Page 55 of Promise Me Sunshine

“If I’d said that, you would have made me get it myself.” I take a lava-hot gulp and sink back into the couch, luxuriating.

Miles heads back to the table, dissecting the paper. I finish my coffee, dissecting the celeb gossip section of BuzzFeed on my phone. My mom calls and I immediately decide I am a very busy person who needs to check her email now. So I silence the call and there staring up at me is a reminder email for an event I can’t believe I’ve forgotten.

I roll up so that I’m spooning the back of the couch, peeking over at Miles.

“Hey.”

“Hm?” He looks up from the paper and his face relaxes from a heavy squint.

“Thoughts on live music?”

His brow furrows. “Uh. Generally pro?”

I play with an upholstery button. “So, I’ve got two tickets to this concert…”

“Oh.” He sets the paper down. “What’s the band?”

I roll back so that he can’t see me anymore. “Just say yes or no, first.”

His chair scrapes and then he’s leaning over the edge of the couch again, face-to-face. “Tell me who the band is first.”

“Okay. Well. Brace yourself. Because I’m warning you I’m about to completely change your life.”

I choose a video and hand it over to him. He comes and plunks down next to me on the couch.

I watch his face as the music starts. He squints, at first I hope in awe, but he only seems to be getting more and more confused as the video goes on. He pauses the video.

“This is the band you want to go see?”

“You stopped it at the best part! Right in the middle of the dance break!”

He studies the still image on the screen. It’s five young men in heavy makeup and sequined belts across their chests all splayed out on the stage, thrusting aggressively toward the sky. I love them so much.

“5Night.” He reads their name from the bottom of the screen. “That’s the name of the group?”

“Yeah.”

“Ohhhh.” Something clicks for him. He crowds me and his fingers slide against my hip bone. For a short, heart-skipping moment of confusion I’m living in an alternate reality. But no, he’s just pincering the laminated list from mypocket. “Number four: go see 5Night,” he reads through a squint. “I get it now. I thought 5Night was, like, the newFast and the Furiousmovie or something. But it’s…This is K-pop, right? I don’t know very much about it.”

“I got Lou and me into them. When she was going through a really rough time with chemo, I was looking for something to lift her spirits. I figured…endorphins, right? Even if it’s brief.”

“Totally. Mine was fantasy football. I was pretty obsessive the first few seasons after my mom and Anders died.”

“Well, at first I just found a random selection of K-pop videos that were fun to watch. She really liked the choreography and the makeup. But then, it’s a slippery slope. We got really into this group in particular. We started watching their livestreams. We joined their fan club. It’s a whole thing. Now I’m invested.”

“All right…so…” He gestures back to the screen. “What am I looking at here?”

I tell him each member’s name and give him a brief overview of their history as a group. I press play on the rest of the video and he watches it. To my delight he clicks on another one. This one is a ballad with their vocal line all framed on stage in spotlights. The next is a fan edit, shipping two members of the group. The last one is a fancam taken at one of their recent concerts.

“Good lord,” he says, then hands the phone back to me. “They’ve got a lot of fans.”

“This is their first stadium tour!” I gush. “I bought the tickets on a whim a few weeks ago.”

He scratches the back of his head. “You don’t think I’ll be out of place there? They won’t kick me out for being an old man?”

I shake my head. “People go with their dads andboyfriends all the time. It’s mostly women, sure, but I swear you wouldn’t be the only dude.”

He considers for a long moment. “Okay, listen. I’ll go.”

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