“I knew you didn’t see it, little moon. I knew it from the first moment that I saw that look in Ripley’s eyes. Didn’t I tell you, Lydia, honey?” he asked his wife.
Lydia nodded as she chewed her food and then held a hand up to cover her mouth as she agreed. “You did, and I saw it with my own two eyes too.”
“What did you tell her?” I asked slowly, trying to process what he was implying.
He cocked his head to the side. “That you didn’t know.”
“Didn’t know what?”
His smile was bittersweet. “That he took one look at you and knew.”
“Mr. Cooper, you know I’m not that great with puzzles and contexts clues. What did he know looking at me?”
“The same thing I knew when I looked at Lydia.” His smile changed from a bittersweet one to a soft one, and I could see in his eyes that he thought about another woman he had known once. “My daddy was the same way. His daddy was the same way. Us Coopers, we just know. The only difference is, Ripley got his stubbornness from his mom’s side of the family. I didn’t fight it.”
“You think Ripley… likes me?” I asked.
The older man cocked his head to the other side and went about cutting a piece of his chicken as he answered, “I don’t think. I know. I’ve seen it on his face a thousand times, Luna. Especially when he was being hard on you. I’ve tried telling him a few times that he should do something about it, but God knows when he sets his mind to something, there’s no convincing him to change it unless he decides to. And I know that takes an act of God. Just like his mom. He’s got that Ripley blood in him.”
He still didn’t look back up at me as he continued going. “I don’t know him that well anymore, but I still see the boy he used to be in bits and pieces of him. He’s got the thickest skin I’ve ever seen, but I know those bones are still made out of love like they were… before.”
Before his mom’s accident? Before he’d left Houston and done all those things he didn’t want to talk about?
“Luna, honey,” Lydia spoke up. “Our relationships with Ripley are what they are. I couldn’t hold it against him, but I wish he would forgive us after so long. I never had kids, but I was close to my mama and daddy, and if my daddy would have married some strange woman a year after my mama died, I can’t say I would have behaved any better than he did. I knew what I was doing coming into Allen and Ripley’s life back then. I’ve gotta live with knowing that because I loved someone, his son packed up his things and left him for twenty years,” she paused. “We both have to live with that.”
It all made sense all of a sudden. Rip’s reaction to Lydia. And as much as I would want to think that if I had a healthy relationship with my dad that I would want him to be happy… well, I wasn’t sure what I would think if or when he got remarried.
I tried to think of how Lenny would have reacted to Grandpa Gus getting married again, and really, it wasn’t a pretty scene when I imagined it.
A large hand drifted over my forearm and settled there, and even though I knew it was Mr. Cooper’s, I still glanced at his face. “He’s a difficult man. Trust me. Nobody knows that better than me. But he pushes the people that love him, pushes them like he’s trying to make sure they won’t go anywhere. Rip is the total opposite of you. God knows I love him and I will until the day I die, but I love you too. And you both deserve to be happy. He thinks the world of you, and I can’t help but think God brought you into our lives for a reason.”
I stared at this man, feeling the fear in my chest, and I asked him, “But he loved you and he left you for twenty years, Mr. C. That’s not… what I want.”
His smile was slow and honestly heartbreaking. “Luna, he threatened to quit on me a hundred times in the first year he came back.”
I blinked.
“He hasn’t stuck around because of me, honey.”
*
Why was I even here? I asked myself as I put my car into park and then turned off the ignition.
Why was I? I should have cancelled the dumb date. I was wasting my time, gas, and money, and doing the same for whatever poor fool was meeting me here.
Because I didn’t want to meet this guy that my sister Kyra had set up for me over a month ago.
I didn’t want to meet any of the guys that I had. The more I thought about it, the more I accepted it.
This whole thing was a mess I didn’t know how to handle or what to think of.
Mr. Cooper had been adamant as I’d left, that regardless of what had happened between him and his son, that Rip did care about me. And Rip had been Lucas Ripley Cooper at one point. He was still in there.
But why he’d waited until now, I would never know.
Or maybe I would.
Did I want to though?
That was a stupid question. Of course I did. I wanted to know everything.
I wanted it to be true.
I wanted it to be true, but I also knew what it was like to hope and dream for things and not have them happen.
I was being a chicken. I was being a giant chicken, wasn’t I? I gave Thea hell for not telling me the truth, because it seemed so easy for me, and here I was, doing the same thing as her.
With my phone on my lap, I sent Lenny a text.
Me: Do you think I’m being a coward with this Rip thing? Tell me the truth.
Not even a minute went by before I got a response.
Lenny: Yes
Lenny: I didn’t make a chickenshit my best friend.
I ignored the guilt and nerves floating around in my stomach as I sat there, reading Lenny’s message over and over again.
There was no reason for my stomach to hurt.
Luna, Luna, Luna, my conscience seemed to whisper in disappointment. You’re lying to yourself now.
I was. I really was. I was being a coward. A chickenshit. A freaking scaredy cat.
And I was sitting in my car, about to go on a date I wanted no part of.
But…
I couldn’t find it in me to just be a no-show. Getting stood up wasn’t nice, and neither was telling some innocent person sorry, bud, I’m in love with someone else. But I could live with the latter a lot easier than the first. That was for sure. It was the least I could do. If I could have cancelled without calling Kyra, I would have, but I hadn’t had it in me to do it. The text messages we had sent each other to set up the date had been awkward and painful enough.
In and out. I’d get this over with as quickly as possible. Then I could go home and figure out exactly what I would tell Rip. I love you and please don’t hurt me didn’t sound good enough.
It was with that decision in mind that I got out of my car and slammed it shut behind me. I flashed my license at the bouncer as a formality, because we both knew he’d seen it before. Then I headed into the bar where I had met the other guys I had gone on dates with, dates that hadn’t gone anywhere.
For a reason.
Who was I kidding? Of course it had been for a reason. Because none of them were built like wrestlers, with a dry sense of humor and a bland look better than any scowl.
Inside, I looked around the half-filled room for a guy with long black hair…
I didn’t need to glance at my phone to know I was a few minutes early. Maybe he was running late? If he was, how long was an acceptable amount of time to wait before I left? Three minutes? Five?
Spotting a table closer to the back, I beelined for it, still looking around at the crowd to make sure the man that Kyra had sent me a picture of back then wasn’t sitting in some dark corner where I couldn’t find him. He was thirty-two and worked on an oil rig. That’s why we’d had to wait a month to meet. I glanced at my phone again as I took a seat.
Sitting back in the chair, I kept looking around the room, hoping he’d magically appear so I could tell him to his face thank you but no thank you.
The door opened just as that thought had entered my brain. Coming in, already looking around, was a man too blonde to be the one I was meeting up with. He was tall, lean, and… not Rip.
He was not Rip.
He was too young. Too slim.
But mostly, he wasn’t the man who ran his hands through my hair when I was upset and listened.