“No,” he whispers. The lie tastes familiar.
Manu looks dubious.
“It’s someone,” Wes finally admits, fighting against his brain. His shoulders wilt. “Kind of hung up on a person I shouldn’t be.”
“Sounds serious.”
Eyes on his mint green Pumas, Wes whispers, “I guess.”
Warm fingers that smell like dark roast coffee and cinnamon skim Wes’s chin, lifting it. They’re close enough for Wes to breathe in when Manu exhales. His breath smells like peppermint, as if he’s popped a candy in his mouth somewhere between the restaurant and here.
“I hope, whoever he is,” Manu tilts his head, smiling, “he doesn’t occupy your mind long.”
“Me too.”
The night wraps around them in a quiet glow. Standing in the gap between the sidewalk and the stairwell door, Wes watches the length of Manu’s eyelashes as he blinks. His heart pushes at his ribcage. Every second is another layer sliced off his Nico-focused brain.
“And on the chance of truly screwing tonight up…” Manu’s thumb traces the edge of Wes’s lower lip. “Can I kiss you?”
The impulsive answer: Yes. The long, drawn out answer: Yes.
The answer Wes’s lips give: “Yes.”
He’s glad Manu doesn’t hesitate. He’s already overthinking everything. Manu closes the gap. Wes eases into it. He curls his arms around Manu’s neck—they’re equal height, which Wes enjoys too—and Manu’s hand rests in the middle of his spine, rather than low enough that Wes will spend the entirety of the kiss wondering if Manu might touch his ass.
Manu kisses softly; Wes reciprocates. It’s light, but easy.
It’s a good first kiss.
Then, it’s over. Manu stumbles backward, waving and mumbling about having a great time. He shouts, “Call me!” and waits until Wes nods his agreement. Then Manu cuts the corner.
Wes, by the laws of geekdom, fist-pumps the air and screeches like a banshee.
Manu kissed him. Wait, no, Wes kissed him back. His heart bops all over his tongue like a kid hopped up on Mountain Dew. Turning away from the street, Wes carefully adjusts his erection, then bounds up the stairs toward the loft.
The night’s ending, but the universe just blessed Wes with a new beginning.
Once again, destiny or fortune or the whole damn universe was incorrect.
No, kissing Manu isn’t a new beginning. It’s an interlude. It’s that minute-and-a-half interruption in an otherwise perfectly assembled album. Kissing Manu is a break from Wes’s typically disastrous existence.
He walks into the loft and is greeted by a half-eaten box of Little Tony’s on the coffee table next to a pair of bare feet. The television emits white noise while Nico lounges on the green sofa.
“Hi.” Nico offers him a small wave to match his tiny grin.
Wes’s heart high-jumps into his throat. “Hey.” He almost asks how Nico got inside the loft—Ella’s known to forget to lock up behind herself—but hanging from Nico’s middle finger is a key ring with a pair of gold keys.
“Your mom left them with me,” he explains. “In case of an emergency and Leo’s unavailable.”
Wes tosses his own keys on the coffee table. “What constitutes this emergency?”
“Ugh. I couldn’t smash this whole pie alone.” Nico hovers a hand over the pizza box. “I needed emotional support.”
“Whatever,” says Wes, but his mouth betrays him so quickly by inching into a genuine smile.
“Help me finish? It’s pepperoni,” Nico says, wiggling over to make room for Wes. “No jalapeños.”
Wes hovers near the sofa, biting his thumbnail. He’s just gone out on his first unofficial date with a guy who’s not Nico. They kissed. But one solid view of that scar in Nico’s eyebrow, his fluffy-soft dark hair, and the dent in one of the cushions no doubt created from years of playing video games in this very spot destroys him.
Who’s Wes kidding? He just wants to curl into his best friend’s side and unravel all his twisted thoughts.
“Cold pizza’s the best,” he says between bites. He’s not truly hungry, not after dinner and dessert with Manu, but he’s placating Nico.
“Duh.”
Wes steals sips of Nico’s orange soda. Adult Swim is showing reruns on the television: some fast-paced anime with cool action sequences. All the color and explosions play like Wes’s brain. He can’t figure out the storyline but, for whatever reason, he’s enjoying the ride.
“My cousins are visiting,” Nico says out of nowhere. “From San Pedro.”
Ah. That explains a lot.
Nico’s appearance isn’t random. He’s not here just to share leftover pizza. It’s not because he misses Wes. Or maybe it is, but Wes also knows it’s because Nico needs a respite from his cousins, three boys who are bigger and rougher and speak exclusively in Spanish whenever Wes is around.
Wes peeks down at the half-drunk bottle of orange soda. “How many have you had?” he asks, as if it’s a beer or hard lemonade.
Nico’s made his way under the wing of Wes’s arm. “Definitely need to replenish your stash.”
“Yikes.”
Absently, Wes squeezes his arm around Nico’s taut shoulders. Orange soda is like a cheat code for Nico. Escapism via carbonation and sugar. That night at The Howls is probably the fourth time Wes has ever seen Nico that far gone. Alcohol isn’t their thing.
“So.” Wes chews and chews before tossing a crust in the box. “Tell me about it.”
It doesn’t take much convincing. Red-faced, Nico rips into his cousins in a blurring mixture of English and Spanish. He’s sniffing, eyes glassy, words mashing into each other to create a new vocabulary.
“¡Los verdaderos hombres no toleran estupideces!” Nico swallows, panting. “It means, ‘Real men don’t tolerate bullshit.’ They think I need to skip college. Get a real job. Man up and take care of my mom. Stop acting like a punk.”
Wes’s fingers find that soft spot behind Nico’s ear, below the lobe. He rubs, slowly and methodically. Nico exhales shakily.
“I’m not them.”
“You’re not,” Wes promises quietly.
“Ellos están locos,” Nico spits. “I’m better than them. I’m doing the right thing. This is my life and I just—” His voice hitches. It’s the piercing sound the body makes before the tears finally come.
But Nico shakes his head, refusing to surrender. “Sorry.”
“For what?”
“For…” Nico sniffs, dragging the back of his hand under his nose to catch the snot. “I’m waffling.”
“You’re Nico-ing,” Wes teases.
Nico laughs. Then he clears his throat, inching back to study Wes. “Nice outfit.”
This time, Wes didn’t need Ella rejecting his choices and almost blinding him. He went for the “casually be yourself” look, which was just a pair of faded skinny jeans and a vintage UCLA T-shirt under his cleanest plaid shirt.
“Were you out?”
Wes takes his arm back. “Just hanging with someone.”
“A date?” Nico’s voice is neutral.
Wes doesn’t know what he expects from Nico’s tone. Anger. Jealousy. Concern.
“Kind of.”
Nico smirks. “You had a good time, didn’t you?”
“It was okay,” Wes says, indifferently.
“Just okay?” Nico asks after a sip of soda, with his voice still on an even keel.
Is okay a poor adjective? Does Nico want him to have a good time with someone else? It’s a red flag, number five on the list he still hasn’t deleted despite it already confirming his future with Nico is destined to be platonic:
Signs Your Crush Isn’t Into You!!!
5. If your crush doesn’t care about you dating other people, GAME OVER!
“Yeah,”
Wes whispers dryly. “But it’s a start, right?”
Nico doesn’t meet his gaze. He picks at a hole forming on the knee of Wes’s jeans.
“Well,” Wes says, darkly, “How was your date?”
Nico tips his head back, his eyebrows lowered. “What date?”
“The redhead. The one you left the store with instead of being at open mic night.” Intentionally, Wes leaves out that he was also absent from the event. That’s beside the point.
“Eve?”
Of course she has a biblical, genesis of the world, name.
“Eve Gomez?” Nico asks, incredulous. “Eve Gomez, Wesley.”
Wes is lost.
“Eve went to high school with us. She transferred before junior year.” Nico snatches a slice of pizza. A lone pepperoni falls in his lap. He brushes it away before continuing. “She found me because Cooper tagged me on IG. She’s one of his followers.”
The entire Milky Way Galaxy follows @coopsarrow.
“She has mad connections at Disneyland,” Nico says. “The twins’ birthday is in October. We went to grab a bite to eat, where she told me about her budding musical career via some YouTube viral video.”
He shakes his head while chewing. “I haven’t landed a job around Palo Alto yet. She promised to hook me up with day passes so I could at least have a gift for the twins.”
Wes chugs the rest of Nico’s soda, unblinking. A throbbing knot forms behind his right eye. In his head, he’s repeating four words: It wasn’t a date.
“Wow, your face.” Nico points a half-eaten crust at him. “Me and Eve? She’s dating this really awesome nonbinary amateur DJ, dude.”
Yup. Wes is an idiot. He’s also doing the opposite of what he should be. He’s not moving on from Nico. As if this one misunderstanding disproves all the other bullet points from his list. Nico’s not into him; Manu is. But here Wes is, slack against Nico’s side, as he demolishes what’s left of the pizza.
“Okay, Wesley: Mario Kart or kill zombies?”
Wes doesn’t fight the tide. The pull of comforting doom rather than refreshing newness takes him under before he can catch his breath. Manu’s a promising unknown. Nico’s a certain unhappy ending.
“Whatever,” Wes whispers as Nico reaches for the game controller.
Either way, he’s going to lose.
Chapter Twenty
Marks & Marx, LLP is on the first floor of a two-story building in the middle of Venice. For a small law firm, it’s well known, but that’s due to all the bright billboards with Al Marx’s smiling, wrinkled face across the city. As an intern, Leo is given a tiny cubicle in a corner. Shelia, the office manager, has strict rules against visitors sitting at interns’ desks, so Wes is seated at a large, round wooden table in the conference room. The room reeks of dust and vanilla air freshener.
Wes sneezes twice.
“Bless you,” Leo mumbles, mutilating a pen cap with his teeth. He’s sitting across from Wes with a stack of files, leafing through pages and pages of documents.
“Thanks.”
Leo hasn’t said much else. Their silence is filled by the gurgling of a state-of-the-art water cooler in a corner and Wes’s humming. He’s got Sheryl Crow on the brain. Honestly, all Wes wants to do is have some fun before the sun goes down, but he’s stuck here with Leo.
Marks & Marx, LLP has a central theme: gray, beige, and dull.
Wes squints at the little worry lines creasing his brother’s forehead. When did Leo get this old?
Leo glares at him through his eyelashes. “What’re you wearing?”
Wes glances at himself. “Oh.” He forgot. “We had a photo shoot today.”
“Are you going into modeling now?”
“No,” he says, tugging at the collar of the dark denim jacket Ella wrangled him into three hours ago. “We were taking photos to hype our next promotion at the bookstore. It’s a mashup of speed dating and book club.”
Self-consciously, Wes presses the wrinkles out of the powder blue button-up he’s wearing under the jacket. Ella vainly attempted to have him stand in middle of Tongva Park shirtless, the jacket slung over one shoulder. Wes immediately vetoed that idea. Posing while holding a copy of his mom’s latest book was one thing. Wes drew the line at being someone’s social media thirst trap to sell the event. He’d never be able to scrub that metadata from the cloud.
Leo looks unimpressed.
“I’ve been keeping track of the bookstore’s revenue since we upgraded our promotions,” Wes says, folding his hands, mirroring Leo’s professional posture. “There’s been a ten-percent increase.”
Leo’s eyes narrow.
“Maybe like seven percent,” Wes amends.
“Uh huh.”
“But it’s a gain. We’re plus rather than minus,” Wes tacks on. “Our profit margin is still in the red, but we’re inching closer to black.”
He’s proud of himself. He didn’t have to glance at his notes app once for the lukewarm speech he typed out twenty minutes before arriving.
But Leo doesn’t pat Wes on the back. He doesn’t offer him a pound or a rapt nod. Leo returns to chewing on his pen cap while analyzing the paperwork laid out before him.
On the conference table, Leo’s phone sings.
Chime. Buzz. Chime. Buzz.
“You’re popular,” Wes comments.
“I’m on lunch duty,” Leo says impassively, peeking at the screen every time it lights up. The corners of his mouth twitch each time Leeann’s face appears.
“We’re going to check out possible reception venues next week,” Wes says quietly.
Leo’s head lifts; there’s something warm and soft in his eyes.
Wes slouches in his gray swivel chair. “She’s excited.”
“She is,” Leo says, choked. He clears his throat. There are shadows under his eyes. His chin and jaw are dark with unshaven hair. He’s paler than Wes last remembers, but the glow in his cheeks at the mention of Leeann is evidence that, under those layers of seriousness, a heart exists.
“Wes, I—”
“You boys look like you’re working hard,” Shelia announces, cutting off whatever Leo was about to say. His expression goes blank. He restacks the paperwork and sits straighter.
Shelia places a glass of water on a napkin in front of each of them. She’s wearing an all-gray pantsuit. Wes is convinced everyone in this office is an android.
“Thanks, Shelia,” Leo says, closing folders.
Wes nods. “Yeah. Thanks, Shelia.”
She lingers in the doorway. Her hair’s cut into one of those severe bobs. It’s a coppery shade, but gray roots are peeking through. She watches, maintaining a cut-and-paste smile despite the sharpness of her eyes. “Don’t work too hard,” she says more to Leo than Wes.
“While it’s nice that your profit margin is skyrocketing,” Leo says wryly after Shelia leaves, “I reviewed all the stuff you gave me and it looks like Mrs. Rossi is deep in debt. Filing an injunction would take more time than she has. Even then, it might not be enough.”
“But—”
Leo cuts Wes off. “And there’s a really good offer on the table.”
“This isn’t about the money.”
“Wes,” Leo says, sighing. He rests his elbows on the table. “Despite what you think, the bookstore’s a business. Money has a hand in everything we do as adults.”
“No, it doesn’t,” Wes says, seething. “The bookstore is the heart and soul of our community. It’s not just this entity you can write off for bad sales. It’s a lifeline. People need it.”
“People need money,” Leo argues. “They need to pay bills. Eat. Survive. They need to pay others, like you and your friends. Long-term profit matters.”
“Once Upon a Page matters,” Wes snaps.
“That’s all good and nice,” says Leo, callo
usly, “but you can’t file a petition for sympathetic value.”
Wes glares as Leo sips water. His heart thrums in his ears. “I’m not giving up.”
“I’m not surprised.”
“Come on, Leo,” Wes says, voice catching. This is it. His resolve is faltering, nearly ready to wave a white flag. He considers getting on bended knees to beg. “There has to be more than just the numbers. You couldn’t have explored all the options. I mean, you’re just an intern—”
Leo’s nostrils flare.
“There have to be more possibilities,” Wes says, eyes softened, throat dry.
“If there are,” Leo starts, opening the folders again, eyes downcast, “You’d have to hire someone to dig deeper.”
Wes is practically bouncing in his chair, drumming his fingers on the table.
“And based on this…” Leo stabs at the email printout. The one that shattered all of Wes’s hopes in a few lines of Sans Serif font and fake cheer. “…no one has the funds to hire anyone even remotely qualified just to look this over.”
No swish. No last minute three-pointer before the buzzer goes off. Wes took his shot and missed.
Leo sips more water, then folds his hands. “Wes, I love the Rossi family…” Translation: I’m about to lower the casket. “…but I don’t see anything in this paperwork that guarantees we can salvage Once Upon a Page.”
I’m tossing dirt in the grave, filling the hole.
“I’m not in business law, but all of this looks airtight.” Leo pinches the bridge of his nose. “Maybe it’s time to let it happen.”
Wes flinches hard in the chair. His chest feels as if someone put a fist through it.
Maybe it’s time to let it happen.
That’s the problem. Wes has spent most of his life just letting it happen. He’s had no control. He’s always been a passenger while some “adult” steered him wherever he was supposed to go. Someone else has been holding the keys out of his reach, promising one day he’d be old enough to call the shots.
He’s fucking eighteen years old. It’s time.
Life can’t take his future, his best friend, and the bookstore.
The Summer of Everything Page 20
