“What do you mean you’re leaving?”
I tried to control my temper—a temper that I didn’t normally have unless it was provoked, a temper that this guy seemed to stoke like a snake charmer, like it was his superpower, while my superpower was that I was easygoing and didn’t get mad that often.
But I guess even Superman had his kryptonite.
Mine was a coworker with an attitude problem who had cheated on my sister. An attitude problem that I had unfortunately noticed mostly only flared up in my company.
That seemed to be a running theme throughout my life for some reason that I wasn’t about to focus on.
“I’m going with Rip to pick out paint,” I said again as I unlocked the cabinet in the desk that held my purse. I’d only started doing that since Jason and I had gotten stuck with each other. I didn’t trust him to not eat the snacks I kept in there or rub my toothbrush along a toilet rim if he had the chance. The booth was mine. I wasn’t sure what I would end up doing if they tried to put him with me permanently, like I had been Mack’s assistant for years, but I’d make sure it didn’t happen.
Somehow.
“Why?” he had the nerve to ask, like the last time we’d exchanged words, I hadn’t wanted to strangle him.
Did I need to give him an answer? No, but I did anyway. “Because he asked me to,” I responded as I locked the cabinet back up. He didn’t need to know that I had tried to get out of it.
“But now I’m stuck here doing your work,” Jason complained, like he wasn’t paid to do just that. He’d been acting like an abused puppy since yesterday. All meek and whiney, but not in a cute or likable way.
I made sure my back was to him as I made a face that couldn’t hide how much he was getting on my nerves. “Going with him is part of my job. You also get paid hourly, so you’d either be in the booth or out there helping out the other guys. If you would rather go back out there, go tell Mr. Cooper. He won’t force you to do something you don’t want to do,” I told him, not able to totally hide my irritation.
But man, I hoped, I hoped, I hoped, I hoped he would go tell Mr. Cooper he wanted out.
If he wasn’t out of here by the time my birthday came around, I knew exactly what I was going to ask for.
There was a moment of silence and then, “I can go with him.”
Oh, boy.
I was choosing happiness and patience.
I was choosing happiness and patience.
I was choosing happiness and patience.
So I bit my cheek. “Ask Rip. I’ll stay if he’s fine with you going.” I mean, I was going to get paid anyway. I didn’t care if I’d end up staying instead of him.
Then again, I was also 99 percent sure Rip wouldn’t say yes even if Jason had the balls to invite himself. I had seen the way he took him in, and I’d bet he’d heard him complain enough on the floor to know what he was like. After yesterday, he had firsthand experience of the mess that was this turd.
I hoped that, if he hadn’t already, he would eventually chew him out. Or even fire him. I had been more than a little disappointed he hadn’t yesterday.
The lack of response he gave settled that he either saw the point I wasn’t making or understood that maybe he shouldn’t try and change the boss’s mind.
“Can’t you ask for me?”
“No, she can’t, and you’re not coming,” came a voice we both recognized.
A voice that startled both of us, because somehow we’d both missed the door opening. Missed getting eavesdropped on. But only one of us was embarrassed by it, and that person wasn’t me.
“Luna’s going with me,” Rip confirmed, sounding bored.
Fortunately, unlike with his conversations with me, Jason managed to actually shut his mouth and not argue or beg or be a passive-aggressive jerk. His head had snapped over to Rip’s direction the second we’d heard him speak up, but at our boss’s decision, he dropped it.
Sucker.
But had Rip given him a hard time yesterday after giving me one? I wondered.
“You ready?” that deep voice asked.
I nodded, gripping the strap of my purse tight.
He stood there, holding the door open.
I didn’t say anything to Jason as I walked by him, but I did smirk.
Like usual, neither one of us said a word on the way out of CCC. Rip didn’t ask if my sister had called to check in with me—she hadn’t—and he didn’t comment about anything else this past weekend, which all worked for me. The only words out of my mouth on the way over were the instructions on how to get to the business, which wasn’t far, but it was still a nice twenty-minute ride away in Houston traffic. It wasn’t until we were only a couple minutes away that I asked Rip what he had in mind.
Because I wasn’t going to give him the idea that he’d hurt my feelings. Staying quiet would do just that. Fortunately, it worked.
The problem was, he didn’t have anything in mind. He wanted to look and see what could be mixed for him in person. Fine by me. We had never gone to the store together, but there was a first time for everything, from the looks of it. I enjoyed going to pick up paint. It was one thing I didn’t mind leaving the booth for, even though most of the time it got dropped off in our weekly deliveries.
Rip parked his truck in the nearly empty lot and we both got out. I was busy thinking about what colors he might be interested in—trying not to think about the day before too, if I was going to be honest—that I just barely managed to tell him “thank you” when he held the door open for me.
Once we were both inside, I finally asked, “Are you feeling a light or a dark color?”
His eyes seemed to scan the shop, and I had to ask myself if he’d ever actually been here, period. I didn’t think so. He usually just chose colors from samples. It was Mr. Cooper who had come with me in the past if he wanted something custom, but even then, that was rare. Custom paints were a lot more expensive than the thousands of options you could choose directly from a catalogue, but sometimes with certain types of cars they bought, it was worth doing something really custom. The two cars he had bought at the auction were totally worth it, so I didn’t blame him for wanting to do something original.
“I’ll know when I see it,” he answered as he turned down an aisle that held brushes.
I almost crossed my eyes. Then I asked myself why he was in the brush section to begin with. Then I reminded myself that I didn’t need to wonder over it.
“Sup, Luna?” a voice called out from behind the counter at the back of the store.
I couldn’t help but immediately smile as I craned my neck toward the counter along the far back wall of the paint store. “Hi, Hector.”
“I had a feeling today was gonna be my lucky day,” the really good-looking man, who had worked at the shop for as long as I could remember, replied from where he stood. He was already smiling that giant, white smile that had to be one of the nicest I’d ever seen.
I snorted. “You say that to everybody.”
“Only you.” He grinned. “Whatcha need?”
I stopped right in front of the counter and took a peek over my shoulder as I said, “My boss wants to do something custom for two cars he’s going to start working on, so I had to bring him to the best.” Standing on the tips of my toes, I called out, “Rip?”
What might have been a grunt answered me from the direction of where I had last seen him. The storefront was pretty small. I wasn’t positive what he was looking at, or why I couldn’t see him, but all right.
I turned back to my friend and rocked onto my heels. “He’ll be here in a sec.”
Hector leaned forward, planting his elbows on the counter between us, and asked the same question he always did when I came to see him. “What are you doing for lunch?”
Then I told him the same thing I always did. “I already had lunch. What are you doing for lunch?”