Page 136 of Promise Me Sunshine

We laugh and even as I’m wondering how we’re ever gonna last a whole night crammed on this minuscule bed, I’m starting to drift. My pajamas tangle with his pajamas and his breaths get long and everything is so warm and fuzzy. I dip easily down into the kind of lazy, loopy sleep that I used to beg the universe for not three months ago. I cannot believe how much has changed.

—

“No! It’s morelikeyah!” Ainsley does a karate kick so high that even Emil looks impressed.

He turns to me. “Get her lessons. She should train.”

“What about me?”

Emil has been showing Ainsley and me how to dribble a soccer ball on the sidewalk in front the building. That devolved into a how-high-can-you-kick contest, at which Ainsley has just bested us both.

“No. You are hopeless,” he says. It’s not even an insult. To him it’s just fact.

“She’s not hopeless!” Ainsley insists, looping her warm hand around mine and staring indignantly at Emil.

“I mean at karate.”

“Oh.” Ainsley nods matter-of-factly. “Yeah, she’s hopeless at that.”

“Couple of karate experts we’ve got here.”

“Hey, let’s give him the…” Ainsley says, waggling her eyebrows meaningfully.

“Oh! Right.”

Ainsley and I engaged in a little something we dubbed “the victory lap” today. We wanted to celebrate her absolutely stellar stage debut, so we went in a big circle around her neighborhood and ate all the good food and drank all the good drinks and bought all the good books and even watched a (pretty good) movie. Now we’re home and we have extra muffins from Jericho’s bakery.

I hand her one of the bags and she proudly holds it out to Emil. “Do you like lemon muffins?”

He’s got a yuck face on.

She waits expectantly, her face a bright, hopeful moon. He can’t withstand her charm.

“Oh, did you say lemon muffins? Yes, I eat those.” He takes the bag. “Thank you.”

“We got one for Mom, too. We’re celebrating!”

“Your birthday?” he asks.

“No. The performance! Lenny, show him the video!”

In what was simultaneously the worst moment of Miles’s life and the best moment of mine, Ainsley’s theater teacher sent out a link this morning to the recording of the entire talent show. Ainsley and I have shown the clip of her dance performance to three separate shop owners (and Jericho twice) already this afternoon.

I queue it up and hand my phone to Emil. He is completely straight-faced through the entire performance. He hands the phone back to me and then immediately walks inside without saying anything.

Ainsley and I shrug at each other and follow him inside. He’s just coming back around from the desk with a pen and paper in his hand.

“I want an autograph,” he says. “You’ll be famous.”

She’s lit up with effervescent joy as she kneels on the ground and painstakingly writes out:

This is my first autograph—Ainsley Hollis.

She changes theOin her last name to a star and I swear, Emil is right, because that is some serious gonna-be-famous mojo.

He takes the paper from her and carefully pins it to the bulletin board behind the desk.

We head up and tumble into the apartment, chatting, and skid to a halt in Reese’s kitchen.

---