Page 83 of The Summer of Everything

Wes’s mouth slides open; no words come out.

From the other side, Anna’s arm comes around. She wriggles it under Ella’s defiant head, and they lie like that, scrunched together, Anna half-hugging her.

“Adults suck,” she says quietly. “And I’m one of them.”

Wes doesn’t know why, but he giggles at that. Ella does too. “You’re mildly acceptable in that role,” Ella says wetly. “But you’re too rad to be a full adult.”

“A half adult?” Anna asks.

“A quarter one,” Ella says.

Wes shifts back around, staring up at the nomadic clouds. In his peripheral vision, the city twinkles. He can identify a few buildings by shape, some by neon signage, but Wes could never draw them in his mind the way his mom does when she writes about Los Angeles. It’s one thing he can appreciate about her writing—the way she takes words and turns them into full murals in someone’s mind. Masterpieces hung in the brain.

Guiltily, Wes wishes she’d given that kind of attention and detail to him. If she spent less time trying to write her next bestseller, maybe she could help him solve some of his problems. Or maybe, at the least, she could tell him how any of this works.

“I think everyone’s parents suck in some capacity,” he says. “They’re all flawed children in adult-sized clothes.”

Ella snorts. “Your parents are golden.”

“They’re not,” says Wes. “What kind of responsible parents allow their eighteen-year-old son to hang out for an entire summer with a wannabe rebel like you?”

“The good kind.”

A calm breeze shifts over them. Ella tugs her leather jacket closed. Anna’s pulled her beanie so far down, she no longer has visible eyebrows. Wes snuggles into his hoodie, watching the sky.

“Okay, but Wes,” Ella says in that voice that usually accompanies a truly horrendous speech, “You high-key need to get over him. It’s time. Moving on from things isn’t the worst.”

Isn’t it, though?Change is something Wes hasn’t made friends with.

Ella channels her sincerity through cold fingertips as she wraps a hand around his wrist. “It’ll be okay if you meet someone new. If you let someonepursueyou.”

Wes’s own fingers dig into his palms.

“You can’t stay hung up on him forever.”

He doesn’t plan to. Then again, maybe plans aren’t Wes’s strong suit after all?

The blue light of his phone screen draws his attention. There’s a new social media notification. Fate has crashed his pity-party.

Wes has several new private messages from one @manus808:

Ok. This took a lot of courage to do. So here me out. You and me eating good together. I know a place close to the bookstore. U down?

9:56 p.m.

*HEAR me out! Damn I’m better with words I promise.

9:57 p.m.

*eating FOOD together. But also eating GOOD food together. Am I a dork?

9:58 p.m.

Of course I’m a dork! I said U down? WTF. Plz say this hasn’t changed your mind. Unless you were going to say no? I hope not. I’m fun ;)

10:00 p.m.

Chapter Nineteen

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