Ten Years of Public Breakups, Then He Ran After My Bus novel · Chapter 10 of 40

Chapter 10: The Seat

Bernie's POV

I told myself I had come for my half of the tools.

That was the story I told in the car, on Route 73, with both hands on the wheel and the window down to keep my face cold.

I had a jigsaw in that house, and a level, and a good set of screwdrivers.

I wanted them out of there before the next time I saw him.

I had cut the key myself, the week we signed the papers.

I opened the front door and stood in the dark hall.

A light was on in the front room, and a smell of fresh-cut pine came down the hall to meet me.

"Eben?"

"In here."

He was sitting in the bay window, in his work pants and a gray T-shirt, with sawdust in his hair.

I walked into the room and stopped.

Under him, built into the curve of the bay, was a seat.

It was long and low, made of pale, old, fine-grained pine, pegged at the joints, with a lid on one end that lifted for storage.

It followed the window exactly.

It was the one I'd drawn.

I stared at it until the dark outside the glass began to swim.

"You wrote Noted," I said, finally, in a high strange voice.

"You wrote Don't text me."

"You didn't even yell," I said.

"What was I supposed to say?"

"Anything!"

I heard how loud it was in the empty room.

"Anything at all," I said. "A sentence."

He stood, slowly, and the seat creaked a little under him, and he walked to the wall and unpinned something and held it out.

It was a napkin, soft and brown at the folds.

Blue ballpoint.

A woman with her feet up, a cup, a small stove with its smoke.

Someday.

"That's mine," I said.

"I know."

"I drew that at the Galley, in April, four years ago. I was a mess."

"You were laughing," he said.

"Where did you get it?"

"I took it off the table when you went to the bathroom."

"And you kept it," I said.

"In the truck."

"For four years?"

He nodded.

I took the napkin from him with fingers that weren't working properly.

I looked at my own handwriting, at the little cushion in cross-hatching, and the word.

Then I looked at the seat.

It was the most beautiful thing anyone had ever made for me, and I wanted to hit him with it.

"Why?" I said.

"You drew it."

"That's not an answer," I said.

"It's the one I've got."

I put my hand flat against his chest and shoved.

He didn't move, so I shoved again, harder, and he caught my wrist and held it there.

I could feel his heart under the palm.

"You can build this," I said, and my voice broke. "You can build me a bench out of a hundred-year-old porch and carry a piece of paper in your truck for four years. And you can't say one sentence."

"Cyr."

"One sentence, Eben."

His mouth opened.

I watched him try.

I watched the whole long fight go across his face, the jaw, the eyes, a muscle in his cheek.

He said, "I wanted you to have somewhere to sit."

It wasn't the sentence.

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