I had survived my grandmother’s funeral yesterday. My sister was graduating tomorrow. I guess I could make it through this too.
“Great,” I found myself mumbling.
Today was going to be a good day. Somehow.
*
I could count on one hand the number of people in my life that I genuinely hated.
Most of the people I could technically call my family.
Honestly, that was pretty much it.
Hating someone for me meant that if they needed a transplant and I was the only person in the world capable of giving them what they needed, I still wouldn’t.
But I would more than likely give a complete stranger a kidney if they were nice and asked.
To me, there was a difference between disliking a person and hating them. There were plenty of people who I disliked for one reason or another—they were selfish, mean, rude, stuck-up, and any combination of all of those things. But if they absolutely needed something that I had, chances were, I would give it to them. Maybe I wouldn’t smile as I did it, but I would do what needed to be done. If it was the right thing to do.
I’d met a lot of assholes in my life—I was related to most of them—but Jason… Jason was in a league of his own.
That was saying a lot.
I was pinching the tip of my nose so I wouldn’t be tempted to pinch him instead that afternoon.
“Why did you do this?” I asked him slowly, trying my best to sound like Ripley, all nice and calm even though I didn’t feel either emotion… On the inside, I’d kicked him in the balls at least four times in the last five minutes.
Maybe even twenty times.
The smirking-shrugging-useless papercut lifted his shoulders like he didn’t know why he had clearly ignored the instructions I had left him to do while I’d been at lunch. They couldn’t have been any more precise.
Two coats of primer. Two coats of primer. Two. Not one. Two.
And what had he done?
One coat.
And in the time it had taken me to go to the bathroom, talk to Mr. Cooper about what had happened at the funeral, and for him to tell me that he was pretty sure he’d found a replacement for the mechanic leaving, Jason had gone ahead and started adding color without giving the primer enough time to dry. I wasn’t even sure where he had gotten the paint from.
It wasn’t even a rookie mistake. It was an idiot mistake.
I had told him at least five times we had to let the primer dry for at least twenty-four hours after the final coat. Not ten minutes. Especially not when one coat hadn’t been enough in the first place.
I could feel my left eyelid begin to twitch already. I took another deep breath through my nose and then let it out of my mouth. He’d done it on purpose. I knew he’d done it wrong on purpose. I’d bet my life on it.
“It looks all right,” he tried to say, turning his back to me to do who the hell knows what.
My eyes took in the wheels and unease slithered right around the collar of my shirt. “Jason, it needed two.”
“But it doesn’t look bad.”
I blew air into my cheeks and let them stay puffed out for a second while I tried to think about what I could—and should—say. “That’s not the point,” I said as patiently as I could, before dropping to a crouch to look at the wheels sitting on top of a thick blanket. I didn’t need a flashlight to see there was a line of uneven color all along the side of it. I could see hints of gray beneath the red, easily. I wanted to tell him he’d screwed that part up too, but… he had messed up enough by just missing the coat of primer in the first place. I had a feeling he hadn’t even agitated the can of paint in the first place.
“I won’t tell if you won’t,” my new—and hopefully very temporary—assistant tried to snicker.
I stood up and sighed. It was done. There was nothing I could do about it now. There was no point in being upset. I wasn’t going to remember this ten years from now, but…. “Everything has to come off, and now we’re going to have to do it all over again from the beginning,” I told him, crushing his dreams.
I didn’t need to look at him to know he had to be giving me a “are you fucking kidding me” face. But what did he expect?
I should have said something to Mr. Cooper the instant he mentioned this happening.
But I hadn’t, and that was my fault.
“And it needs to dry properly,” I explained, walking around the other side of the wheels and leaning back to take in another line of uneven color across the entire thing. He was rushing. That’s why it was so bad. Why he’d decided to rush, why he’d decided to even do this in the first place, was beyond me.
We all had to start somewhere. We all screwed up. I could keep it together. I could give him another chance.
It was just going to be hard when every time I looked at him, I thought about all the times in the past that I was pretty sure he’d tried screwing me over.
“Once it dries, I’ll help you do some of the sanding if I have time, and you can try doing the primer again,” I told him.
He gawked. “Help me do some of the sanding?”
“Yes.” I glanced at him to find him making a face at me… and not doing anything with that face even afterward. “I’ll help you. I can’t fall behind now because of this. If I get a chance, I’ll help you, and I probably can.”
My coworker blinked, and the man who had to be twenty—too old to be such a crybaby—practically squawked. “But that’ll take hours!”
Duh. I gave him the same shrug he’d given me. It was his fault he either hadn’t read the instructions or had decided to ignore them. What was that saying? Measure twice, cut once?
“Mr. Cooper said I’m supposed to help you in the booth,” Jason started, his voice already outraged and surprised.
Here we go.
I nodded. “This is part of it.”
“But what about the body guys? Why can’t they do it?” he tried to ask.
“Because they already have their own work to do.” Which he knew. “They already worked on this. You can ask them if they’ll help if they get a chance, but usually they’re busier than I am, and I’m not going to ask for you. If I was the one who messed up, I wouldn’t want anyone to know. I would do it all myself, but it’s up to you what you want to do.”
Maybe mentioning that I would be embarrassed if I were him wasn’t the nicest thing in the world to bring up, but…
This guy had gotten another girl pregnant while dating my eighteen-year-old sister. In the time he’d worked here, I had never heard anything about him having a son or daughter. But that was none of my business.
I couldn’t find it in me to scrape up any sympathy for him. The other girl, sure. But Jason? Not even a little bit.
“But…,” he started to choke.
I really wasn’t anywhere near being in the mood to deal with him. “Look, Jason, go tell Mr. Cooper or Rip about it if you don’t want to do it. I have too many things to do, to do it for you. I already screwed up this month and had to own up to it. I left instructions and they weren’t followed. I’m not doing it for you. Period.” Sorry not sorry, buddy.
Jason, who was about three inches taller than me at five ten and in decent shape, gulped. I saw the fury in his eyes, and I didn’t like it. I never had. That was why I gave him about as much of a berth as possible.
But… Mr. Cooper, who never asked for anything, wanted me to work with him. I could do it for him. I would.
“I’m not trying to be a jerk. I can’t be okay with you skipping two important steps. I would be furious if I paid thousands of dollars for a paint job that wasn’t done correctly. Mr. Cooper wouldn’t be okay with it either. We have a reputation, and I’m not going to let that come back on me. I’m sorry, but you have to do it again.”
He was still giving me an angry expression and those beady, mean eyes.
Mr. Cooper, Mr. Cooper, Mr. Cooper. I could do this for Mr. Cooper.
“I’ve messed up before too. It happens,” I added, trying to make him feel better. “It’s fine. It can be fixed. It isn’t a big deal.” We didn’t have to tell Rip, so he should be grateful for that.
He wasn’t. “It’s a lot of fuckin’ work for a little bitty—”