Page 14 of The Summer of Everything

“Oh, if you loved that series, let me introduce you to this one. Pirates, ships, and enemies-to-lovers-to-possible-enemies-again romance,” gushes Mrs. Rossi as she leads a woman through the aisles.

Mrs. Rossi arrived an hour ago in a blast of lily-scented perfume and charm. She reminds Wes a lot of Frenchy fromGrease—the movie version, since Wes has never seen a live musical. Mrs. Rossi is bubbly, a bit spacy, and not-so-accidentally dyes her hair cotton candy pink just like Frenchy. While she entertains customers with jokes and wide-eyed excitement, Wes is stuck dealing with Mr. X-Files, whose breath smells of raw onions and desperation.

“Sir, would you like me to order it—”

“I need it now,” argues Mr. X-Files. “This research is vital.”

“Really?” Wes raises a curious eyebrow at this guy’s‘It’s all good in the hood’ E.T.T-shirt. He’s not judging; just observing.

Mr. X-Files relents with a grunt. “How long will delivery take?”

“For this book?” Wes clicks around on the store’s semi-ancient desktop computer. “Ten business days.”

“That’s a millennium.”

Wes peeks past Mr. X-Files to his comics corner. A young teen with honey-blond hair, green eyes, and a healthy distribution of freckles across their cheeks looks undecided between a Deadpool graphic novel and a Harley Quinn one. Every inch of Wes wants to scream. That’s where he should be, instead of listening to this onion-breath monster’s ranting.

“Would you like the book delivered to the store or a home address?” Wes finally asks, watching as Mr. X-Files turns an unhealthy shade of red.

After paying, Mr. X-Files stomps toward the door. Wes shouts, “And have a page-turning day!” because Mrs. Rossi loves to torture her employees by demanding they use the store’s customary farewell for every customer.

He can’t believe this is his life on a Monday afternoon.

“You’re back!” Zay strides into the bookstore, greeting Wes with a fist-bump and a quick hug. Wes loves that about Zay—he has zero issues with showing affection with other guys, no matter their sexuality. In high school, Wes watched boys be casually demonstrative with each other, but if it ever got too physical, or there were too many eyes on them, they would always separate with a “that’s gay” and a laugh.

He hated that.

But Zay isn’t like those select assholes who ruined Wes’s perception of PDA. Zay’s still in high school. He’s starting his senior year in September. He’s got perfectly straight, white teeth, along with an awesomely soft, curly ‘fro, the dreamiest sepia eyes, and a tawny complexion that Wes swears has never seen a pimple.

“Nice to have more melanin in this place,” says Zay, jokingly.

This is another aspect of Zay that Wes loves. The one that doesn’t walk around Wes’s genealogy. Zay doesn’t shame Wes’s passing exterior because Savannah’s white and Calvin’s family is all very light-skinned. They both acknowledge Wes’s privilege as much as they recognize they share the same community.

Zay’s one fatal flaw is his poor choice in music, which he proves by cutting off Wes’s epic air guitar session to Weezer’s raucous “Holiday” and putting on Tracy Chapman.

“What the hell?”

“Wes, listen.” Zay tilts his chin up. “I’m trying to educate you on great music the way my moms have informed me.”

With Tracy Chapman?Wes is insulted on behalf of all the customers browsing the aisles. Zay’s lucky Wes is too jet-lagged to chastise him about the differences between quality music, like Nada Surf and the Offspring, and whatever mellow nonsense is currently assaulting his eardrums. Plus, Zay’s stupidly cute smile wins every argument.

In the teen fantasy section, a young girl stops to whisper-shout to her friend, “Fuck, he’s bae-material.”

On merit, Wes agrees. Zay’s straight, and Wes really isn’t into that whole turn-the-hetero-guy-homo thing he’s read about online. Also, there’s that Nico thing he’s currently navigating. Wes supposes it’s a bit hypocritical to pinpoint his one reason for not dating Zay being the straight aspect, considering he’s only about eighty-percent confident Nico’s at least bisexual.

Thing is, Nico’s been on dates with girls. He’s kissed guys. Well,a guy. Wes doesn’t vehemently hate Marco Carpenter for drawing Nico’s name during a juvenile game of dirty dice—which was really the junior, home arts-and-crafts version Lula Fuentes made by taping dirty dares on the sides of Monopoly dice—at a party when they were sixteen. But he’s not fond of the way Marco used his lizard tongue to attack Nico’s mouth or the way Nico bit Marco’s bottom lip. Their hands did a lot of moving too. It was kind of dark in Lula’s basement, but Wes has read a lot of comic books; that’s certainly given him partial X-ray vision by osmosis.

“Um, Wes?”

Wes blinks, then jerks out of his daydream—nightmare? —to stare at Zay.

“Wow,” Zay says, nodding approvingly. “The power of Chapman.”

“You should not be allowed near music.”

“I dunno, homie.” Zay points to the aisle between mystery and nonfiction. “Anna sure likes it.”

Wes would like to remind Zay that they both believe Anna’s part wood nymph. She has long, ash-blonde hair and large, rock-candy blue eyes. Freckles cover her fair skin. As she twirls, the hem of her peasant dress flutters. She’s twenty, a supposed future assistant store manager, and so Bohemian-hippie.

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