“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.
“Anna’s high,” Wes comments.
“Maybe,” Zay says, grabbing a stack of books that need to be reshelved. “But she digs it. The customers do too.”
Throughout the store, people browse while swaying or bopping their heads. One guy mouths the words to “Fast Car.” Traitors, all of them.
“Yikes. Scary.”
Once again, Wes startles out of a daydream, this time to find Anna leaning over the counter. Popcorn flowers are braided into a crown around the top of her head. “Okay, help me out here,” she says, tucking pieces of wavy hair behind her left ear to expose a sparkly line of piercings. “I have this customer looking for a funny book… but with aliens.”
Wes’s face pinches. It better not be Mr. X-Files.
“Uh.”
Although Wes has spent more time in the bookstore than his own bed, he’s not exactly the resident bibliophile here. That’s Ella. But he knows enough about books to reply, “The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy,” without looking like a total novice. “Book’s better than the movie.”
“Aren’t they all?”
Wes snorts. Truth.
“And that is…?”
Sometimes, Wes forgets how new Anna is. He only spent two weeks training her before he left. After that, she was in the very incapable hands of Ella.
“Sci-fi.” Wes nods to a long wall opposite the front counter. “And if they really want a good book, tell them to get We Are the Ants also.”
“Thanks,” Anna says, skipping off with a smile too naïve for her to manage any portion of this store.
Wes settles onto the stool behind the counter. He’s not jealous of Anna’s situation. It’s not as if he has time to go for a promotion. Not with college.
But if I didn’t go to school…
No. Wes can’t entertain that thought. But the problem is, it keeps creeping into his mind—not going to college but staying here, in Santa Monica, and helping Mrs. Rossi run the bookstore. Maybe it’ll be easier to figure himself out in a place he knows than waste four years and end up in debt. And then what? A ridiculous amount of statistics show that most college graduates don’t end up working in their field. So Wes is going to dedicate years to learning a subject, only to end up doing anything other than whatever he decides to study? It makes no sense to him.
But, all around Wes, everyone has their future figured out.
Ella Graham. UCLA. Communication.
Xavier “Zay” Jones. Plans to attend UCLA. Music Performance.