Rip didn’t go easy. It was like he set a bar he needed to go above and beyond.
He started coming over to my room for no reason. He came in every morning around ten without fault, and in the afternoon too, and would look at me through the window if I was in the booth, or just fart around looking at things he’d seen a dozen times in my room.
But he watched me, even when I purposely avoided looking at him.
He watched me, and he was patient.
He kept that warm smile, or pretty close to it, on his face every time I looked at him, like he was purposely giving me time and space to… I wasn’t sure what.
I really wasn’t sure.
Every time I called him “Mr. Ripley,” he corrected me and then moved on with our conversation, even if it was mostly me responding in one-word answers and trying to be professional.
One week turned into two, and the next thing I knew, there were two vases on my desk, filled with the most beautiful, perfect roses. When one started to wilt, he took it out before I’d even gotten to work, but a new one was always sitting on my desk like he wanted me to see it and appreciate it.
Lenny: He’s trying. You’ve gotta give it to him.
Me: He doesn’t need to be trying. I don’t want him to try.
Lenny: Liar.
Lenny: You love it, and that’s okay.
Me: That’s what scares me. I’m tired of loving people who decide they’re done with me.
Lenny: You only miss all the shots you don’t take in life, Lu, you know that.
He was trying.
And Lenny did have a point.
But…
But.
*
I was going to blame sleeping like shit the night before on why I finally lost it the next morning.
I could blame the letter I’d found in the mail the night before on why I hadn’t been able to sleep. The letter I had read and reread a dozen times. Knowing I would end up reading it a dozen more. I had slept with it on the nightstand.
Dear Luna,
I want to tell you that I’m sorry, but that feels like a cop-out now. But I am sorry. I’m so, so sorry for everything. I’ve wanted to call you, but I don’t think I can handle hearing you being all decent after what a bitch I’ve been lately.
I didn’t mean for you to find out about Dad the way you did, okay? He called me right after he got out of jail and kept calling me every once in a while for years after that, and I never answered, until one day I finally did. I was having a bad day, and I answered intending to tell him off… I yelled at him, I asked him why he’d been such an asshole my entire life. I spent at least ten minutes screaming at him, and he took it all. He apologized, Luna. He told me how sorry he was, how unhappy he’d been and how much he regretted how things had worked out. He said he was sober and was trying to make amends for the things he’d done.
If it makes you feel better, I hung up on him that first day after all that. He called again a few days later, and I was a bitch then too. But he kept on calling, and I kept answering.
I know that’s not an excuse or really even an explanation, but that’s how it happened. Please don’t get more mad than you already are, but he isn’t so bad. He’s changed a lot. He asks about everyone. (Yes, including you.) (But mostly me, Kyra, and Lily, but I’m sure you already know that. I just don’t want to lie to you anymore.)
I’ve asked him not to call you again so you know. I know you won’t ever forgive him, and I get it, but I guess I was just worried you would make me choose between you or him. Kyra and I both thought the same thing. If it makes you feel any better, my boyfriend thinks I’m an idiot and says I deserve you shutting me out of your life now. But I hope you don’t. I hope one day you can forgive me.
If you’re still reading this, you should know how bad I still feel about the night you came over. I’m sorry doesn’t cut it, but I am. I’m sorry for so many things I don’t know where to start.
The other thing is… look… I haven’t known how to tell you this, and I still don’t, but… I’m not selling drugs or anything like that. Don’t freak out. I started stripping, okay? I didn’t tell anyone. I barely told Kyra a year ago. I couldn’t keep it a secret any longer. I make enough money to pay for most of my school expenses, and I only have to work a few hours a day. My roommate is a stripper too. I’m just doing it until I graduate.
I dated this older guy for a while, and he was the reason why I got the apartment I was at. We split up and things got weird, and… to make a long story short, it was him who got into my apartment that night. He was jealous over my new boyfriend, but I got a restraining order now and I’m moving out when my lease is over in January.
You always do the right thing, and I didn’t want you to get mad at me. By the time I knew I had to say something, it had been too long and I don’t know how to fix any of this anymore. Lies always spiral out of control, even if you don’t mean for them to, huh?
I love you, Luna. I’m sorry for fucking up so much and lying to you and just being a shitty sister, but I want you to know everything.
Please don’t be mad.
Love, Thea
P.S. You should know Rudy went to your house and job on his own. Dad didn’t send him there. He said that Rudy overheard me telling him about getting broken into and got the idea to try and get away with it. Dad had asked me to check with you that one day to make sure you were okay. He had a feeling Rudy would try to do something. I should have warned you, but now I have to live with that too if it makes you feel any better. I’m really glad you’re okay. Lily told me all about it. Not that it means much, but I’m sorry.
That’s what I’d gotten.
So I was going to blame my sister’s kind of passive-aggressive note on why I slept like shit.
I was still mad. Me. Who was rarely ever mad. But how could she think I would give a single crap about her stripping? I wouldn’t care what she did.
Why couldn’t she just call me? Why couldn’t she just tell me? I wasn’t scary. I understood, I guess to a certain point, but it still just felt like BS.
What I was, was mad.
And that was what I was going to blame as the reason why I lost it.
Then again, maybe it was finding Ripley bent over the engine of a Corvette he was restoring and getting a great view of his butt that might have been the icing on the cake.
Maybe it was the six red roses cut short and sitting in a glass bowl-like vase that were the icing on the cake. They were beautiful. But they were too beautiful. And when I really took in the vase and saw that it was spotless, without a single fingerprint on the glass, and imagined Rip carrying something super delicate in his hands and then wiping it down with maybe his shirt or a rag before leaving it there for me to find it….
I lost it.
It was that simple.
I barely remembered dropping my bag and things on the floor and heading back out to the main floor to find the man who had left my gift there.
“Rip!” I called out, knowing exactly where he was.
There was no lapse in response. “Yeah?” he responded from the furthest end of the floor, still looking at something inside the Corvette.
My coffee was sitting in a mug with the poster of the Rocky Horror Picture Show on it.
That hadn’t existed in this building before. Had he bought it… for me?
I sucked in a breath, eyeing it until I was right beside him before I forced myself to look over and say, “Rip,” I started, not even realizing I’d forgotten the “mister” part, “you can stop now with the flowers, all right?”
He didn’t look up as he asked in that congenial, soft voice, “You didn’t like ’em?”
“It isn’t about whether I like them or not—”
He still didn’t glance over as he cut me off. “You liked them then?”
“You know I do. They’re beautiful—”
“You don’t like them in your room anymore?”
I blinked. “No, I like them there—”
“So…?” he asked, still busy doing whatever it was he was doing.
I didn’t glance at his butt.
I didn’t.