Page 51 of Promise Me Sunshine

I find Reese squatting in a mini-mountain of produce.

“Bag broke,” she says, squinting up at me from a three-point stance. I bend to help her clear them up and she starts listing to one side. Her forehead catches her slow-speed fall against the wall. She groans. I do believe this lovely lady is three sheets.

“I’ll get this,” I tell her.

“No, no. I got it.” She insists on helping but I spend more time making sure she doesn’t fall over than I do picking up produce.

Finally we’re settled in the kitchen and I serve her a bowl of the pasta I just made. Normally she waits for Ainsley to eat, but tonight I think she might need something in her belly other than whatever has one of her high heels hanging off her big toe.

“Didn’t mean to get so drunk,” she says, eyes closed, her temple resting against one fist while she chews. “I was out with clients and they just…kept drinking.”

“And then you went grocery shopping?”

She groans. “Who even knows what I bought. Where’s Ains?”

“She’s down in the courtyard playing badminton with Miles.” I try to say it lightly, but even so, she’s actively frowning at that news.

“Oh, good,” she grumbles. “With any luck he’ll arrive from babysitting my kid and find me drunk. He’ll have enough ammo for a year.”

I’m taken aback by her wrath. He wasn’t kidding when he said they had a really long way to go.

“He thinks you’re a good mom, Reese,” I say gently. “And I don’t think he’d judge you for accidentally getting drunk with clients.”

She scoffs. “He thinks he knows what it takes to be aparent. Everyone’s an expert when they don’t actually have to do it themselves.”

I’m honestly confused. This is more than just her seeing him in a bad light. This is her literally seeing himwrong.“He…definitely doesn’t think he knows how to be a parent. Seriously, part of the reason why we even hang out together is because he wants to learn how to take care of Ainsley. He’s fully aware he’s starting at square one.”

She turns and really looks at me, brings me into focus. “You like him.”

“I do.”

“I’d probably like him too,” she says low, and tosses her fork back in with her pasta.

I clear my throat. “If…”

Either she’s been waiting to talk about this or she’s too drunk to know where I’m guiding her. “Did you know that Miles is almost exactly nine months younger than I am?” she asks.

I do some quick math. Even to a layperson, nine months younger to a different mother…That’s not the kind of algebra you want to know about your own dad.

“Ouch.”

She laughs humorlessly. “Yeah. I see he told you we’re related.”

I nod.

“There’s this big, famous story about my dad.” She’s slumped forward, pushing pasta around the bowl. “He had to do this music show. And he got snowed in in Denver when my mom was in labor with me. All the planes were grounded so he went out to the highway and hitched a ride with a truck driver to get back across the country to be with me. He wrote an entire album about the experience. I mean, the drama, the dedication, theAmericana.It went gold, that album. Hewon a Grammy for the title track.” She pushes the food away, leans back in her chair, and crosses her arms. “Turns out, the whole thing was bullshit.”

“Bullshit how? He didn’t get snowed in?”

She laughs and drops her head back to look at the ceiling. “No. He did. But apparently he missed the last flight out before the storm because he was with Miles’s mom. He missedmybirth to be withher.And then he felt so guilty that he scrambled to find any way back east. And then nine months later Miles was born.”

“Ouch,” I repeat.

She gets up, walks to the stove, and serves another bowl of pasta. “Reese,” I call, “you still have some left over here—” I cut off when she slides the new bowl in front of me.

I eat my pasta and she dissolves toward the table in stages. Her forehead is flat against the place mat and her arms are laced across her belly. “My dad was really sweet, you know. If the only thing you knew about him was that he got some other woman pregnant on the night I was born, you wouldn’t understand…”

“People are complicated.”

---