Page 80 of The Outsider

“Well,” he said. “I was.”

“I appreciate that. I don’t think anybody’s ever worried about me before.”

There was something about her tonight, something joyous, but with that kinetic, untamed energy that always radiated from her. She was glorious. A little bit wild.

Beautiful.

“I was just out here feeling very proud of myself. All of these things... I made them. I made this beer, and we actually get to sell it. With a license and everything. It’s like being a pedigreed dog instead of a stray. I never thought... I really never thought that I would ever get to do anything like this. I really never thought that I was going to...” She frowned. “I never thought about the future before. Not really. And you have to, if you want to be a highly effective person. You have to look at the end in the beginning. You have to think about your goals.”

“Is that from one of your books?”

“Yes. I used to read those books, and I used to get angry, because I wanted to do the things in them, but I didn’t know how. I didn’t have the tools. You know, I didn’t have a brick.” She let out a breath. “But I get it now. And not only that, I’m just really proud of myself. I did it. I made this.”

And then she did something unexpected. She twirled in a circle, her arms stretched out wide, her blond hair swirling around her.

And he could only stare. At her joy. At her enthusiasm. It echoed inside of him. In a place where he’d once felt things that big. That deep.

He had always focused on the ways that he recognized himself in Bix.

And this... It was an old thing. But it wasn’t anything he carried with him anymore.

It felt dangerous. To even stand this close to it.

“I think we need to try the product.”

“I didn’t think you did that,” he said.

“Normally I don’t. Because in my life, alcohol has been associated with either greed or a need to forget. But that’s not what this is. I don’t need to forget anything. And this isn’t about greed. It’s about making something people actually like. It’s about building something new in the ranch. And I will always have been a part of it.” She glowed with that. Her eyes luminous. “Even when I’m not here anymore, I will always have been a part of this. It’s not just... a still in the woods that I’ll have to tear down and pretend it never happened. Do you know how much of my life I’ve spent doing that? Erasing any evidence that I was ever there? But that’s not what I’m doing now. I just...”

She took two beer bottles out of one of the crates sitting at her feet. But then rather than handing him one, she scampered to a ladder that extended down from the ceiling. And with the two bottles in one hand, she began to scurry up the rungs.

“Hey,” he said. “I didn’t say that I was going to...” He looked up after her as she disappeared, past the loft, and then up through an opening that led out of the ceiling. “Are you kidding me?”

But his stomach tightened as he went to the ladder, and began to chase after her.

And there she was, up on the roof, beneath the starlight, beneath the moon.

Her hair was all silvery in that light, and her smile was radiant. Then she extended her hand toward him, holding out the bottle. And he crossed the space and took it, then sat down beside her.

She fished a bottle opener out of her pocket, opened her own, then opened his. He let her do it, because it was her beer.

She tilted it back, and he watched her profile as she took a long sip of the beer. It reminded him of something. And yet, it was entirely new also. It was an echo of what it had been like to be younger.

“I think this is freedom,” she said, resting back on her elbows. “Can you feel it? Can you taste it?” She lifted up the beer bottle and took another sip.

“Is it that good?”

“No,” she said. “I really don’t like beer that much. But that isn’t the point. I feel like I... I did it. I did it, Daughtry. I’m not pathetic anymore. I’m not making decisions just to survive anymore. I am something more. I am expansive.” She grinned. “I am large. I contain multitudes.”

“Are you quoting poetry?”

She nodded. “Yes.”

“How did you come to know all that poetry? Your different references to things. Free libraries?”

“Yes,” she said. “My father was never going to educate me in any way past what he saw fit. He was never a reader. He didn’t understand all the things that were contained in books. He didn’t understand that I couldfind secrets to all the world, to myself, on white pages with black text. To him, that was all boring. To me, the secrets of the universe. But it’s only now that I feel like I finally know what to do with them. It’s only now that I feel free. Hunger, scarcity, fear. Those are chains.”

She took another sip of the beer, then set it beside her. And she stood, there on the roof.

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