Contest: NYC Midnight
Word Count: 500 Max
GROUP: 19
GENRE: Comedy
ACTION: Overstaying
OBJECT: A Microphone
Place: TBD
My one job as best man was to watch Keith, the groom’s cousin. Whenever Keith got drunk, he cried about “the only person he’d loved since high school.” We all assumed he meant the bride. Mary was the only girlfriend he had back then. Their relationship lasted only three months.
I showed every bartender a picture of Keith and explained my predicament. Every bartender promised to limit his drinks. By the time the wedding speeches began, he was already whimpering and retching between two swan boats a hundred yards from the pavilion as I rubbed his back.
“I’m sorry, Ross,” he said no fewer than ten times.
Afterwards, I asked the security guard at the island’s only bridge to call him a taxi and not to let Keith back in.
I got drunk. Everyone got drunk. I got sober when the DJ called Keith to the stage for “Jessie’s Girl”.
I checked my phone, hoping for a message from Keith saying he’d made it home. What I had instead was a text from the security guard saying he had lost Keith.
“This is for the one I still love,” Keith said, his voice quivering over the opening riffs. He stood there dripping with pond mud smeared across his face. “The one I promised myself I’d let go.”
“Goddamn it!” I shouted as I clawed my way through the crowd from the back of the pavilion to the stage.
“I knew it was love on the first day of Social Studies in Ms. Denny’s class,” Keith continued, ignoring the lyrics scrolling across the screen. He pulled a limp napkin from his breast pocket. It disintegrated when he unfolded it.
“I wrote a beautiful poem to convey my feelings. But what is more poetic than speaking from the heart?”
When I got to him, I motioned to the DJ to cut Keith’s mic. The DJ shook his head. When I reached across his mixing table for the controls, he slapped my hands away.
“You can’t silence love, Ross,” Keith said. “I can’t keep living like this without saying something. Especially on such a romantic day.”
I grabbed the spare microphone from its stand.
“Where can I find a woman like that—” I shouted into it, trying to drown out Keith while reaching for his mic.
“Ross, I love—”
The security guard—who was also waterlogged—yanked Keith off the stage and twisted one arm behind his back.
“Ross! I love you!” he shouted as the guard hauled him through the crowd.
“I knew it!” my boyfriend, Jessie, yelled from the bar.