The Not-Outcast

by Tijan

  “Then why are you here?!” I yelled right back.

  The switch was flipped and I didn’t give a fuck.

  I didn’t care about him.

  I didn’t care about the police.

  I didn’t care about his neck.

  She was taken from me, and that wasn’t their decision. Deek wouldn’t have come over if Chad hadn’t--but he was right, and I stopped because he was right.

  “Hey.” Cut’s voice came down the hallway. He was alone and frowning, his head inclined and moving between the two of us. “What’s going on?”

  I turned away.

  She could’ve lasted longer.

  She might’ve lasted longer.

  She might’ve—she might’ve got help, but no. I was lying to myself.

  She did get help. A lot of it. And it never stuck.

  When would it have stuck?

  Or would she have done it herself later on? Would she have pushed the second needle in anyways?

  Cut and Chad were talking. I heard their voices murmuring to each other, and then Cut was coming toward me.

  I didn’t want him near me.

  “Hey, hey.”

  His voice was gentle.

  His hands were gentle.

  I didn’t want gentle.

  I whipped around and shoved him back. “Don’t!”

  “He—what?” From Cut.

  Chad had been leaving, but he stopped and turned back.

  “This.” He had to know. I already told him, but he had to know. “This isn’t a one-time shitty thing that happened to me. This is the last in a long list of shitty things that have happened to me, and I thought it was done. I thought when she died, and when I went away, and when I got better, I thought it was all going to get better. I’m still here! I’m still in the police station because my father helped my mother overdose. He killed her, and he had no right! No. Right! NO RIGHT!”

  I was remembering those days.

  Bits and pieces. They were disjointed.

  We ran out of shampoo.

  I used soap from a gas station a block away.

  I remember my stomach growling, and growling, until it got to a point when it stopped growling. I thought it stopped working at times.

  I remember the cold.

  I’d forgotten the cold, until now.

  I had no blankets.

  She took them, but I never knew why. She just did.

  And she was cold.

  I wasn’t talking about temperature.

  I just wanted someone to make me warm.

  “Let’s go home, Shy.”

  I wasn’t numb anymore.

  So many thoughts and feelings were blasting me now, but I heard him and I lifted my head.

  I was sad. I didn’t want to be sad anymore.

  “You used my nickname.”

  He gave me a crooked grin, but to me it was the most beautiful smile ever.

  He murmured, reaching for my hand and curling two of his fingers around mine, “I can call you Shine instead? My own nickname for you.”

  Shine.

  I liked that.

  Shiny.

  A wind funnel formed inside of me. I had my own tornado in me. It was going around and around, and then finally, at the touch of his hand, it started to leave me. I was all empty inside, just the aftermath of that storm.

  I curled my hand tight around his two fingers and I held on.

  I needed to hold on.

  “She was an outcast growing up. She told me that. She stayed an outcast, too, and so was I. She made an outcast, but,” a sick little laugh rippled up my throat and left me. I felt like it was pulling the last of that wind with it, leaving me hollow. “I never felt like an outcast back then, but I was.” I looked at him, feeling nothing except emptiness inside of me. “I was one back then, but I didn’t feel it. I’m not one now, so why do I feel like I am?”

  His eyes darkened and he stepped toward me, pulling me to his chest. He curled his arm around me, holding me tight and his head bent down. His lips grazed my forehead. Then my cheeks. Then my lips. Then my throat, and his breath tickled me.

  “I can’t speak on what it was like for you back then, but I can tell you about now. And now is good. Now is where you have Sasha and Melanie. You have Reba and Boomer at Come Our Way. You have all the guys at Come Our Way. They all care about you, and you have me.” He held me even tighter. “You have all of me.”

  I did.

  His breath warmed me.

  He warmed me.

  It was later on the ride home.

  We were going to Cut’s house.

  I don’t know what happened to Chad. I didn’t care. Cut told me that Chad was going to call Natalie, and he was sure that Natalie’s husband would help Deek how he could. It was karma in a way, but Cut also reassured me that I didn’t need to worry about Chad saying anything about his neck.

  But it hit me around the time Cut was turning onto his road that if my mom hadn’t died, what then?

  Would I have gone to my uncle’s? Got better? Gone to Silvard?

  Would I have ended up where I was right now, with Cut?

  I’d never know, I guess.

  But there were two things I did know.

  I fell in love with Cutler when I first saw him, and I still loved him.

  I’d love him for the rest of my life.

  I lied. I knew three things after all.

  Koala Sister: I love you

  Koala Brother: Same.

  55

  Cut

  Three months later.

  “She’s adorable.”

  My mom was whispering/hissing to me, her hand clutching my arm.

  “I know, Mom.”

  She stood on her tiptoes, pulled me down, and yelled-whispered in my ear, “Adorable, Cutler! Adorable.”

  “I know.”

  Her hand squeezed harder. “You kept her away from us for too goddamn long.”

  This was not the response I thought I’d get the day my parents met Cheyenne for the first time.

  They flew in for the start of the playoffs. We were going to pick them up at the airport, but they insisted on renting their own vehicle. Dylan and Jamison were with them, and at first they weren’t going to stay at the house.

  They always stay at the house.

  “Oh, no,” my mom said to me in our conversation about it. “You didn’t have a lady friend then.”

  “She’s not a lady friend. I love Cheyenne. She’s going to be my wife one day.”

  Killer Mama Alice started tearing up, her hands pressed to her mouth. “Cutler!”

  “What?”

  Her hands fell away and she whispered, “You’re going to propose?”

  “What?” I rewound our conversation. “No! I mean, not yet. Eventually, yes, but it’s too soon.”

  Her hands lifted back to her mouth and she was holding them in tight, blinking a ton, and then she sniffled. Her hands fell away once again, and she was beaming at me. “She’s the one?”

  “Yeah.” Everything clicked in place then. I hadn’t told her we were that serious, but we were. Or I was. I was pretty sure Cheyenne would be, too. “She’s the one.”

  She was crying after that, and we never resolved our conversation, but I called their hotel and canceled their reservation. So I won and they were staying on Chad’s side of the house. Chad had moved out, so it didn’t matter. Cheyenne moved in a month ago, though she’d basically been living here since that night of Deek’s confession. I drove her home, and it’d been our home ever since.

  Chad moved out a month ago, and the timing hadn’t been a coincidence.

  Things had been strained with him. He hadn’t been the dick to Cheyenne he had been before, but he’d been quiet. Really quiet. If she was around, he left and he only came around if she wasn’t around. The thing was that I didn’t think it was because he didn’t like her, not like earlier. He’d been different since Deek’s confession. Well, he’d actually been different since the night Cheyenne att
acked him. He came to me one night.

  “Give me a lowball offer.”

  “What?” I was watching the team we were playing in a few days. I hit pause and leaned forward. “Say again?”

  He sat down across from me, dropping into a chair and he scooted forward. Knees to his elbows and a look of determination on his face, mixed with fear.

  I narrowed my eyes. Chad had been off, but he’d not been scared. What was going on?

  “I want you to buy me out.”

  I raised an eyebrow. “Of the house?”

  A short clipped nod. He seemed even more determined. “You paid for most of it anyways, so give me a lowball offer. I’ll take it. Cheyenne is moving in and you’ll want some space, and to be honest; I need to get my shit together. I don’t like the guy I was when Cheyenne attacked me and I don’t like how she was with me at the police station.”

  I frowned. “You know that her dad had just confessed to killing her mom, right?”

  “I know. It’s not that. It’s not on her. It’s who I was for her to have that reaction to. I shouldn’t have been that asshole to her, and I was. I kept telling you I would try and I was trying, but old habits die hard. And I’ve been using your name for my promoting business and it’s not right. I gotta do things on my own. I need to be someone that I like and I hate who I am right now.”

  “You think me buying you out will do that?”

  “Yeah. I do. I gotta do things on my own for a while. I need to do some right, too. This is stage one.”

  “Okay.”

  So I bought him out, and he moved into a townhome.

  He and I got together for a beer every now and then, but it was random. He seemed to have taken his mission to change to heart. Course, he’d been my best friend since we were little and there was a bond there that might’ve colored my lens, but he seemed like a better guy. Kind. Humble. Time would tell. He was supposed to be coming to the hockey game tonight, so I was hoping no confrontations happened when I was on the ice. Killer Mama Alice had been briefed on the situation and she was ready to activate her kill switch. If Chad came in and started acting a certain way toward Cheyenne, Chad would find himself on the receiving end of Killer Mama Alice and I knew Chad didn’t want that. He’d shared with me a few times he never wanted to piss off my mother.

  I think the entire hockey nation felt the same.

  “I want to hug her. I want to hold her. I want to never let her go.” Alice was tearing up, talking about Cheyenne.

  They knew about her. There’d been too much news coverage over us, and over her to keep any of it in the dark. News broke about Deek, then he took a plea deal. He was in prison now, and he’d be there for ten years. All those events shone even more of a spotlight on Cheyenne, but she was handling it fine.

  In her words, “The masses learned they love a little Cheyenne, so I’m out and about. I might as well be myself. They’ll love the wavy train just like you do.”

  Sometimes Cheyenne said things that didn’t make sense to me, but it was her.

  I was learning how to translate. I was also loving how much she accepted that I loved her, and if I loved her, then with her way of thinking, everyone else was going to come and love her, too. Which made sense to me because why wouldn’t they?

  Maybe that’s what the ‘wavy train’ was. I didn’t know, but that was Cheyenne.

  Sasha and Melanie had been at her side, almost every day. That meant they were over at the house, a lot.

  Except today.

  Cheyenne told them to hold off to meet ‘the fam’ until the hockey game. They were watching it in Margo’s box, who had fallen in adoration of Cheyenne as well. She was pushing for Cheyenne to do something official for the team, or even to write a book about her life.

  The most Cheyenne had agreed to doing was starting a podcast with Sasha and Melanie.

  It was called Decking with the Tomcats.

  They tried for Dicking with the Tomcats, but there were issues with that name so they changed it. Reluctantly.

  It was in the top five most popular podcast in the local area.

  The girls were becoming celebrities in their own right.

  “You gotta promise me that you won’t fuck up this relationship.”

  We were back to my mom lecturing me about Cheyenne.

  “What?”

  “You. I know you. I know my son, and I know that you’ve not had a relationship except for a silly girl in college.”

  This was uncomfortable.

  “I know you kept girls in other cities when you traveled and you’d call to visit them, but there wasn’t anything exclusive about it.”

  “Mom.”

  She spoke over me, gripping my arm, “I know this because Kathryn Meomeuooux met one of those girls, and do you know who Kathryn Meomeuooux is?”

  God, no.

  “Do I want to know is the real question you should be asking me.”

  She ignored me, giving my arm a jerk. “Kathryn Meomeuooux runs a crafting Etsy shop in Pine River. She’s across the river. I hold the market in Pine Valley, but not across the river. That’s her. She’s my competitor, Cutler. And she found out all about your girls and it wasn’t a fun scene when she tried to lord that over me at one of our sales events. She had a booth across from me.” She let go of my arm, giving it a soft pat and stepped back. Her voice turned cheerful and her whole demeanor brightened. “But, that’s all done for now because you met Cheyenne. You realized you’d be absolutely stupid to do anything to lose that girl, because she’s one of a kind. I didn’t raise you to be stupid. She’s nice, and smart, and she doesn’t have an ego.”

  I grinned at her. “Ask Cheyenne about her wavy train.”

  “That’s healthy confidence. You want that in a woman, too. Do. Not. Lose. Her.” A pause. A mean glint showed in her eyes. “Ever.”

  I was a little scared of Killer Mama Alice myself now. “Not planning on it, Mom.”

  “Good.”

  Another pat on my arm and she lifted up on her toes. She pressed a kiss to my cheek. “Now go and make your momma proud on the ice. Fucking reap, Cutler. Fucking reap. Named you that for a reason, I did.”

  Yes. Still scared.

  “Got it, Mom.”

  56

  Cheyenne

  The crowd was beyond tonight.

  The crowd was always beyond, but it was a playoff game and so the crowd was beyond beyond.

  You feel me? Good.

  I was golden.

  I’d embraced my new lease on life, and that was the life of loving and being loved. Not that I hadn’t loved before. I had all sorts of golden goodness love for Sasha and Melanie, but being loved by someone like Cut and then his family? That was deep and something I never thought I’d get. But I did. I got it. That was the cherry on top of everything. The goose egg of all eggs, and I was loving life right now.

  “Girl.”

  That was JJ. She, Maisie, and Otis were up in Margo’s box with me. Sasha and Melanie were enjoying their seats instead, because they now came to the games a lot with me. In an unofficial way, Margo had taken me under her wing. She wanted all sorts of goodness for me, and she kept wanting me to write a book. I wasn’t a writer. I was barely a typist. I could do what I needed for Come Our Way, but that shindig was it for me and writing. Talking. Doing our podcast. Laughing with my girls, that’s what was the easiest so I was getting my story out that way.

  I turned to JJ. “Girl.”

  “Gurl.” She was beaming at me, and she grabbed my arm. “I am so glad I took that phone call for you.”

  I laughed, because it was true. I grabbed her arm. “I am, too.”

  Maisie came on my other side, a beer in hand. She was already flushed, her cheeks all red, and that was just from laughing. They only stepped into the owner’s box two minutes ago.

  “Otis is tickled pink by this.” Maisie’s eyes were shining. There might’ve been some moisture there. “He’s been telling his buddies all week he’d be watching the game
from the owner’s box. They’re all green with envy.”

  Otis came over, a pink drink in hand with a little umbrella sticking out of it.

  He was shaking his head, the tops of his cheeks almost matching his drink. “You tell her about my buddies?”

  He was asking Maisie, and she nodded. “I sure did. All week.”

  He focused on me, a somber look coming over him. “We’re loving your new friends and all, but in all seriousness, Cheyenne, we’re just real happy to see you happy. We’re also real glad to have met your friends, the Tits owner and Melody—”

  “Melanie.” From his wife.

  “Melanie, but I swear she told me her name was Melody. I made a joke that it’d be easy to remember, I just needed to sing a tune and she was all for it.”

  Knowing Melanie, she might’ve gone with it.

  We were all staring at him.

  He blinked, and his head popped farther up. “Anyways, moving on to the meat of what I mean to say. We’re just happy for you. It’s not that you weren’t happy before, but you deserve everything good that’s coming your way and I’ve a feeling there’s more coming.”

  And now my cheeks were the pink ones, and I was flushed, and I was a little weepy.

  “Thank you, guys. You guys were the best seatmates ever.”

  “Oooh!” Maisie was gushing and she started to lift her arms to put around JJ and Otis for a hug, but JJ caught Maisie’s drink in hand. JJ now had two so as Maisie was throwing her arms up, JJ shuffled in.

  Otis threw his free arm around me, and all four of us got close for a group hug/huddle. Hugdle.

  “Is this an exclusive thing or can anyone get in on the group hug?”

  We stepped back.

  Margo was standing there, a wide smile on her face.

  “Oh, girl!” Otis pulled her in and we had our second hugdle for the day.

  Margo laughed, her head leaning forward. “I’m feeling like we should be devising a plan to take over the world or something.”

  “We’re just gushing to Cheyenne about how she deserves everything that’s been happening to her.”

  Margo’s gaze came to mine, our foreheads a few inches from each other. A soft smile came over her face. “I agree, wholeheartedly.”