Ten Years of Public Breakups, Then He Ran After My Bus novel · Chapter 18 of 40

Chapter 18: Lighted Boats

Bernie's POV

By the first Saturday in December the Dorcas Jean looked like a boat that had lost a bet with a Christmas tree.

Gordie had strung eleven hundred lights along her rails, her mast and her wheelhouse.

There were red ones on the bow, green on the stern and a lit-up plywood lobster in a Santa hat on the roof.

She was the lead boat in the Festival of Lights parade, and she sat at the town float at dusk, blazing.

I stood on the float with a thermos, and I did not want to go aboard.

I hadn't spoken to Eben in nine days.

I had taken my phone to bed every night and put it face down, and every morning I had turned it over.

There was nothing from him.

There was nothing from Portland, either.

"Get on the boat," said Paulie, behind me.

She wore a green elf sweater with a bell on the hem, and a red scarf, and the face of a woman reading a will.

"I'm getting on."

"You've been standing here for four minutes," Paulie said.

"I'm admiring the lobster."

"Listen to me." She took my arm. "Everybody's aboard. Linwood and your mother are in lawn chairs by the bait box, under a blanket. Gordie's got the cocoa. The petty officer's got a flare gun, God help us."

"Paulie."

"Strike three is the wedding. I have said it nicely and I have said it with a spreadsheet. Please, Bernie. Get on the boat and stand somewhere dark and be nice."

I looked at her.

She was crying, a little, in the cold, and she wasn't hiding it.

"I'll be nice," I said.

"Promise."

"I promise."

I went aboard.

The deck was crowded and warm with bodies, a dozen of the Friday table in knit hats, passing cups and laughing.

My mother and Linwood sat in two folding chairs under a plaid blanket, as close as two chairs could be.

My mother lifted her paper cup to me.

Linwood waved.

Eben was in the wheelhouse.

I saw him through the glass, in his canvas jacket and his cap, with the green dashboard light on his face.

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