Page 54 of Promise Me Sunshine

A silent moment passes.

“Is your eye okay?” he asks.

“Yeah. It was just a little cut on my eyelid. Healed up after a few days.”

More silence.

“Okay,” Miles says. “Okay, I’ll get going, then.”

Reese is blocking the door but she doesn’t seem to realize it until Miles walks up and taps the back of one of her hands. Then she jolts backward, tips to one side, and catches herself just in time. Miles looks torn between wanting to shepherd her to safety and getting himself the hell out of Dodge.

I poke him in the back to encourage him in the right direction. It works. He heads down the hall, popping his head into the kitchen to say goodbye to Ainsley.

Reese takes a shower while Ainsley and I clean up dinner. She’s a little sobered up by the time Ainsley is practicing her back float in the bathtub. Reese sits on the toilet and chats with her while I get Ainsley’s pajamas ready.

I say good night to Ainsley, and then Reese does, tucking her into bed, and the two of us head down the hallway together.

Reese groans and covers her face with her hands. “Something tells me I’m going to be really embarrassed tomorrow.”

“You didn’t do anything wrong!” I insist.

“I dumped my sordid family business all over you.”

I shrug. “I could do the same if it’ll make you feel better. My great-uncle Murray fell in love with my great-aunt Lorraine’s manicurist. Now all three of them live together in a throuple. Pretty mod if you ask me.”

She laughs but then dissolves down into looking completely wiped.

And frankly, I’m about ten seconds from being a cracked egg on the floor.

“Thanks for everything tonight, Lenny. And for everything always.”

“You got it.”

“I’m serious,” she says, drifting after me while I toe intomy now-tomato-less sneakers. “Thanks for staying after that first weekend.”

Something occurs to me. “Reese, you know you have Miles to thank for that, right?”

She recoils. “What?”

“Yeah. He came and found me and asked me to stay.”

“Oh.”

She looks shocked, confused. I’m hoping her worldview on Miles is in a sudden state of radical flux. “See you tomorrow.”

I give her a salute and head out.

Chapter Thirteen

I wake up the next morning on Miles’s couch. Last night I stopped by his house, let him feed me pizza rolls and cabbage salad even though I’d already had dinner, and then passed out in a heap. Now I’m coming awake in stages, making weak, pleading sounds and signaling to the kitchen by vaguely waving one of my socked feet over the back of the couch.

I hear a heavy sigh and I grin.

There’s the scrape of a chair and I hold in a hoot of victory.

A steaming mug of coffee appears over the back of the couch and I just barely resist a fist pump. “Thanks, pal!”

He carefully hands off the coffee and glowers at me. “Is ‘Hey, Miles can I have a cup of coffee’ too much to ask?”

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