Page 78 of Promise Me Sunshine

“Hey, Lou,” I try, dropping my head to the back of the couch and looking at the ceiling. “I made a friend last night. Maybe three friends. I went to a 5Night concert and Eunho poured water on himself and gave a lap dance to a folding chair. You would have loved it.”

“Sounds enriching.” Miles walks over and places an apple in my hand and comes around to sit on the couch, newspaper in hand.

I laugh and take a bite of the apple. “Hey, Lou. You ruined me for friends. I don’t know how to be casual friends with anyone. You were my soulmate. How do I settle for less?”

He turns a page of the newspaper. “It’s not a contest. There’s no reason to rank friendships.”

“Hey, Lou. Miles is taking me and some new friends camping. Can you even imagine me camping? I’m going to get lost in the mountains and airlifted out. I’ll be on the local news.”

“I’ll attach you to me with a leash. You won’t get lost.”

“Hey, Lou. Miles is taking care of everything. He’s going to make sure I don’t get arrested for weeping at the grocery store.”

“You can weep at the grocery store. That’s not illegal.” He turns another page.

“Hey, Lou. Miles says when you left, you took my heart with you. He says it was like a heart transplant. Only…” I lean forward and thump my chest. My hair falls in a tent around me, blocking out the light. “I don’t know what this new heart is supposed to be living for.”

I hear the paper rustling as he sets it down. My hair gets swept to one side and the light gets in. Miles peeks through the door to the outside world. “That’s okay,” he says in a quiet voice. “You don’t have to know yet.”

The light catches on something sparkly in my hair and I realize there’s a whole swath of silver paint still smeared there.

Paint from a friend, a new friend. From a concert, one I should have seen with Lou. How come we never got to see them in person together? We fell in love with 5Night while we were crammed side by side in a hospital bed, staring at the five-inch screen of my cell phone. How could that possibly have been it? That’s really all we got?

I tug at the silvery section of my hair and toss it over my back. I’m up and striding toward the bathroom. I open the medicine cabinet, searching. I don’t find what I’m looking for so I march back out into the living room, right toward the small desk under the window. Miles is watching me from the couch. I wrench open the desk drawer and find what I need, striding back to the bathroom.

I’m breathing hard in the mirror, lifting the hank of silvery hair, Miles’s scissors opening wide, ready to take a bite out of this fresh pain.

And then he’s there. In the mirror, standing behind me. He reaches around with two hands. One hand on the silver section of my hair and one hand on the scissors, his chest pressing against my back. “Don’t cut your hair, Lenny.”

“I can’t stand to look at it anymore,” I gasp. Tears fill my eyes and he’s just a blur of color and light in the mirror now. “I grew it out because she asked me to, but I’m the one who has to haul it everywhere.”

“Don’t hack it off like this. You wanna do something big? Great. Wonderful. But I can’t let you do this.”

I sag and the scissors are removed from my hand, neatly set aside. The sink starts running and Miles dunks me. I splutter under the water and cough and sob. “You asshole,” I curse him, but there’s no bite. I’m sagging against the porcelain sink, watching the water run silver down the drain. “You keep saying it’s for my own good, youpushing me.Through the list, to make friends. AndstillI end up like this! Hyperventilating and sick to my stomach. Guess what! None of this is making me miss her less! I’m sick of trying so hard to do this right. So just…just let me do something I’ll regret. I can’t be healthy for you. That’s not fair. It’s too hard.”

He’s quiet. I hear thesnickof his shampoo bottle and then he rubs at my hair, my scalp, scouring the silvery partbetween two hands. When the shampoo is gone, there’s conditioner and I don’t even have the energy to comment on the fact that he’s upgraded from 2-in-1. He deposits me onto the edge of the bathtub and wraps a towel around my shoulders. He carefully combs out my hair and it takes ages. There are knots galore and I shut my eyes and endure it all, both the snaps of pain when he tugs and the delicious buzz of gentle fingers.

I finally open my eyes when I feel him gather my hair back, twisting it carefully into a wet bun at the top of my head. He’s concentrating so hard his tongue is sticking out. He just barely gets a ponytail holder around it all and miraculously it stays. Because my hair is feet long and wet, the bun weighs about five pounds, but I don’t adjust it.

He’s wet from shoulders to belt buckle. The shampoo and conditioner are open and sitting on the edge of the sink, the scissors cast aside on the toilet. I’m just about to apologize for calling him an asshole, but then he speaks.

“You’re right,” he says quietly. “It’s not fair.”

I furrow my brow. “What?”

“I don’t want you to be healthy for me. I want you to be healthy foryou.So…if you need to do something you’ll regret…let’s do it. I’m in. Just not your hair.”

“Are you serious?”

“Yes.”

I’m breathing hard, standing up, energy back. “Let’s go get a tattoo.”

Chapter Twenty-One

Forty-five minutes later and thirty blocks from the apartment, Miles and I stand out front of our destination.

“Okay,” he says. “Just checking one last time. There’s really nothing else you want to do? Anything at all? Maybe something that doesn’t involve eternity? Why don’t we do something on the list?”

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