Promise Me Sunshine

Lenny and Miles get ready to go to dinner with Lenny’s parents, Eva and Kevin, in Brooklyn, and Miles seems excited and nervous. Lenny’s parents are ecstatic to meet Miles but also to see Lenny again. They all play cards and eat an elaborate multi-course dinner, where Lenny’s parents and Miles have a lot to drink. When Lenny comes back after leaving the room for a moment, she can tell that the others have been talking about her. Eva and Kevin want Miles to help them figure out how to track Lenny’s location on their phone, which she objects to, and they are happy when Miles tells them that they can always get ahold of him if they can’t reach Lenny.

Lenny helps a drunken Miles get safely back to his apartment, and he regrets accepting all the grappa her parents forced on him. Miles asks Lenny to sleep on his couch for the night while he sleeps on the floor beside her, and he asks her what is wrong again before falling asleep. When Miles wakes up a few hours later, Lenny knows that she needs to tell him about her feelings for him. As she starts to tell him how happy she has been recently, Miles understands that she feels guilty for this happiness, and Lenny recognizes for the first time that she has been protecting her own grief because it’s all she has left of Lou. Miles tries to reassure Lenny that she is “not betraying [Lou] by healing” as he holds her (233). As Lenny begins to confess her love again, she sees that Miles understands without her having to admit it. She tries to kiss him, but Miles puts a hand over her mouth and tells her that they need to wait. Lenny is confused as Miles asks to walk her home, and she yells at him. Miles tells her that he has a plan he can’t tell her but that they have to wait, though Lenny forces him to make it clear that he does want to kiss her. Just after Lenny confirms this, she runs scared back into the studio apartment.

Lenny doesn’t see Miles for the next few days, though he continues to check in on her over text and leave food for her. They finally meet again while Lenny is babysitting, and Reese sees that there is something going on between them. Lenny and Miles arrange to get drinks with Jericho, Rica, and Jeffy, and everyone is surprised when Miles suggests that they go to a disco-themed bar. While the others wait for Miles to arrive, Lenny tells them everything about her feelings for Miles and how they are avoiding each other. Rica later gets the whole story from Lenny and reassures her that she shouldn’t worry about what Miles has planned. Jericho and Rica are immediately swept onto the dance floor by suitors, and Jeffy makes sure that Lenny and Miles are forced together before going to hang out at the bar. Lenny continues to flirt, but Miles still wants to wait. Miles notes how suddenly Lenny has adapted to this change in their relationship, but she begins to notice that she has been falling for him slowly this whole time. Miles gets up to leave, unable to bear what Lenny is telling him while still wanting to wait, but he continues to assure her that he will know when the timing is right.

Over the next few days, Lenny continues to flirt with Miles, lamenting her inability to seduce him. Lenny deep cleans her house to distract herself and falls asleep early but awakens to Miles banging on her door. He has texted and called her several times, but he is surprised to find that she is not in distress; she was just asleep at a normal hour. They talk, and Lenny falls asleep on the couch again, but when she wakes up, she notices that Miles is crossing something off a page in his notebook. Lenny correctly guesses that Miles has his own list, though it is unclear whether it is meant for himself or her. After he leaves her, Lenny feels at peace being alone with her thoughts for the first time since Lou died.

Lenny comes over to Miles’s apartment to check something off her list: making food for herself and someone else. Lenny is surprised to see that Miles has a guest, a friend from home whom he introduces as Ethan. Miles and Ethan talk about Ethan’s bar and his young daughter, Miriam, while Lenny makes guacamole for all of them, and she listens as Miles speaks passionately about his work. Later that night, Lenny looks into how Miles might start a bricklaying business in the city, but when she brings it up to him, he says that he has thought about it but worries that he wouldn’t be present enough for Reese and Ainsley. Lenny tells Miles that “[p]art of taking care of the people you love is taking care of yourself” (259), and this makes her finally realize why Miles won’t kiss her. He is waiting for Lenny to be able to take care of herself on her own, and Lenny wants to prove to him that she can. When Lenny recognizes this, she decides to stop trying to seduce Miles and instead puts her time and effort into things that she knows will be good for her. She finally outlines a contract for a regular job with Reese, goes to yoga classes with Rica, and starts hanging out more with Jeffy and Jericho, as well as with her parents.

Lenny tries to help motivate Ainsley for her talent show/dance recital, but at the show, Lenny sees that Miles is the one who is nervous. Miles leaves the auditorium before Ainsley’s performance, and Lenny is shocked to see him appear onstage moments later with Ainsley. Rather than the parent dance for the recital, Ainsley and Miles have been rehearsing a choreographed dance for the talent-show portion of the evening, and both are giving it their all. Reese surprises Lenny even more, as she was supposed to be out of town for the performance, and she doesn’t know how Ainsley got Miles to do this with her. Lenny tells Reese that Miles wanted to, and she begins to rethink her perception of Miles. Lenny lets Reese, Miles, and Ainsley have their family moment and insists that they go out to dinner without her, despite Miles’s invitation.

Lenny takes herself out on a date afterward and finds herself at the salon where she and Lou shaved their heads years ago. The hairdresser remembers her, and when Lenny says that she wants to cut her hair off, the hairdresser recommends that she donate it to a charity that makes wigs for children with cancer. After she cuts her long hair to chin length, Lenny boards the Staten Island ferry, and when Miles hears this, he rushes over. Miles is surprised that Lenny looks okay when he reaches her, and he admits that he is excited for the future of his relationship with Reese and Ainsley. Lenny tells Miles that the ferry reminds her of Lou because she was put in hospice on Staten Island. For Lenny, riding the ferry feels like heading toward her friend. Lenny finally pulls down her hood and shows Miles her new haircut, and they both know she is going to be okay. Lenny tells him that she is here to stay, and they finally kiss.

After riding the ferry back and forth, Miles and Lenny resurface near the studio apartment, where Miles asks to hear Lenny’s initial “love-at-first-sight fantasy” about him (277). Miles is shocked to hear the out-of-character story she tells about him, but he knows she did this because she was trying to find happiness in her grief. As they talk about how grateful they are for having met one another, Miles tells Lenny that he feels like he met himself when he met her, and they fall asleep together.

The next morning, Ainsley and Lenny celebrate the successful performance at the talent show. When they return home from running around the city, they see that Reese is already home from work and has been having a serious conversation with Miles. Reese tells Lenny to take the rest of the day off, as she and Ainsley are going to her friend’s cabin for the weekend. As they get ready, Lenny asks Miles what he and Reese were talking about. Lenny learns that Reese might be stepping back from work to have more time with Ainsley. Miles and Lenny talk about where their relationship is headed, and they begin to have sex for the first time, but Lenny has a hard time getting over the newness and strangeness of the moment. Yet a short while later, they are back in bed, and Lenny feels more connected to Miles than ever.

Miles tells Lenny that he might be giving up his apartment because Reese thinks it would be better if he weren’t constantly looming over her, but overall, Reese seems like she wants to include him in her life. Miles thinks that he can sell the apartment to have money to get a new business off the ground, and Lenny is ecstatic, promising to help Miles get his new life on track. Over the next few weeks, Miles finds an apartment, and Lenny is nervous about saying goodbye to his old place, not wanting to lose the place where they fell in love. Months later, Miles has settled into his new place, and Lenny spends most of her time with him rather than at the studio apartment. One day, she asks him if she can die first. Miles worried that she might wonder about this at some point—fearful of one day losing another loved one. He brings out the list he was making to take care of her and tells her that she should keep adding to it even if he dies first.

When Miles catches Lenny looking at photos of him to put in the other half of her locket, he mentions to her that he thinks it is time that she officially moves out of her old apartment. Lenny doesn’t want to leave her past life with Lou behind there, but she knows she needs to move on from the past to have a future. Miles is surprised when Lenny is the first to suggest that she should ask her parents and Jericho for help cleaning out the apartment. The next morning, Lenny tells Miles that she wants him to meet Lou, and she takes him to the Met to see the O’Keeffe painting she ran from months ago. Going to the Met as much as possible was the last thing Lenny had to check off her Live Again list.

Lenny thinks about the anticlimactic feeling of finishing the list, revealing that it all feels more arbitrary than when she originally wrote the list. Miles is confused, thinking that Lou was the one who wrote the list for Lenny to complete after she died. Lenny reveals that she wrote the list for Lou to complete after she got her hysterectomy years earlier. Lou always carried the list with her in her pocket and had it laminated before she gave it to Lenny shortly before her death. Miles notices that the laminated list is folded slightly, hiding one last item to check off. Unfolding the list, she sees the words “Get over it already, loser” written in Lou’s handwriting (300), and Lenny knows that these last words of Lou’s are the best gift she could have received. This note shows Lenny that Lou knew that “there isn’t actually a checklist for learning to live again” (300). In the Met gift shop, Miles gets Lenny a book that she thinks Lou would’ve read, telling her that reading it will be good for her. When they go outside, they see that the entire city has been covered in snow. As they slip and slide on the ice, laughing as they head home together, Lenny ends the novel thinking, “[I]f that isn’t living, then I don’t know what is” (302).