Ten Years of Public Breakups, Then He Ran After My Bus novel · Chapter 1 of 40
Chapter 1: The Microphone
Eben takes the mic at the crate race and proposes in front of three hundred people, Bernie says no, and the tenth breakup ends with a volunteer shoving them into the harbormaster's shack.
Gordie tapped the microphone twice and said, "Folks, I need everybody to look at the stage."
Three hundred people at Harbor Park turned around with their paper boats of fried clams.
I was at the bottom of the steps with a sunscreen bottle I was supposed to deliver to my best friend.
Then I saw who was climbing those steps in clean jeans.
Eben Dyer owned exactly one pair of clean jeans, and he only wore them to funerals.
"No," I said, out loud, to nobody.
Gordie handed over the microphone like it was a baby he was sorry to lose.
Eben stood at the front of the stage with his cap in one hand.
His hair was flat from the cap, and he had cut himself shaving, just under the jaw.
"Ten years ago today, a woman fell off the third crate in that race," he said.
His voice came out of the speakers a half second late, and it was steady.
"I was on the float, so I went in after her."
"I got her by the belt."
Everybody in the park knew the story, and the whole crowd said, "Awww."
I put the sunscreen down on the bottom step, because I had stopped being able to hold things.
"Eben," I said.
He found me in the crowd, which took him no time at all.
"She hit me with her elbow when I pulled her out," he said. "I think it was the first thing she ever said to me."
People laughed, and a woman near the front put her hand on her chest.
He reached into his back pocket and brought out a Sucrets tin.
It was dented and the paint was worn through to the metal.
He opened it, and the sun came down on a small old ring.
The whole park made a noise I felt in my teeth.
"I'm not good at this part," Eben said. "So I'm going to say the short version."
"Bernie, marry me."
Nobody in Harbor Park was eating anymore.
The cooker was still steaming behind the tent, and the steam went straight up in the still air.
I knew what I wanted to say.
I wanted to say yes so badly that my eyes stung, and that was exactly why it couldn't come out.
Five weeks.
We had been back together for five weeks.
He had picked a stage in front of the entire town so I couldn't say anything else.
He came down the steps and held the microphone out to me.
"Say it so I can hear it," he said.
He meant it as a kindness.
I took the microphone, because there was nothing else to do with the hand.
"No," I said.
My voice went out over the water and bounced off the Coast Guard boat at the dock.
A man in the back yelled, "Oh, come on!"
Gordie said, over everyone, "Is that a no? Folks, I think that's a no."
Eben didn't move.
Something went across his face and was gone, and I had watched it go across that face nine times before.
"You picked this on purpose," I said. The microphone made it enormous. "In front of everyone. So I couldn't."
"You said it fine."
"I said it because you took away every other choice."
"I gave you a crowd," he said. "You love a crowd."
Somebody laughed and was shushed.
"It's been five weeks," I said.
"It's been ten years."
"And you've never once come after me, Eben, not one time. Nine times I walked out and you stood there."
I hadn't planned to say that.
It went out over three hundred people and the water.
His jaw worked, and he closed the tin with his thumb.
"I'm not going to chase a woman who's got her bag packed," he said.
"I don't have a bag."
"You've always got a bag."
The crowd was a living thing now, leaning in, a few of them with their phones up.
A kid on his father's shoulders said, "Why is she mad?"
Eben looked at me for a long moment.
Then he took the microphone out of my hand, gently, and said into it, "That's ten."
"Somebody tell Gordie to write it down."
"Ten!" a voice shouted from the beer tent. "Eleven by Labor Day!"
The park roared, and I wanted to go into the harbor and not come up.
"Okay, okay, folks," said a volunteer in a plastic lobster hat, pushing through. "Let's give these two a minute."
He had one of my arms, and a second volunteer had one of Eben's.
They steered us along the town dock, past the crates and the coiled line and the cooker crew staring, to a small gray shed with a sign that said HARBORMASTER.
The first volunteer opened the door and put me in.
The second put Eben in after me.
"Take all the time you need," said the lobster hat, and shut the door.
It stuck halfway, and he shoved it, and it latched.
The sound of the festival came through the walls, muffled and huge.
There was one window, painted over, and a chart table, and a smell of old coffee and diesel.
Eben stood against the door with the tin still in his hand.
I stood against the chart table with my arms crossed.
Neither of us said anything.
His chest was moving fast, and so was mine.
"It always sticks," he said finally.
"I know it sticks."
He put the tin in his pocket.
He looked at my mouth, then at the door, and then he did not look away.
"Say it again," he said, very low, "where nobody can hear."
I grabbed him by the front of his shirt.
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