“Beer would be great,” Link said. He stepped into the cool of the living room and blinked as his eyes adjusted. “This really is a hell of a place,” he said, looking around at the glass cases, the teetering stacks of books that Andrew had pulled down and not reshelved, making ziggurats of them instead next to all the chairs.
“What can I do for you?” Adam said, handing him a glass of Upper Canada Lager with a little wedge of lime. He’d bought a few cases of beer that week and had been going through them steadily in the living room, paging through the most favored of his books, trying to find something, though he wasn’t sure what.
Link sipped. “Summer’s here,” he said.
“Yeah,” Alan said.
“Well, the thing is, summer. I’m going to be working longer hours and, you know, evenings. Well. I mean. I’m 19 years old, Andy.”
Alan raised an eyebrow and sat back in his chair. “What’s the message you’re trying to convey to me, Link?”
“I’m not going to be going around your friend’s shop anymore. I really had fun doing it all year, but I want to try something different with my spare time this summer, you understand?”
“Sure,” Alan said. He’d had kids quit on him before. That’s what kids did. Attention spans.
“Right. And, well, you know: I never really understood what we were doing… ”
“Which part?”