Ten Years of Public Breakups, Then He Ran After My Bus novel · Chapter 40 of 40
Chapter 40: The Crate Race
Gordie tapped the microphone twice and said, "Folks, I need everybody to look at the crates."
Three hundred people at Harbor Park turned toward the water with their paper boats of fried clams.
I was standing on the float in my bathing suit, with a towel around my shoulders, and I did not look at the crowd.
I looked at forty wooden lobster crates floating in a line across the cove, bobbing and knocking in the sun.
Eben stood beside me in a pair of cutoffs and his DYER cap, with his hand wrapped around mine.
"You don't have to," he said.
"I want to."
"You'll fall," he said.
"I'm going to fall."
"Then why?" he said.
"Because I'm done being afraid of the water," I said.
He grinned.
"This year," Gordie said, over the speakers, "for the first time in the history of the Maine Lobster Festival, we have a pairs run."
A cheer went up.
"Two people, hand in hand, forty crates, one finish line. If either of you lets go, you're out. If either of you falls, you both fall."
"That's a rule?" someone yelled.
"It is as of this morning. The bride made it."
Paulie stood on the dock in her sunglasses, eating a corn dog, and gave me two thumbs up.
"Racers ready," said Gordie. "On my whistle."
The whistle blew.
We ran.
The first crate dipped under my foot and bobbed up, and I leaped to the second.
His hand never loosened.
Crate three, four, five, a rolling wooden floor beneath us, and the crowd screaming from the shore.
I heard my mother's voice somewhere, and Linwood's, and a deeper one that said, "Go on, girl," in an accent from the north.
The rest of this chapter is part of the paid portion of the series. Chapters 1–20 of Ten Years of Public Breakups, Then He Ran After My Bus are free to read — start from the beginning, then unlock the rest with coins in the app.
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