Page 24 of The Summer of Everything

It’s not enough.

Leo exhales, as if he can tell Wes isn’t paying attention. Wes rubs his forehead. He motions toward the pale pink building behind him. “Do you want to come up?”

“I’ve already stopped by.”

Of course Leo has. He’s probably washed the dishes, reorganized their mom’s bookshelf, and inventoried their dad’s cooking alcohol collection to see if Wes or Ella have snuck any.

“Tell Ella to clean up,” demands Leo.

“I’ll tell her you said hi,” Wes replies smugly.

“And you’ll call Leeann?”

“Sure.”

“I mean it, Wes.”

“Fine,” Wes hisses. “I’ll call.”

Leo looks ready to say something sarcastic but doesn’t. He whispers, “Thanks,” in an almost sincere tone before nudging past Wes and disappearing into a fleet of tourists migrating toward the pier.

Wes finally drags himself to the loft. His first day back at the bookstore is officially a disaster.

“When it comes to matters of love, you’re always dancing with devils.” The music surrounding them was a din under Daemon’s melodic voice. “Devils of temptation, constantly reminding you this love isn’t enough. Devils of jealousy. Devils of uncertainty leading you to chaos and emptiness.”

“You think love is confusing?” Elisabeth asked. A lock of her walnut-brown hair slipped from its neatly tailored bun.

“Love is the very definition of confusion.”

Elisabeth smiled, though she wasn’t sure if it was her or the itching noise around her pulling at her lips.

Beneath their feet, the ballroom’s black and white pattern blurred. Dark, then light. Light, then dark. They danced in continuous circles—a waltz defined by helixes.

“Then there’s the devil of heartbreak that drags you to hell. Always feeding your loneliness, your pain, with blackened memories. The ‘what was’ versus ‘what was not.’ Why would anyone want to live that way?” asked Daemon. Not a thread of his ice-blond hair had fallen out of place. Not a muscle in his pale face moved too earnestly, without a reason or a rhyme.

“And you?” Her control waned under the pools of black in his eyes. “How do you deal with such devils?”

The darkness shifted through her marrow like the chorus of a familiar song. The magic in that room, so thick and coated in blood, filled her lungs.

“I dance alone.” Daemon smirked, exposing the barest hint of sharp canines. “I spin around until I don’t recognize it’s the devil leading me the entire time.”

Elisabeth gasped, but could not escape.

They danced and danced.

—Savannah Kirk,The Dark Prince

Chapter Seven

It turns out constructing anexceptional list of ways to finally ask out your lifelong best friend doesn’t happen overnight. It doesn’t happen in two days. Wes’s been home an entire week and still… nothing.

It’s a Wednesday and Santa Monica breathes easy under a cloudless blue sky. People pass by Once Upon a Page in shorts and no shirt, tank tops and flip-flops. Everywhere, someone’s wearing a shiny pair of sunglasses, reflecting all the good vitamin D.

Today’s excellent weather promises one thing for the bookstore: sparse shoppers.

It means Wes can work on his plan of attack. He sits, cross-legged, in his favorite corner with one earbud in and hisSummer for Losersplaylist—a collection of mostly Lit and the Offspring and R.E.M.—cranked all the way up. Slouched over, elbows on his thighs, he scans through his phone. He’s surrounded on three sides by wall-to-wall comic-book-cover murals. Each one has vibrant colors or large fonts and action sequences and characters he’s imagined being too many times to count.

More than once, Wes’s mind drifts to Metropolis or Gotham City.

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