Page 77 of Promise Me Sunshine

“Come on! You’re Mr. First Aid Kit. This is totally in your wheelhouse.”

“If you can’t clean your own ears, I quit.”

I laugh and start scrubbing.

I quit,Miles joked. And I laughed because I knew he was joking.Ha ha habecause that’s the last thing he’s ever going to do.

When I emerge back into the living room, he’s feet up on the coffee table and a bowl of ice cream in his lap, flipping channels.

“Hey!” I put my hands on my hips. “Can I have some of that?” I point to the ice cream.

He points to the bowl of ice cream on the coffee table that he already brought for me. We sit side by side and watch infomercials and eat ice cream while the sun comes up behind us.

We wake up late morning. I’m rested, because five hours of sleep is a boon for me. Miles wakes up wrecked, because he’s a solid-nine-or-bust type of guy.

I brush in his bathroom with the toothbrush I keep in his cup and flip his toilet paper because he’s put it on wrong again. When I’m done I fully intend to make him coffee and pancakes, because, come on, he did not need to schlep across the city to help me make friends last night, but by the time I’m out, there’s already a steaming cup of coffee waiting for me and two bowls of cereal.

“You’re disgustingly self-sufficient,” I inform him as I pull up a chair at his table.

“Totally,” he agrees absently, thumbing through yesterday’s paper and then picking up today’s, his reading glasses in place. “People who pour their own cereal are so high and mighty.”

“Thanks for breakfast, by the way.”

“Mm-hmm.”

“And for coming to the bar.”

“Mm-hmm.”

“And for buying me a car, really top-notch stuff.”

“What would you even do with a car?” he asks over the top of his newspaper. “Besides sit behind the wheel and make vroom-vroom noises.”

“Dang, I thought for sure you weren’t listening. I’d sell it, obviously. And use the money to buy a pair of roller skates. Roller skates are more my speed. “

“Expensive pair of roller skates.”

“They’d be made of NFTs.”

“You have no idea what NFTs are, do you?”

“Does anyone? No! Don’t attempt to explain it.” I stare into nothing as I start in on my cereal and coffee. “Hey, I went to a 5Night concert last night.”

“Was it everything you dreamed it would be?” he asks as he sips coffee. It’s a lighthearted question, but his eyes arecarefully trained to my face. He’s sensing that this is a minefield.

The truth is, the concert was amazing, Jericho is the best, I’d do it again in a heartbeat…but. But there’s a pit in my stomach this morning. Because I went to a 5Night concert and there’s only one person in the whole universe who I’d like to tell about it. And I can’t.

“Hey, Miles?” I’ve finished my cereal, so I get up with my coffee and walk around to the couch and plunk down.

“Hm?”

“Do you ever get used to not being able to give updates on your life?”

He pauses. I can feel his eyes on the back of my head. “You mean to my mom and Anders?”

“Yeah.”

He pauses again and I hear him scooch his chair back a few inches from the table. “No. No, that part has always been hard for me.Hey, Mom. Dad finally told Reese about me. I’m moving to New York City to try to help raise Ainsley…so weird that I couldn’t tell her that. I mean…this is the woman who used to ask me what I’d had for lunch that day because she was genuinely curious. She loved knowing the details of my life. Every little boring nothing, she wanted to know. And now…literally every aspect of my life is different and I can’t tell her.”

---