Page 121 of Promise Me Sunshine

Finally I’m a heap on the bed and watching shadows on the ceiling. My mom’s thrilled voice when I answered the phone today washes over me.

Bang-bang-BANG.I jolt out of a dream and scramble to my feet. The room is layered with shadows and soft with sleep. Someone is banging on my door at the witching hour and I suddenly have…a Converse in my hands? Where did that come from? Terrible weapon.

“Lenny?”

Oh. “Miles?”

Ica-klunkopen the door, rubbing at my eyes and tossing the shoe aside.

“What’s going on?” I ask, sleep still tugging at all my edges, making everything, including him, wobble.

He’s stepping inside, glancing around. “Oh. Were you sleeping?”

“I was having a dream that I invented a new recipe with figs and cheddar and it was so good they brought me onLive with Regis and Kathie Leeto talk about it.”

I close the door behind him and go back to collapse on the bed. “What’s going on?” I ask again through a yawn, fluffing my pillow. “Is everything all right?”

“Yeah,” he says, still standing by the door, taking in everything.

“Well,” I prompt him. “Why are you banging on my door in the middle of the night?”

He blinks at me. “It’s nine-forty-five.”

“Oh.”

“And you weren’t answering my calls or texts so I got worried. But…you were just sleeping.” He blinks. “At a normal hour. In pajamas.”

I shrug and snuggle against the pillow. “I was sleepy.”

There’s nowhere for him to sit in the tiny apartment, so he toes off his shoes and comes to sit at the foot of the bed. “Still are, from the looks of it.”

“Mm-hmm.” My eyes pop open. “But you interrupted my REM so I’ll probably never be able to sleep now. Thanks a lot.”

He crinkles his nose. “Sorry.”

“You assumed I’d be wandering the streets, looking for traffic violators to accost?”

“Or hungry in Queens with nowhere to go and nothing to eat.”

“Or drunkenly dancing with strangers whilst wearing my entire life in a backpack.”

“Hey,” he says, looking around the apartment with a frown on his face. “It’s clean in here.”

“Yeah,” I agree with a cracking yawn.

He slides off the bed to the floor and comes to sit by my head. We’re eye-level this way. “Why?”

“Why did I clean?”

He nods. I didn’t bother to turn on any lights, so he’s richly shadowed and inscrutable. His cinnamon eyes have gone coffee.

“I was aggravated by the mess. And amped up from all thewaiting,” I say with a scowl.

He briefly smiles, his eyes all over my face. I’m taking long blinks and snuggling further into the pillow.

“And then,” I continue, “I got tired from all the cleaning so I went to bed. You know, you’re extremely interested in the details of what is turning out to be a very boring story.”

To my surprise, and contrary to all the arms-length-ing he’s been doing recently, he actually comescloserto me.

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