Page 55 of Taming Georgia

On cue, an obese orange one rubs his body against my leg, purring.

“Read the body language, man. I’m not the one you want. Go to her.” I point toward E.

“I don’t think I believe her though.” Ethel scratches a tabby cat’s butt as he sticks it up in the air for her.

Cats are so weird.

“I mean, surely, this fat thing”—I nudge the orange cat with my foot—“would be happier in a home. What cat wants to live in an office?”

“Nope, I definitely don’t believe her.” Ethel shakes her head. “I know she loves you.”

I freeze as the air leaves my lungs.

“What?” I ask in disbelief.

“I don’t know why really,” she continues. “Obviously, it’s not your charm. But sometimes, love is like that. It’s a connection thing. You can’t explain why it’s there. It just is.”

“She said she loves me?”

“Not in those exact words, but in many other words, she did. You just have to listen to hear it.”

I groan, “Let me guess. She said, ‘I need a new jacket,’ and you translated that into,I’m in love with Wyatt.”

Ethel laughs. “No, not like that.”

“Like what then?”

“I can see it. I know she does.” She picks up a black cat that’s trying to crawl over to her. She holds the cat in her arms, stroking his dark fur. “And I know you love her, too.”

“All right, now, you’re just being crazy.” I grab the medicine log book to record the pill I’m about to give Luna.

“I love you, Wyatt, like my own. You know that. But I have to be honest; you’re about as hardheaded as they come. That girl is good for you. For some crazy reason, she loves you. Don’t take too long, deciding what to do about that, because she’s going to be gone, and you’re going to be alone.” She sets the black cat down and starts toward the office door.

“I like being alone,” I say to her back as she walks away.

“No one likes being alone,” she calls over her shoulder.

“I do,” I argue. “And you do realize that there’s a plaid cat’s ass on the back of your shirt?”

The cat on the front of her shirt is also on the back, as if one is looking at him pass right through the shirt on his hang glider. There’s a large cat butt and the underside of the glider as it soars away.

Where in the hell does she find this crap?

After she’s gone, I turn to Cooper. “I’m not alone anyway. Right, boy? I have you.” I ruffle the fur on his head.

I think about Georgia moving away, and I admit that it doesn’t sit well with me, but it is what it is. Ethel’s wrong though. There’s no way that Georgia could possibly love me.

And Georgia’s right. There’s no such thing as true love, and if there were, Georgia wouldn’t be mine.

15

“I don’t need to be tamed. I love being free. I simply want to be seen.”—Georgia Wright

“Africa? Really?” London’s face is displayed on the screen of my cell phone as we chat.

“I don’t know,” I say with a sigh. “It sounds good. There’s definitely a need. Do you know that some women carry giant pitchers of water on their heads for miles? It’s literally miles to the closest clean water source for some of these people. Can you imagine?”

“But you promised Mom and Dad that you’d stay in the States.”

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