And still, my ears buzzed.
I didn’t mean to get up so fast, but I did, and luckily so did Rip. We were the first people out and the first ones walking toward the lot. The tension in Rip’s body was something I could have easily tasted. I felt it everywhere, even if I didn’t understand it and wasn’t in the mindset to as we walked out.
I knew something was wrong the second we got into his truck and he slammed the door shut, my name slithering out of his mouth, ending on a hard vowel. “Luna?”
I was looking out the window at the side mirror. My cousin was out of the door, his head swinging around the parking lot. Probably looking for me. “Yes?”
His breathing had gotten loud, but it was steady; I had no problem hearing it. “Is your last name really Allen?”
Shit.
This throbbing sensation instantly pierced right through my right eye socket and had me rubbing my lips together. My fingertips even went numb before I winced—on the inside and the outside.
That was just about the last thing I would have ever, ever, expected him to ask.
Somehow, somehow, I managed to get the truth out, because there was no way I could lie. This wasn’t the kind of thing I could try and hide when there were a handful of people who knew the truth. “Legally, yes.” The pain from my head got stronger before I admitted slowly, “But it hasn’t always been.”
Had he recognized my grandmother’s last name? The one I’d had for the first eighteen years of my life?
This was exactly why I had changed it. This was what I’d been trying to avoid. Only a handful of people—including Mr. Cooper—knew that I hadn’t always been an Allen. No one else at the shop, not even the other guys who had worked there nearly as long as I had, knew about it. They had no reason to know that my siblings had a different one. I was the only one so far who hated it enough to not want to keep it. Lily had mentioned before that she wanted to change it too, but she was still too young.
Rip had closed his eyes at some point. His forehead became lined as he frowned. I could see that great, big chest inhale and exhale, and his voice was incredibly calm as he breathed out. “Okay.”
Okay?
Did he… know?
Had he read the paper and recognized the name and seen what my family looked like and pieced it all together?
It hadn’t been a huge bust. Dad had only gone to jail for three years. His brother was a different story. But while I’d been growing up, everyone knew the Miller last name hadn’t been the greatest. Maybe they hadn’t known specifically about the meth, but they had known there was something, and no one ever did anything.
Until I did.
I couldn’t even find it in me to be ashamed if Rip knew that part of the truth I had tried so hard to get away from.
“It used to be Miller.” I tried to keep from making it seem like it was something I had tried to hide. Even though I had. “According to my birth certificate, my mom’s last name had been Ramirez, but when I changed my name, I didn’t want to choose anything that any of them might think of. You know Mr. Cooper’s first name is Allen, and I thought Luna Allen sounded like a nice name.”
The lines at his forehead and along his mouth got even deeper, and I couldn’t miss the way he shook his head slowly, thinking who knows what. The skin at his cheeks changed color and got… pink? Why?
“I changed it eight years ago,” I explained to him, glancing out the window to look through the side mirror again. More people exited the building, but none of them looked familiar.
I wondered if my dad had already gotten to whatever car he was now rolling around in, without me noticing.
“Mr. Cooper and Lydia drove me to the courthouse two days after my eighteenth birthday so I could start the process. They paid for the filing fees. The judge eventually granted my petition, and… I changed it,” I explained, still looking through the side mirror, the pain behind my eyeball still sharp. “No one but my sisters, the Coopers, and now you, know I changed it.”
The breath Rip let out was low and long, and the leather creaked as he shifted around.
I was a coward and didn’t want to look at him. “Did you see it on the news?”
He didn’t respond. The leather just creaked more, and the next sigh he let out was even louder than the last one. The deepest one I had probably ever heard from him.
Out of the side mirror, I watched a hearse pull around to the front of the building and a police officer appearing out of nowhere on a motorcycle.
It was time to go.
To go and see my dad, whose smallest offense had been selling drugs. The man who I would have forgiven for doing that, if he’d just been a decent person. If he’d just been… different.
“If you don’t want to go to the burial, I understand,” I found myself telling Rip as I fought the urge to scrub my face with the palm of my hand.
There was another sigh—not as deep but still off—and then he said, “We can go.” The words had barely come out of his mouth when he started the truck and then put it into drive.
I could feel the wheels in his head turning. Could sense his tension. I didn’t like it.
Did he think…
“I’m not… like them,” I told him, just in case he was thinking that I was. I was reliable. I had never actually lied to him before. I hadn’t stolen a single thing in years, and even then the stealing I had done was subjective. At least I thought so. “I’ve never done a single drug in my life. I rarely drink. I would never do anything to hurt anyone at the shop or anywhere else, even if they deserved it.”
His scoff almost made me jump. His fingers flexed on the steering wheel for what might have been the hundredth time since he’d picked me up. “That’s not what I’m thinking.”
I held my breath and kept on looking at him and his facial features, but they didn’t give a single thing away. “It’s not?”
Rip scoffed again, shaking his head while his attention was on the other side of the windshield. “You’re a good girl. Everybody knows that.” He paused and a muscle in his cheek twitched.
“Nobody’s fucking perfect, Luna, but I know a good girl—a good person—when I see one.” His breath was more of a sigh. “And you are. I’m not about to start a fucking tally with you about the shit we’ve done in the past. I know you’re not like… them in there.”
My nose tingled, and I didn’t… I didn’t want to talk about those things I’d done. “I haven’t seen them since I left when I was seventeen,” I rushed out. “I told you, I’m not… it’s complicated. We don’t… like each other.”
A line had somehow formed while we’d been talking, following the hearse that had just driven off. Rip squeezed the truck in between a Chevy Impala and a small Toyota pickup. I looked behind me to make sure that it wasn’t anyone I knew in the truck.
I wouldn’t put it past the cowards I called my family members to do something stupid like accidentally run a light or look down. That’s who and what I was related to.
Crap. What the hell had I been thinking? I had no business being here.
Yes, you do, Luna. You have every right. You think they were close to Grandma Genie? You think they’d be here if there wasn’t some other motive? They never do anything unless they can get something out of it.
People don’t change. Well. Most don’t.
“I’m sorry I didn’t tell you,” I told him. “I guess I’d hoped that they wouldn’t come.”
He didn’t say anything. He just drove, and as the silence stretched, all I could do was stay where I was and, after a moment, look out the window. The ache behind my eyeball got worse as we drove on.