Page 91 of Promise Me Sunshine

We drive for an hour in almost complete silence. I’m tired and contemplative and happy for the quiet. He, on the other hand, seems to be chewing the kind of thoughts that get stuck in your teeth. His brow is deeply furrowed and one of his thumbs drums on the steering wheel when we stop at stoplights.

“Rhonda’s.” I read aloud the name of a little roadside café and my sudden voice makes him jump. “Pull over, I wanna go in there. It looks so cute!”

He steps on the gas. “No way.”

“Why?”

“My former fourth-grade teacher runs the place,” he says. “She’ll wanna hear every single detail of my life. Actually she’ll wanna hear every single detail ofyourlife, too. You really want to go through that?”

I crane backward to look at the café. “Are you kidding me? Of course I want to meet your fourth-grade teacher. I want to hear what you were like in fourth grade!”

“Bigger than all the other kids, shy, and bad at reading. There. You’re caught up.”

“Bad at reading? Really? But you’re always reading now.”

He shrugs. “I stuck with it. We’re here.”

Our car takes a right turn directly into a forest. If we weren’t driving down it, I never would have known there was a gravel road here. It’s overgrown, and leaves slide against the windows of the car.

“Is this your driveway?” I ask in awe. “It’s like that scene inBeauty and the Beast.”

He frowns. “I gotta talk to Burt about trimming down these trees.”

I’m beyond charmed. I’ve never lived somewhere that even had grass to mow, let alone the necessity for Burt the tree trimmer.

We round a bend and there’s a little blue house. Big, boisterous bushes seem to throw their arms out to us under the front windows.

It’s obviously been a while since anyone was here, but it’s a handsome sort of disheveled.

“Well, this is it,” Miles says. “The only place I lived before Manhattan.”

“You went from here to the studio where I’m staying?”

“Yeah.”

“Culture shock.”

“Yeah.”

We grab our bags and Miles leads the way up the front walk, onto the porch and clickety clack, through the front door.

We push into the entryway. On the wood-paneled wall there’s a photo of young Miles getting tickled to pieces by a woman who must be his mother. They don’t look that much alike, but the love on her face…yeah, this kid is her wholeworld. As Miles walks past, long-worn habit has him absent-mindedly lifting his fingers to the frame to give it a quick tap-tap.Hi, Mom.

I stand there and watch him disappear into the house, looking back and forth between him and the photo. Does it get that natural for everyone? To be reminded of the hole torn through your heart and be able to just tap the picture frame on the way past?

I catch up to him in the living room. The house is dark but he does a big circuit, opening all the blinds. Dusty shafts of light illuminate the furniture. His apartment in Manhattan is minimal and stylish. This home is floral prints and plaids, a ginormous rug, and a wall of knickknacks. It’s a little dusty but otherwise well cared for. Friendly and dated, and I can picture giant, shy, fourth-grade Miles lying in front of that very fireplace practicing reading with all his heart.

I turn to him, hands clasped under my chin. “I love it so much here.”

He lets out a breath and adjusts his ball cap again. “Really?”

“What should we do tonight?” I ask, inspecting a bookshelf filled to the gills with paperback thrillers. “Let’s play cards and eat hot dogs again, that was fun last night.” I gasp at an exciting discovery. “You can show me all your yearbooks.”

He comes up behind me and firmly pushes the yearbooks back onto the shelf. When I turn to him, he looks distinctly uncomfortable. “About tonight…”

“Hm?”

“I…didn’t tell you all of it. About why I needed to come here.”

---