Page 35 of The Summer of Everything

“Are you sure?” Nico asks, chewing. His mouth pulls a little south, as though he’s concerned or disappointed.

What would he have to be disappointed over? Wes’s inability to go after a semi-sure thing rather than having to create a plan just to ask his best friend out?

“Don’t worry,” Wes says, exhaling. “He won’t be stealing your permanent position as my plus-one to all future formal events.”

“Good.” Nico tears into more funnel cake, chewing with his mouth open.

How is he gross and attractive at the same time?

Defeated, Wes stares down the pier.

A man strums his guitar for passing tourists. His case is open, slowly filling with crinkled dollars and shiny coins. Eventually, a raspy voice accompanies him. It takes Wes a second to realize it’s Anna. He didn’t know she could sing. He didn’t know she’d be so bold, but here she is, singing Adele like some indie pop artist trying to gain cool points.

Wes spots Cooper whooping from the small audience forming around them. Kyra’s next to him, a dreamy expression softening her face.

“Wesley, I—” Nico doesn’t finish. He peers out at the water, nose wrinkled.

“I’m sorry about earlier. About…”

“Losing your shit?”

“Losing my shit,” Wes confirms.

“I get it.”

“You do?” Wes can’t curb the surprise in his voice.

“The bookstore means a lot to all of us, but it meanseverythingto you. It always has. You’ve been in love with that place since day one.”

Wes has. Since the moment Calvin walked him through that glass door, around the cardboard stand advertising his mom’s newest book, to the comics corner. He sat down, cross-legged, with Wes and let him have at it for two hours. He never said a word. Not until he asked Wes which one he would like to take home.

“All of them!” Wes wanted to eat, sleep, and daydream on that gray carpet.

“It’s like a breakup,” Nico says to the ocean.

“Sorry. I don’t know that word,” teases Wes.

“Lauren Walsh,” Nico reminds him. “Angela Barry. Khalia Pressley.”

“Okay. Point made.”

So, Wes had a little bit of an issue with rejection in middle school. He failed to master the art of “no” whenever a girl asked him out. They were all fictious arrangements: holding hands in the halls; kissing on the cheek after class; writing the most dramatic poems via texts. And every girl would break up with him after two weeks.

It never bothered Wes. He didn’t recognize who he really wanted to date until much later.

“Anyway,” Wes says. “It’s worse than a breakup. It’s like a—”

“Death?”

A chill crawls over the back of Wes’s neck, seeping down his spine. He doesn’t want to compare losing Once Upon a Page to death. Not to Nico.

“I get that too,” whispers Nico. “Either way, it’s like someone reaching into your chest and ripping out half your heart. How do you survive with only half a heart?”

Wes doesn’t know.

Nico’s fingers are white from picking at his funnel cake. He raises a chunk. “Want some?”

Hesitation claws at Wes. He leans forward, and Nico pops the greasy, doughy piece into Wes’s open mouth. He chews slowly, grinning. Nico matches his expression. They’re twin white-bearded friends on a bench in the middle of a neon-lit pier while Anna sings Adele’s melancholy “Someone Like You.”

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