Promise Me Sunshine

by Cara Bastone

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.

I can already see it now. He and I will have a tumultuous two-year fuckfest, 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.

“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.

Well, ohhhhkay. Guess we’ve got some family dynamics to navigate here.

This is a love story, I swear. This is what happens when you’ve promised someone you’ll live again.

Not strung out, just having a debilitating mental health crisis while navigating the most excruciating chapter of my life.

Miles is a conveniently large prop in my one-woman show right now.

He cracks up. “He had no idea he messed with the head of the Sesame Street gang.”

Well, it’s a nice night to watch the Statue of Liberty pass twenty-two times in a row, I suppose.

I lay one cheek on top of my bag. “What do you even care?” His eyes sweep across me and a change comes over his face. He’s making an expression I haven’t seen him make before. It almost makes him look like a human person with feelings and a backstory.

His eyebrows flatten like the answer is obvious. “You have a very expressive face. You did it with me the first time we met.” I scoff. “That crush lasted all of twelve seconds.”

“Lenny and Lou,” he muses. “Like two old men.”

But the thing about thanking someone is that it requires acknowledgment that the situation is, in fact, real. And I just can’t bring myself to do that.

“Are we calling this dancing?” I laugh and concede the point. I’m currently pretending to mow a lawn, so yeah, maybe dancing isn’t quite the term.

“Wow,” Miles says, giving her the same face he gave the amorous dancers just last night. “Well, that was fucking rude.”

“I’m not. If she tells it accurately, my mother will kick her ass for what she said.” And then I grimace too. “Though she’s not going to tell it accurately. Sorry. You’re probably forever a villain in my family lore.”

“You need water,” he decides, toeing his shoes off. His fingers touch the top of my head very lightly as he walks past.

I give up on pushing, because clearly he’s made of cement and never thought to tell me.

“Well, you know, lone wolf howling at the moon? Pretty lonely. I thought you’d make me go for something happier.” He frowns. “They’re not lonely.” He gestures between our two bandages. “There’s two of them.”