Excerpt
Promise Me Sunshine
Chapter OneThis baby will not stop judging me.
The B train brakes and we all slide two inches to the side. Perched atop their mother’s lap, the straps of a bright red sunhat pinned under chubby cheeks, somber, unblinking eyes, the baby studies me, trying to decide if I have a soul.
I stick my tongue out and make my ears dance.
No reaction.
I pull my cheeks out to the sides and do rabbit teeth.
Not even a blink.
Finally, as the train is pulling into my stop, in a last-minute bid to be judged human, I use my ponytail as a mustache.
And there. Finally. I get one radiant, two-toothed smile.
Thank goodness. I guess there is a soul in this scraped-out husk of mine after all. I wave goodbye and bound up, off the train, and head west. It’s dog-breath hot out here and I can’t believe I’ve mustered up the energy for this.
But the thing about losing the person you love the most on earth is—somehow—you still have to do mundane things like tie your shoes and make enough money to continue to exist in this punishing world. So, I plod on. Toward yet another short-term nannying gig. Just to keep the Froot Loops on the table. Even though I’d really rather crawl into that trash can over there and emerge in about a decade.
Oh, look. I’m here. It’s a gigantic brick apartment building. The lobby is populated by a group of people who look so happy I wouldn’t be surprised if their lives suddenly turned into a musical. They mob the doorman with luggage, so I go up on tiptoes and shout to him where I’m headed.
“Ah. They’re expecting you,” he calls to me in an Eastern European accent. “Eight-eenth floor.”
By the time the elevator dings, I’m in a better mood. One of my former babysitting families recommended me to Reese so that I can help out with her kid while she’s out of town this weekend. Besides, here in the worst six months of my life, the only thing that’s brought me even a hint of happiness has been hanging out with the kids I babysit. I’m between jobs right now, so this new family is likely going to be the only spot of light in my life for a bit.
I ring the doorbell and ten seconds later, perfection personified answers the door. She’s got blond hair in a high ponytail and is decked out in head-to-toe Lululemon.
“Hi, I’m Reese.” She holds out her hand and smiles so toothily that I find myself grinning back.
“Lenny. Nice to meet you.”
“Thank you for agreeing on such short notice. My friend Harper usually helps out for stuff like this, but she’s busy during the days this weekend. She’s the one who will be staying overnight with Ainsley. Anyways, come in, please. Did you get my email?”
“I did,” I assure her. It was literally six and a half pages single-spaced and filled with so much loving detail on how to care for her daughter that it teared me up. I come inside and kick off my shoes, straightening them when I realize that all the other shoes are in perfect pairs. We’re in a roomy front hallway, painted a trendy mauve and lined with gigantic black-and-white photographs.
“So, Ainsley is back in the—” The doorbell rings again right after Reese closes the door, and she frowns. She pulls the door back open and her shoulders cinch about two inches upward when she sees who it is. “What’s up, Miles?”
There’s a man standing in the crack of the door that Reese has just opened, and I get the feeling he might have wedged his foot in there so she can’t close it.
He’s not good-looking, really. Low-grade sexy. He’s wearing a used-to-be-black hoodie stretched over two big shoulders and faded blue jeans. Viciously short dark hair and the kind of stubble you can’t ever shave away. Judging by that promising scowl, he’s the type who’d really enjoy partaking in a public bathroom tryst with a near stranger. I can already see it now. He and I will have a tumultuous two-year f***fest, defined by me perpetually being sent to voicemail. He’ll stand me up on Thanksgiving, thereby dumping me. But then he’ll realize horrifically, cataclysmically, that he’s been in love with me this whole time. He’ll come crawling back to me on all four appendages. I’ll make him wait outside my door for a year before I let him back in. Eventually there’ll be a ring with a black diamond so dark I can see his soul inside it. We’ll get married on Halloween and his wedding present to me will be a sex toy. It sounds ecstatically fun.
It’s probably apropos to mention that I instantaneously spin elaborate fantasies about almost every man I ever meet. Not to say that this guy isn’t special; I have just fallen in love, after all.
He looks over Reese’s shoulder and spots me, his gaze narrowing and his eyes taking me in from socks to eyebrows. I don’t think I’ve passed the test because he leans forward and thus commences an aggressive (and nearly silent) whisper fight between the two of them and it’s getting a little icy in here.
I occupy myself with the black-and-white prints for something to do. That’s when I realize that what I’m looking at are actually gigantic photographs of someone very famous.
“Sorry about that,” Reese chirps at my elbow, and I jolt. I hadn’t heard her approach. She’s got a plastic smile superglued to her face and when I look back, the man is still standing in the now fully open door, glowering in our general direction.
“No problem,” I say, and then jog one thumb toward the portraits. “Big Willie Nelson fan?”
“Hm? Oh! Ha. Willie’s great. But that’s my dad there next to him. They toured together for a while.”
“Oh, wow!” I lean in and sure enough, there’s another guy in all the pics, at the mic in some and jamming on a steel guitar in others.
“Carp Hollis,” she says, supplying the name I clearly couldn’t come up with. “Ever heard of him?”
“Your dad is Carp Hollis?” I don’t know much about bluegrass or country, but even I know that he’s kinda royalty.
“Yup. That’s Dad.” She looks affectionately at the pictures before her expression clouds. I instantly recognize that look, and my stomach drops to my toes. “He passed about a year and a half ago. This is his apartment. Ainsley and I are still getting used to it, to be honest . . . Why don’t you come meet Ains.”
She starts to usher me out of the hallway.
“Reese!” calls the man who is still standing in the open door.
She doesn’t turn around. “Then stay if you want, Miles!”
I’m looking back and forth between them. “Um. I’m Lenny,” I offer to him with a little wave of my hand. “Lenny Bellamy.”
He’s ignoring me, staring daggers into the back of Reese’s head.
“That’s Miles. Ainsley’s uncle,” Reese finally says into the silence. “He lives upstairs. He’ll probably be around today, if that’s okay with you.”
“Oh, uh. Sure?” I don’t usually enjoy babysitting with an audience, but he is my future husband after all, as prickly as he may be.
The apartment is gargantuan and curated and polished. Kitchen, living room, dining room, a handful of bedrooms and bathrooms, and then, finally, in what she refers to as the “drawing room,” is a little somebody who is, in fact, drawing.
“Ains,” Reese calls.
The little somebody doesn’t stand, she just drops her colored pencil and pivots on her knees to face us. She’s about seven years old, with dandelion levels of staticky hair. Tiny purple glasses magnify her eyeballs to twice their size and she’s swimming in a very faded Madonna concert tee. “Is that a cat eating lasagna on your shirt?” she asks me.
“It’s Garfield,” I clarify.
“Who’s that?”
“Oh, it’s a good thing we’re going to hang out all weekend because we’ve got a lot of ground to cover.”
She nervously tugs the hem of her T-shirt. “Okay.”
“I’m Lenny,” I say, and I leave the adults behind to sit next to her. “What’s your name?”
She frowns at me. “Mom didn’t tell you?”
I smile. “She did, but people usually start getting to know each other by exchanging names.”
“Oh. Yeah. I’m Ainsley.” She makes a puke face.
“You don’t like your name?”
“There are three other Ainsleys at my school. Different grades but . . .” She shrugs.
“Oh, really? Wow. Ainsley sounds like a unique name to me. If you could choose any other name, what would it be?”
She shrugs again, still nervous to meet me. “I don’t know. Something cooler. Like . . . Blackbeard. Or Darth Vader.”
I burst out laughing, and she tries to hide her pleased smile while she plays with the hem of her T-shirt.
I instantly like her, and I like her mom more by extension. This uptown address, Reese’s perfect ponytail, head to toe in Lululemon, I would have put some serious money on Ainsley having been carefully manicured into a mini-Reese. I’ve seen it before. But Reese and Ainsley are a delightfully odd couple.
