Page 59 of Promise Me Sunshine

“I’m on the ferry again,” I tell him. “I wanna be somewhere else.”

Somewhere painless and dark.

“I’m coming,” he says. “Don’t hang up.”

Chapter Fifteen

In the day that’s passed since I called him from the ferry, Miles has done something truly despicable: he’s made me take up exercise.

“This isbarelyexercise,” he asserts, hands on his hips as I drag my ass up a hill.

“I have one little meltdown on the Staten Island Ferry and the punishment is corporal?”

“What’s wrong with you?” he asks. “You can walk normally on the street. How come you can’t walk normally when it’s for your cardiovascular health?”

“Maybe it’s the shoes.”

“What’s wrong with the shoes?” he demands.

“They’re for running. They’re inherently flawed.”

“It’s closed-minded to have opinions on something you’ve never experienced,” he informs me.

“Ooh. Burn.”

“What do I have to do to make you run?”

“Dance naked around the Empire State Building.”

“It can’t involve me getting arrested. I’ll buy you a new Garfield shirt, how about that?”

“Pass. I don’t need two.”

“Nutella croissant? Bruce Willis movie marathon? I’ll go back to the sporting goods store and see if that married guy will go out on a date with you?”

I come to a full stop and put my hands on my hips. “How do you know me so well? It’s creepy.”

He laughs and rubs at his eyebrows. “It’s not creepy, Lenny. It’s called friendship.”

“See? Why doesn’tthatcount as having a new friend? Why do I have to make even more?”

“You need more than one friend. Trust me.”

“How many friends doyouhave?” I demand.

He glowers at me. “Run up this hill right now.”

“If I run up this hill…I want…an afternoon beer. And…sunshine. And…a basket of fried shrimp. And…a view of the ocean.”

He blinks at me. And then at the cloudy sky. It’s been a full day since my trip to the Met and the clouds haven’t let up yet. “Well, I can’t promise the sunshine. But I can do everything else.”

Three hours later, after an hour of labored feet-moving and a shower apiece, we find ourselves sitting at a picnic table at one of the Russian cafés down the boardwalk from Coney Island.

Yes, there’s an extremely cold beer. Yes, there’s a basket of shrimp, and apparently hecanpromise sunshine because the old girl has made an appearance, bouncing silver off the ocean.

It’s only seventy degrees in the sun, so no one is swimming, but there are plenty of wrinkly late-season sunbathers, men with potbellies and G-strings, beach volleyball enthusiasts, hotties arching their backs for the ’Gram.

I eye his lunch critically.

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