck.
I spend the next approximate ten minutes staring at the timer, visualizing an hourglass filled with molasses. Eventually, all four numbers reach zero, the ringing sound goes off, I’m put out of my misery. I don’t bother to save the document, instead closing it and dragging it straight into the trash bin icon at the bottom right of my screen where it can join my other ghosts of drafts past.
I’ve had bouts of writer’s block for as long as I’ve been writing, but it was easier to manage when the stakes were lower and I didn’t even have so much as an agent to send it to, let alone an editor. The most infuriating part, though, is that I know what it’s like to be on the other side of this mountain, how buzzy and exhilarating it feels when the story comes so naturally as you’re typing that the only thing holding you back is the fact that your fingers physically cannot keep up with your brain, that thrill that accompanies the knowledge that you’ve nailed something perfectly, whether that’s something as small as the last sentence of a chapter or as big as a central plot twist. The high when you reread something you wrote yesterday and you know it’s good. Even thinking about it now, I miss it so much that my fingers twitch.
In front of my bathroom mirror, before I wash my face, I remove my necklace, a gold chain holding an oval Georgian intaglio seal pendant set in gold. The red seal features an image of Cupid churning butter, the words PEU A PEU engraved along the top arch of the oval. It had been a present from Zwe when I signed with my literary agent, meant to serve as a reminder of exactly what it said: Little by little. As he’d put it, Good things take time. Lately, it feels like a taunt. I’ve been churning away at new drafts and yet none of them resemble anything like a finished product. Ayesha, my agent, keeps telling me to take as much time as I need for my next book, but I know my editors aren’t going to wait forever, I know my marketing and publicity teams are hoping that I give them something soon so they can strike while the iron’s hot. Because at some point, the buzz will die out, and I’ll be a has-been.
Last month, another editor at my publishing house contacted Ayesha to ask if she’d pass along an advance copy of a novel coming out at the end of the year by Pim Charoensuk, a “fellow Southeast Asian author.” The book was our publisher’s lead title this year, and even before Ayesha’s email, I’d seen how the hype was already steadily building. It felt like déjà vu—except the last time I’d seen this play out, it had been with my book. There are few things publishing loves more than a debut novel by a young, undiscovered talent; I should know.
Objectively, Pim Charoensuk, who, judging by her social media presence, is a funny, insightful, smart person, is not my competition. I know this. Objectively, it’s hard enough to be a Brown woman, especially one from a non-Western country, trying to break into traditional publishing without having another author actively trying to compete with you; I also know this. We don’t have the same agent or editor, our stories are wildly different, she’s a debut, I’m a sophomore. Objectively, I shouldn’t be jealous.
And yet, and yet …
Why are feelings so funny and illogical? And cruel.
It’s far too shameful that I haven’t even told Zwe, although I get the feeling that he knows. It must be obvious via the shift in my tone whenever I bring up Pim’s book, because every time, I can feel my body tense as though I’m preparing myself for battle. It’s not like she took “my” lead title spot, because I know I’m not entitled to it, and because I don’t have a book this year that could have been in the running for lead title.
But what if? a voice taunts.
But what if I had written faster? What if I’d pushed through all this writer’s block nonsense and finished a draft earlier? What if Pim’s debut is a hit, and she delivers her second book quicker than I can?
After rubbing cleanser onto my skin, I turn the tap in front of me to full blast to drown out my thoughts.
Lately I’ve been listening to that Taylor Swift and Phoebe Bridgers song on repeat, wondering if anyone will still want me when I’m nothing new. Ten years from now, will I be on some snarky listicle titled 10 Authors Whose Debut Novels Showcased Literary Excellence, But Everything They Wrote Afterward Sucked?
It’s okay, I tell myself as I climb into bed. I just need a change of scenery, new activities to inspire me. I’m only nine days away from inspiration.
As I’m setting my alarms for the morning, a text notification appears at the top of my screen. The name reads Soraya Mazhary.
U up?
Soraya lived in the room beside mine during my first year at university. She was studying geography, and even though I didn’t know anything about geography and she “didn’t give two shits” (her words) about English, it was one of those relationships that, from our first conversation, felt like we were always supposed to have been in each other’s lives, it had simply been a matter of time.
We had both signed up for the same Freshers’ week club night event, and fell in step at the back of the pack on our way to Neon Bazaar in the chilly October air.
I’m starting to think this won’t be worth it, I’d half joked, already regretting wearing a little black dress with no tights.
Wanna ditch it and go get ice cream? Soraya asked.
I laughed. She didn’t. You serious?
She shrugged, and gave a head tilt at the group, almost all of whom were already drunk. Most of them sound like proper twats, don’t you think?
I studied them, yelling and whooping down the cobblestones of High Street like they already owned the town. They do, I admitted.
And that was it. I’ve never been one of those people with a core friend group, and it turns out Soraya wasn’t either; we liked that hanging out with each other meant hanging out with only each other, only two schedules to sync up, two similar tastes in restaurants and concerts and clothes shops to consider. When everyone was forming their little cliques during Freshers’ week, Soraya and I were content being a team of two.
Now, she’s got a toddler, and is a professor at the university.
Unfortunately, I type back. Trying to write. What’s up?
Why are you writing in the middle of the night?
Copyright © 2025 by Moe Thet War