Page 63 of The Outsider

She shouldn’t care what he was doing.

She was hurt. More than she had a right to be. It was just... she had wanted him to be proud.

Maybe that was weird. It was definitely weird. But he was this unobtainable thing. A man who had woken up a loneliness in her. A need too. And she wasn’t foolish enough to think that he could actually fill it. Or that he would want to. Now, she wasn’t even dumb enough to think that Michael was going to do that. She just had wanted to go on a date. Because it was normal. And she wanted to be normal. Wasn’t that okay? And wasn’t that what he was encouraging her to do?

She paced a small length of the porch, and finally, Michael appeared.

She grinned, and hopped down the steps, making her way to the truck.

Her heart gave a strange dip. She was going on a date.

It was absurd. And kind of neat.

She was wearing a dress; she felt like just a normal twenty-three-year-old. At least, what she imagined a normal twenty-three-year-old might feel like—she didn’t really know where she could get confirmation on whether or not her experience was normal.

She opened the passenger door and got up into the truck. “Hi,” she said, overly cheerful.

“Hi yourself,” he said, smiling.

This was going to be fun. She was pretty sure.

Except, as they started driving away from the house, she realized that he didn’t really know anything about her, and he would probably think she was weird if he did. Were they going to talk about themselves? What sorts of things was she supposed to ask him? What were good date topics?

She didn’t want him to ask where she had gone to school, or what she had studied in college. She didn’t want him to start asking questions that—if she were honest—she wouldn’t have very good answers for.

“How long have you been living in Pyrite Falls?” he asked.

Okay. That was a pretty innocuous question.

“About a month and a half.”

“And you live with Daughtry,” he said.

“Yeah,” she said, wondering if he was... jealous. “He’s kind of like an older brother.”

“I see. So he’s the one that brought you to work at the ranch?”

“Yes,” she said, feeling slightly relieved. “He told me there was a job opening, and so here I am.”

It was definitely evasive and for sure sidestepping the truth of the situation, but it was necessary. Because he could fill in the blanks with something made up for now, something that was a little bit less weird thanDaughtry found me squatting in the woods.

And then later she would be able to remind him that she had actually never lied to him.

Good plan.

“How about you?”

And that had been the right move, because the minute she asked about him, the floodgates open. By the time they got to Smokey’s she knew that he was from Redding, California, and that he had dropped out of high school. She chalked that up as a point to her, since technically she hadn’t graduated either.

He had an ex-girlfriend who had broken his heart, and had decided to come to Oregon to see if things would be better.

His ex was crazy.

Him saying that made Bix flinch. But, she supposed everybody had a dim view of their ex. She didn’t think that that particular phrasing, and the fact that it was volunteered without her asking, was a pink flag.

But again, this was much more about having the experience than actually believing that Michael was perfect in some way. So there.

He parked, and they got out. She looked around the parking lot, which was relatively full, and felt a sense of accomplishment. That she was doing something so normal. This was clearly where the people of Pyrite Falls hung out. And she was part of the hanging out.

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