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“I can fight,” Coco blurts out. “I trained in Kung Fu for a while.”
I smile at her words, knowing “a while” was a total of two months while she dated a man obsessed with Kung Fu. Despite her fudging the facts, I like to see her embracing her usual flair. A quiet Coco isn’t someone comfortable in her surroundings.
“Well, you can jump in and help Hobo if trouble comes knocking,” Walla Walla tells Coco.
“What trouble?” Hobo asks. “No one’s hassling us, right?”
Walla Walla shakes his head, yet he still seems unsure about leaving me at the Pigsty while he runs his friends to the hospital to check on Yagger.
As we stand at the front door, he insists, “If you need anything, you text, call, or scream really loud. I’ll come running.”
Smiling, I wrap my arms around his waist and wait to taste him one last time before he leaves.
Walla Walla fears letting me down, but he finally moves his sexy butt to the SUV. I stand on the porch and watch him go. As long as I seem calm, he works up the resolve to force himself to drive away.
Back in the house, Hobo and Xenia head outside and sit in the shade. Coco and I check on the kittens.
“Walla Walla wants to claim the orange one,” I tell her.
“He really likes your hair.”
“You have a thing for redheads, too.”
Coco sighs. “I couldn’t make things work with my ex-girlfriends because they were too soft and dramatic. I refused to play their shrinks. With the men, I felt like I couldn’t be myself. I was always putting on a performance. Then, they’d complain how I was drama queen.”
Settling in a chair near the igloo where Rose the Cat watches me while her kittens crawl around her, Coco sighs again.
“That first night, after the attack on your clinic, I built Goose up in my head. How she was all the good stuff about men and women wrapped into a single person. I imagined a scenario where we made perfect sense. Except it was all in my head.”
“Goose is really difficult to read.”
“I thought it would be like you and Walla Walla. How you don’t make sense on paper. He’s this easygoing powerhouse, and you’re the scared nerd.” We share a smile at her words before she continues, “But you two are drawn to each other. From the moment you said his name at the clinic, I felt an intense pull between the two of you. And I wanted that with Goose.”
“You’ve never poked at people like you did with her. That’s not you. Maybe you inspire her to act weird, too. Once she settles down and is just Goose, she might stop frowning at you all the time.”
“I probably shouldn’t have flirted with Tomcat.”
“You didn’t flirt with him. You were clearly poking at her. I’ve seen your flirt, and he wasn’t getting any of your best moves.”
“No, I don’t want him. I think I want her, but now I’m not sure if I’m drawn to the real Goose or the one in my head.”
For a moment, I’m at a loss for words. Usually, Coco’s the self-assured one bulldozing through problems. I’m the worrywart, overanalyzing everything until the world is micromanaged into a miserable state.
Now, I’m spending the night with a wild man while Coco gets in her own way.
I choose to give her the opposite advice I’d give to myself. “I think you should back off and catch your breath. You’re trying to force things while Goose puts up roadblocks. If she’s interested, she won’t be able to deny her feelings. If she’s full of shit, you can’t make her want you.”
“What do I do if she doesn’t want me? I’m in this place where I have no job or home. Am I supposed to just follow you around?”
“Coco, you’re so stupid sometimes,” I reply, and her mopey expression turns snarly just like I intended. “You’ve been stuck for years. Not because you’re incapable of doing anything else. This was a choice you made. If Goose blows you off, you’ll find someone else. As for work and a home, we haven’t even looked around this town. The person of your dreams might be walking around McMurdo Valley as we speak. Your perfect job could be a mile from here. We don’t know.”
“I’m not stupid.”
“No, you’re not, but you’ve been floating aimlessly through life since you stopped dancing. Losing your career was like when I stopped riding my horses. An important part of us went away. But I still love horses, and I know you still love dancing. Maybe you could become an instructor at a community center, even if it’s just teaching old people to tango. You need to reclaim that old part of you.”
Coco studies me for a long time. “You’re different now.”
“Yes.”
