Page 43 of Promise Me Sunshine

A few hourslater,I knock on his door upstairs. He opens up, looking a little wrecked.

“You okay?” I ask tentatively.

“Fine, fine. Sorry…you had to see that.”

“You have nothing to be sorry for.” I can’t get the worduselessout of my head. This ragged version of Miles is not what I’m used to. He needs a task. “Hey. I’m not really in the mood for pancakes. Plus. I’m…in the dumps.” (I’m actually not, right now.) “Can you think of a way to cheer me up?”

He smirks, like he can see right through me, but he takes the bait. “Let’s go for a walk.”

He abruptly turns around and walks back into his apartment.

“Outside is the other way!” I lean into his apartment and call to him.

“Where’s your Big Bird sweatshirt?” he asks, heading back my way. “You’re always in T-shirts and it’s getting chillier at night.”

“I like my clothes!”

“Me too, but it’s the beginning of fall.” He’s back at the door, a sweatshirt in hand. “You haven’t been back to your apartment in Brooklyn to change out your summer clothes for fall clothes yet, have you?”

I sag down. “No.” Now Iamin the dumps.

“When’s the last time you were back? I thought maybe because you always show up in different clothes…”

“I get new stuff from secondhand shops a lot. Mywardrobe is expanding. Soon it will consume your entire apartment. You’ll have to dig me out with a snow shovel.”

“Well, next time you’re in a thrift store, buy some warmer clothes. Put this on for now and there might be a couple warmer things back at my place if you need them.”

And then he is shoving a blue sweatshirt on over my head. The hood is big enough to fall forward over my eyes and when I thread my arms through the sleeves, there’s eight inches of fabric left before I make it to the wrist holes. It’s warm and soft and old and smells like laundry detergent.

“Why do you still keep clothes there?” I ask him.

He tilts his head toward the door and I follow him into the hallway.

“In case Reese wants me out of this apartment. I mean…technically it’s mine. But if she asked me to leave, I’d go.”

“Why would you leave the apartment if it’s yours?” I ask.

He locks up and we’re out on the street before he answers my question. “Because that apartment used to be hers. Well, sort of. I mean that she and Ainsley used to live there.”

“Ohhhhhh.” It’s all coming together. “Did she leave most of her stuff? Is that why everything matches and looks so homey?”

He frowns at me. “Yes. I mean, I’m not a Neanderthal. I can pick out matching furniture. But yeah. She left a lot of stuff when they moved to the big apartment to be with our dad.”

He takes a left outside the building and by now, I’ve learned to follow without questions.

“So,” I prompt him. “She moved out to live downstairs with your dad and you moved into her old place?”

He sighs and I guess he gets tired of telling the story in scraps. “About two years ago, Dad had a stroke. It was pretty bad. He called me and asked if I’d come visit. He and I were…sort of in contact before that. But he’d definitely never asked me for anything before. Or asked me to come to the city. So I showed up and…a lot of stuff happened all at once. But the most important part was that our dad needed help. And so did Reese and Ainsley. He’d been helping her raise Ainsley. But suddenly he was in rough shape and Reese went from having a co-parent to having to take care of both him and Ains. I stuck around and helped. First I lived in the studio apartment. But then I moved into the apartment above them. Then he had another stroke, a worse one, and he didn’t make it. He’d owned both apartments and he left the upstairs one to me and the downstairs one to Reese and Ainsley.”

His hands are in his jeans pockets, so I slide my arm through the loop of his arm and momentarily press my face to his shoulder as we walk. We’re a tangle of sweatshirts. “That’s what you meant when you said you unexpectedly came into money. That everything was so new for you. You’re not used to any of it.”

He kicks at an empty chip bag as we walk, and then thinks twice, picks it up, and tosses it in a trash can. “Honestly, I was shocked he called me to come be with him. We’d been in contact abitsince my mom died…he understood that I didn’t really have anybody anymore. He started calling and checking on me. But I always knew there was a limit to what he could offer me…” He glances down at me, and the arm that I’m hugging goes tense. “Reese…didn’t know about me. Not until I showed up at the door two years ago.”

“Oh,Miles.” I give his arm a huge squeeze. So tight that it throws off our walking balance and we veer toward the street. He rights us and saves the day. “That must have been so terrible for both of you.”

It’s all starting to make sense, in an awful sort of way.

“Not as bad for me. I knew about her since…I don’tknow. The beginning? He used to visit when I was a kid. But only when he was on tour. He was married to Reese’s mom at the time. And his image was a family man, you know? So an extramarital kid definitely had to stay under wraps. Once when I was ten or so, he gave my mom and me tickets to one of his shows. Backstage passes. But after the show, when we went backstage, they told us the passes weren’t good. I just thought it was because something was wrong with the actual passes. But when I was about twenty my mom explained that Reese and her mom had flown in and surprised him, so he’d told the bouncers backstage not to let us through.”

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