Page 63 of Walking Red Flag

At least she’d left me my paper plates…

“Well, my sister likes her coffee, so I hate to break it to you, but you’re gonna have to come up with something,” he pointed out.

I grinned. “I’d go out and buy her one but…doesn’t she own a coffee shop? She could make a better cup of coffee there.”

“She’s a bear without her coffee,” Shasha said as Dima said, “If she doesn’t get her coffee first thing in the morning, she turns into this evil version of herself that grumbles and growls at everyone and everything.”

“You have a cat,” Shasha said.

I looked toward the water where the stray cat I’d named Mustard came out of the water.

“I thought it was a rat,” Dima said. “That’s a cat?”

I whistled and Mustard came running.

“Hey, isn’t that Rudy?” Shasha asked as he leaned forward.

I turned to him. “Who’s Rudy? That’s Mustard.”

“That is Rudy!” Dima said as he got up. “Ru-Ru!”

The cat came walking up, stopped at the base of the steps, and shook himself free of the water clinging to his fur.

I reached behind me and pulled the box of cat food I kept on my porch forward.

Getting a small cup full, I dumped it on the floor of the porch and Mustard came up and started eating.

“My sister has a cat that looks exactly like this one…like to a T. But there’s no fuckin’ way that the cat would come all the way over here…right?” Dima asked.

“Cat comes in from the water every day for breakfast.” I shrugged. “I mean, logically, I guess it could be someone else’s cat.”

The cat ate half, then went back into the water and started swimming.

“That’s insane,” Shasha said. “Even in the winter he gets in that water?”

“Even in the winter,” I confirmed. “That’s actually why I started feeding him a year or so ago when I first saw him. He came in out of the water and looked freezing-ass cold. I gave him half a chicken leg, he ate it, then got right back in the water and swam off. After he did that a few mornings in a row, I started keeping cat food over here.”

“That lines up to about when my sister started noticing he wasn’t around for breakfast. But he was always there for dinner.” Shasha shook his head. “The only reason I even know, or care, is because my daughter loves that fuckin’ cat.”

The sliding glass door opened and a crazy-haired, beautifully sleepy woman walked out onto the porch.

She was still wearing my sweats, but now she had on a pair of my slippers.

She looked ridiculous, but I fuckin’ loved it.

She took a look at all three of us, glaring once at Shasha, then moved past both of her brothers to get to me.

She stared at me for a long second before she said, “Can I sit in your lap?”

I opened my arms and she crawled into my lap.

And I finally realized what Shasha was talking about.

Between one sip of coffee and the next…I realized that I’d do just about anything to make sure she was safe. Even go along with her brother and possibly piss her off later when she found out what I’d done.

People be like, bear with me, and they don’t even have a bear with them.

—Milena’s secret thoughts

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