By the time the meeting rolled around, I had finished my project and gone to the break room, already knowing the other jobs I had on the schedule. Usually, I had a pretty decent idea at least a week or two in advance of what work I would be doing on a specific date. Everyone at the shop did. We were a well-oiled machine because we passed around projects in different stages. Proper scheduling was something that Mr. Cooper excelled at to get cars back to their owners as quickly as possible.
That was part of the reason why the shop hadn’t just survived but thrived despite recessions. We worked hard, worked as fast as possible without compromising quality, and Mr. Cooper charged fair prices for everything. Cooper’s wasn’t the cheapest, but it wasn’t the most expensive either. I’d heard from more than enough friends over the years about how they were overcharged or how a mechanic had taken too long to work on something.
Mr. Cooper didn’t play those kinds of games. We were all supposed to work together. And we usually did.
Usually.
The issue was that the car I needed to work on next had been added onto my schedule as an emergency job that the owner had requested, and was paying out of his butthole for, for us to have done by next week. But the instant I went to look for the car, I found it in the same condition it had been in the last time I had seen it.
Not freaking ready. Not anywhere close to being ready.
And that was why, two hours after our meeting had ended, I found myself going to lunch, just a little irritated.
Just a little. Because I wasn’t about to really get mad. It wasn’t a big deal in the grand scheme of life. If something didn’t kill or injure me or anyone I loved, I didn’t let it linger in me for too long. The body guys—the employees whose only job it was to fix the imperfections before sending a car over to me—hadn’t finished. There was no point in getting all bent out of shape, but a little bent out of shape was all right.
I had better ways to spend my energy; on that day it was finishing the freaking bodywork.
My frustration had to be apparent on my face, because I’d barely walked inside the break room when Mr. Cooper asked, “What’s wrong, little moon?”
I couldn’t help but smile at the term of affection the older man called me when we were out of the shop or when no one else was around while we were working. We had never talked about it, but I knew he did it so that no one would assume he had favorites. I was pretty sure everyone knew I was his favorite anyway.
It wasn’t just anyone he took into his home and into his life and family.
We didn’t hide that we spent birthdays, Thanksgivings, and Christmas Days together, and in years past, New Year’s Eve too. Now he claimed he was too old to stay awake until midnight. He was part of my family and had been for going on a decade. Just like his wife was. Just like my siblings were too.
Because he was my family, because he had gotten to know me so well, I couldn’t hide the fact that something was bothering me—specifically, a person who worked for him.
The same person I had never totally been honest with him about.
“It’s no big deal,” I lied, trying to give him a genuine smile, but I must have failed because the worried expression on his face didn’t change.
The seventy-one-year-old man, in a brand-new olive green collared shirt with COOPER’S COLLISION AND CUSTOMS stitched onto the breast, who stood right around six foot three, just kept on frowning. “Luna,” he said as I walked behind him, setting my hand on his shoulder for a moment before heading to the fridge. “Even if it’s a little deal, what’s wrong? Is it the girls?”
“No, the girls are fine,” I replied, knowing he was referring to my younger sisters.
“Something wrong at the house?”
“No, everything is fine, Mr. C, I promise,” I partially lied, grabbing my lunch bag from inside the fridge, finally wondering for a moment what my little sister had made. I’d worked late the night before, and by the time I made it home and showered, she had already loaded my bag up and set it back in the fridge for the next day.
That was definitely something I could be grateful for today. Thank God my little sister makes me lunch every day. She was the best cook in the family and wasn’t stingy about it. And I wasn’t going to let myself be sad that I had less than two months left of having my own personal chef in the house before she left me.
“Tell me what that face is for.” Mr. Cooper’s quiet, careful voice brought me back from the brink of being sad over something I had promised myself I wouldn’t be upset about. My baby sister was growing up and going to college. I had always known it was going to happen. It was what I had hoped for. I had already gone through it with my other two sisters, and I was proud of her—them—and happy. I was.
But I was never going to tell anyone that I’d cried twice already just thinking about Lily leaving.
And I was definitely not going to get upset about it at work. No, siree.
“Are you sad or mad, Luna? I can’t tell.”
Setting my bag on the table beside the seat Mr. Cooper was in, I started pulling containers out of it, eyeing the plastic Rubbermaids. There were three. One was full of chopped greens. The second one had what looked like rice, beans, and ground beef, and the smallest looked like it was full of pico de gallo. Yum.
“I’m not sad. I promise.” Liar. “The car I needed to start today wasn’t ready is all,” I told him, prying open the lids to take a peek inside of them, trying to ignore feeling like a snitch for even saying that much.
“That looks good,” the much older man commented as I turned around to stick the bean mix into the microwave. His voice was almost a whisper as he asked, “Who was supposed to be working on it first?”
I bit my lip as I pushed buttons on the screen. I wasn’t going to get mad. I wasn’t going to assume the worst. “You know who,” I told him in my normal voice, because I wasn’t doing anything wrong telling him, so I wasn’t going to be secretive.
And he did know. Mr. Cooper might be the boss—one of the bosses—but I rarely complained to him about anything, mostly because there were rarely things to complain about. I wasn’t going to tattle on anyone and get them into trouble. I was never going to abuse my relationship with Mr. Cooper, which was why I was totally fine with us usually being mostly professional at the shop.
But…
I had told him a couple times in the past about a certain coworker that I swear went out of his way to not just be a jerk, but a pain in the ass. But only to me. Because that was my luck.
I didn’t say anything to get the guy into trouble but just to vent. Mr. Cooper was mature enough and professional enough to take my words one day at his house for what they were: his daughter-like figure complaining to her father-like figure about someone who had cheated on someone she loved. Except I had never told him that part.
That “someone” being the middle of my younger sisters. So, of course that was already going to be a strike against the jerk who had made my sister cry. The fact that he wasn’t very nice to me even now didn’t help our relationship.
But in this case, Mr. Cooper, the owner of the business, peeked into our conversation, and I saw his head swing toward me, a frown on his well-loved face. “Again? Didn’t he do something like that a couple weeks ago?”
He had. Two weeks ago exactly. And a month before that, he’d done it too, but on a smaller scale.
But I did the same thing I had done every other time; I sucked it up and did what I needed to do. It was my job, and I wasn’t going to get in trouble because someone didn’t do theirs. The only reason Mr. Cooper had found out about two weeks ago was because he’d walked in to find me putting filler on a car and hadn’t understood why I’d been the one doing it when he knew I had other things on the schedule.
I watched the seconds count down on the microwave screen. “I’ve worked on it for two hours, Mr. C. I still have another two before I can even start priming it. I’m supposed to work on another one after that too.”
Goodbye, my plans tonight.