Page 110 of Promise Me Sunshine

“So, you’ve been keeping an eye our Lenny-girl, huh?” Mom asks, plunking down in between Miles and me on the couch.

Dad emerges balancing a tray of piping hot espressos and passes them around. I immediately set mine aside. Miles triesto figure out how to hold the tiny cup without burning his fingerprints off and settles on taking the coffee down in one scalding swallow. He’s looking a little woozy over there.

“So…” Mom nudges Miles to answer her question.

“Hm? Oh.” He’s fanning his tongue and sort of sliding to one side of the couch. “She keeps an eye on me too.”

I get up to retrieve a glass of ice water in order to save his life so I miss the next few moments of conversation, but when I return Miles is glancing at me, a blush on his cheeks.

“Quit interrogating him,” I say, handing him the ice water and reclaiming my seat.

Mom ignores me completely. “She’s a total and complete mess but there’s no one else like her.”

Miles’s brow furrows. He’s drunk, but not so drunk he’ll stand for that. “She’s not a mess,” he says in a low voice. “She’s perfect.”

Mom scowls right back at him and leans across the couch to throw an arm around my neck, pressing our temples together. “Ofcourseshe’s perfect. Who says she isn’t?”

“She means it as a compliment,” I assure Miles. “They think I’m charmingly free-spirited.”

He’s still frowning at my mom and she’s still frowning back.

“Messy,” he concedes. “But not a mess.”

Mom turns to me—I’m still in a headlock, by the way. “I like him.” She turns back to him. “Do you know how to turn on the GPS in someone’s phone? Will you turn on Lenny’s and make it so that I can see it on my phone?”

She’s picked my pocket and is handing my phone over to Miles.

“Oh! Good idea.” Dad is handing his own phone over to Miles as well. “Hook her up to mine, too.”

I’m yoinking phones and handing them back to their owners. “You don’t need to surveil me! I swear I’ll start calling more often.”

“If you can’t catch Lenny you can always call or text me,” Miles offers, and my mom’s face immediately slinks into a knowing smile. This was what she was hoping for all along.

“Wonderful.”

Chapter Twenty-Eight

By the time we make it back to Miles’s apartment, it feels like a year has passed, but it’s only eight-thirty. We took a cab because I didn’t think Miles was physically capable of managing the stairs down to the train. Luckily Emil met us at the cab door and helped me drag Miles into the elevator.

Right now his body has the same basic structural integrity as a bag of hot soup. I lodge my shoulder into his armpit and scrabble at the lock on his front door. I can’t help but notice that every second the door stays locked we sink about six inches toward the floor. By the time the door handle finally turns, I’m eye-level with it and we pretty much crawl inside on all fours. He drags his ass over to the couch and collapses.

“I think…” he says. “I think grappa hits in stages.”

“Grappa is basically rubbing alcohol.”

“Am I Italian yet?”

I laugh and go into the kitchen to collect him a glass of water.

“Your parents do that every week?”

“Only when they have company. And there’s not usually quite so much grappa.”

He groans. “Don’t say grappa.”

“You were saying it like five seconds ago!”

He groans again. “The tides have turned.”

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