Page 104 of The Summer of Everything

Damn, how long has it been since he called Calvin that? How long since he’s felt this vulnerable, a man-sized shell of a body containing a five-year-old desperate to crawl into his father’s lap for tea and cartoons.

“Are you okay?” Calvin looks down, probably to check the time. “Are you at work?”

“Ye-Yeah,” Wes stutters, smiling with all the muscles that’ll cooperate.

“Mrs. Rossi good?”

Wes doesn’t know. She’s taken another unplanned day off. Technically, he’s in charge, but he has the slightest faith Ella and Cooper won’t burn the store down in the next ten minutes.

“Yeah, she’s fine.”

Calvin hums; the camera shifts until Wes gets an up-close-and-weird view of him. He’s always been strange about FaceTime. He doesn’t understand the concept of keeping the phone still or what to do when the picture freezes and always holds the lens too close, as if it’ll make the moment more personal rather than awkward.

“How’s the restaurant?” Wes asks, killing time until he can corral courage.

“Good, good. But I can’t wait to get back home. They’ll be fine without me here.”

Wes loves the confidence in Calvin’s voice. It’s taken him years to get to the point where he trusts anyone else to manage one of his projects.

“Did you get my texts?”

This is the point Wes’s been avoiding. For weeks, he’s kept Calvin on hold. Or he’s skirted the subject of school. But after talking to Leo, he knows this is what he needs to do. Thankfully, Leo’s got his back. He even offered to call their parents for Wes.

But Wes needs to own this.

“About that.” Wes scratches his cheek.

Calvin hums again. The camera pans back as he lifts a cup to his mouth, slurping.

“Is that tea?”

“Yup,” says Calvin, holding the cup higher, almost dropping his phone. The joy in his voice collapses the light-years of distance between them, as if Calvin’s right here in Santa Monica with Wes, both of them stretched lazily across the green sofa with twin cups. “Thai ginger. Do you remember drinking this?”

Wes nods, eyes wet. A sleeping, curled memory stretches in his chest. Its blissful light overtakes Wes’s cells. Calvin’s drinking herbal tea. He’s thinking of Wes.

I can do this.

“So, uh.” Wes clears his throat. “Can we talk about college?”

* * *

On Thursday morning, before theivory imprint of the moon disappears, Wes jogs down the stairwell to Colorado Avenue. From the sidewalk, he can view the unlit blue-white arch welcoming tourists to Santa Monica Yacht Harbor. The air’s slightly damp and cool. Eugene’s already inside Brews and Views, setting up the espresso machines for the seven a.m. crowd. A soundtrack of birds and rolling waves from the beach whispers into the streets.

It’s like every other morning Wes has been here, in front of Once Upon a Page, before the bookstore opens.

But today it’s different. There’s a weight on his shoulders he’s ready to remove. There’s a hollowness in his chest that needs to be filled.

When Wes opens the door, he inhales the scent of new books and old carpet. In a few hours, the bookstore will smell like sand and ocean. In a month, the bookstore will probably reek of new paint and retail commercialism. Anna forgot to turn off the neon BOOKS sign in the window last night. The pink letters aren’t the only lights glowing in Wes’s vision.

In the back corner, the office shines like a beacon.

Wes’s fingers drag along the shelves as he navigates the aisles. What happens to the books when a bookstore closes? Are they donated to charity? Given to schools? Put in a storage locker, where their stories grow old and lifeless in the dark?

The void in Wes’s chest expands, but he carries on.

Mrs. Rossi is hunched at her desk. Her hair’s more gray than pink now. Sitting on a messy stack of papers is a used copy ofThe Heart of the Lone Wolf. Mrs. Rossi’s mumbling to herself; her left hand trembles as she attempts to hold a pen. “Heaven help me!”

Wes frowns, then clears his throat. “Hey?”

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