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There was still so much I wanted to ask and Critter must have sensed it. “Just a few,” he repeated.
“Okay.” I finally took a sip of the whiskey and coughed when the liquid burned my throat.
“Thought you didn’t drink whiskey?” he asked. His eyes glimmered with unshed tears.
“Tonight feels like a whiskey night,” I said, using his earlier words.
“I’ll be right back.” Critter pointed to the back window and suddenly the time of reminiscing was over and my boss was back. “In the meantime, there are a bunch of new notes over by the window. Some rookie hanger didn’t have a clue how to use a stapler. Tack them back up for me would ya?”
“Sure.” I took another sip of my drink and coughed again.
Critter untied his apron, set it on the counter, and grabbed a full bottle of whiskey from the bar. He didn’t say another word before disappearing through the swinging doors. “I’ll be in the kitchen.”
I wanted to follow him and beg him to tell me more but the look on Critter’s face was heartbreaking and I knew he’d tell me more when he was ready although it had to have been over twenty years since my mother had been there, considering how old I was, and he wasn’t ready yet.
I took my tumbler with me and shuffled over to a fallen note. I bent down to pick it up and pulled out a stool to attach it back to the ceiling and when I did I spotted three different tings all tangled together.
I keep falling in love with the same moron.
-Josh, a.k.a. The Hot Cop
Cool kids don’t write the dates.
I got my friend back.
We didn’t even need a friendervention.
-Miller
Cool kids still don’t write the dates.
Today I invented the word ‘friendervention’.
-Miller
Even though my stomach was a pit reading Miller’s ting about Finn, I couldn’t help but chuckle at Josh’s and Miller’s tings about each other. They did love each other. It was a unique kind of love.
Just like mine and Finn’s.
His name in my thoughts was enough to make the pit in my stomach grow.
It was easy to spot the other recently hung tings Critter mentioned. The string colors were still bright and hadn’t yet faded like a lot of the others. Plus, the ink on the paper was still dark and bold. Critter was right, there were a bunch of new ones. At least ten, all hung one after the other in a row and instead of tacked with a staple like all the others, these were flimsily held to the ceiling with small strips of clear tape.
I grabbed the stapler from the bar and hopped up onto a chair which I slid across the floor. I tacked the first note to the ceiling when the air conditioning kicked on and the note fluttered around toward me. The message was at eye level.
May 10th
I saw the most beautiful girl ever.
I was a complete dick to her.
-Finn
I gasped. The date was the day I came into town. But this wasn’t here then. I moved to the next one as my heart began to pound in my chest.
May 20th
I kissed her for the first time.
I don’t think I’ll ever stop thinking about her lips…
-Finn
My eyes stung with forming tears as I continued.
June 15th
I made her smile.
Freckles became my new favorite thing in the world.
-Finn
June 25th
I made her MINE.
-Finn
I felt the tears pouring down my cheeks by the time I read the last one which I plucked from the ceiling and dropped down on the chair to read over and over again as the tears continued to fall.
Date: Unsure exactly when
I fell in love with Sawyer Dixon
-Finn
The swinging doors from the kitchen creaked open and that feeling of awareness I used to think was dread but now associated with Finn flitted down my spine. “I was beginning to wonder if you’d ever come back,” I said, turning with happy tears still spilling down my face, fully prepared to jump from the chair and into Finn’s arms, only to come face to face with Critter who had an apologetic smile on his face.
Critter ducked under the bar and I jumped down from the chair I’d been standing on. “What’s going on?” I asked when Critter poured himself half a tumbler of whiskey and downed it all in two gulps.
“Are you going to tell me the rest of the story?”
“It’s not my story to tell,” Critter said.
I was growing frustrated. “If it’s not your story to tell, then whose is it?”
“It’s mine,” said a familiar voice from the kitchen. I looked to Critter whose face was unreadable. I slowly turned, wondering if the voice was imaginary but when my eyes landed on the person standing between the swinging doors, I suddenly forgot how to breathe.
No. It can’t be.
The woman folded her hands in front of her and took a reluctant step into the bar. She smiled sweetly.
“Hello, Sawyer.”
My. Heart. Stopped.
“Mother?”
THE END…FOR NOW
The Outliers is the second and final book in The Outskirts duet, and the conclusion to Sawyer and Finn’s love story.
The Outliers
