Page 115 of Promise Me Sunshine

I wait twenty seconds and slide the door open a crack.

He’s walking back down the sidewalk, laughing and shaking his head likeWTF, Lenny.

I watch him until I can’t see him anymore.

Chapter Twenty-Nine

So, yeah. Here I am, playing it cool, super cool.

I like a guy and that guy likes me.

No big.

Lots to just sort of casually ponder in a totally relaxed and contemplative way.

My next few days are complete crap. Miles is leaving Tupperwares of food for me after work and checking in by text, but I’ve yet to lay eyes on him again since I watched him walk down the sidewalk.

How does one interpret this? He’s avoiding me because…he thinks I’ll take him unawares with my prodigious seduction technique?

He’s providing space after a really intense and emotional change in our relationship?

He’s spending his free time hyperventilating into a pillow at the mere thought of my silky lips?

He assumes that I’m stumped over thiswaitingidea and will likely badger him relentlessly to tell me what he means? I mean, correct, but…

Ainsley is lounging next to me on the couch and singing a song she’s had stuck in her head for days. I’m prickly and sensitized to everything. Especially with this load of staticky laundry that I’m attempting to fold. It’s attracted every bit of lint known to man and there are socks hiding in all the shirt sleeves.

I chase down a rogue undershirt three quarters of the way inside a bedsheet and yelp when I get about fifty static shocks in a row. “Ow! No! Why?”

The sheet gets lifted off me all at once and my hair goes with it.

“This is a good look for you,” Miles says, standing overme.

“Hopefully irresistible?” I say with a half glower/half grin. Because I like him and he likes me and he just made my heart skip and I don’t understand why we he won’t kiss me.

Lots to feel while folding laundry.

He just raises his eyebrows and glances over at Ainsley. “You ready?”

“Sure!” She scrambles up and leaps off the back of the couch. Miles catches her reflexively and sets her on her feet.

“Where are you going?” I ask, on my feet, hands on my hips. The unsaid part of that sentence is:without me?I, too, would like to jump off the back of this couch into Miles’s waiting arms.

“Practicing dancing,” Ainsley says.

“Why are you folding their laundry?” Miles asks. “Reese doesn’t ask you to do that, does she?”

“No, I just needed something to do. To occupy my brain.” I playfully glare at him.

He nods and then backs away from me.

“Hey!” I say, and step toward him.

He reaches down and picks up Ainsley by the armpits, holding her in between us. “Protect me,” he tells her.

She cranes around to look at him. “From what? Lenny?”

“Yeah. She’s frustrated with me.”

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