“Thanks, Mr. C,” I muttered, trying to think, but also taking a bite of the food my little sister had prepared for lunch. I let my gaze slide over to him, picking up on the tension in his own shoulders. I had an idea what the cause was. “You okay? I was pretty surprised when you announced that Rogelio is leaving.”
The older man grunted as he chewed. The last thing he’d said during our meeting had been that one of the shop’s longtime employees was leaving to start his own mechanic shop. “I’m happy for him,” he finally said, and I knew he was telling the truth. “But you know how hard good workers are to find, and now I need to get someone else before he leaves. We’ll be hurting if we end up short-staffed.”
We were always almost hurting, and with one person less?
He shrugged the shoulder closest to me. “I’ll find someone. I get resumes all the time from kids straight out of school.”
I smiled at him. “If there’s anything I can do, let me know.”
Mr. Cooper put his arm around my shoulders and hugged me to his side.
He rarely ever did that, and it caught me by surprise so much I barely had time to smile over at him.
His quiet laugh had me glancing down at where his eyes were focused: on my wrist. On the bracelet of linked, tiny plastic donuts with colorful icing on my left hand to be specific. “I was wondering what your fun thing of the day was.”
I gave my hand a shake. “Lily bought it for me,” I explained.
“That’s pretty fun, little moon,” the older man confirmed with a warm smile.
“Luna,” came a familiar male voice that had me looking toward the door just as Mr. C’s arm started to retreat.
Sure enough, Rip’s massive body took up the width of the doorframe as he stood there, a piece of grease-stained paper in his hand, his gaze intent on me. Totally ignoring Mr. Cooper sitting beside me, pulling his arm back toward his side. He wasn’t frowning, but there was something about his expression….
“Hey, Rip,” I said, giving him a smile as I straightened.
He tipped his chin up, making my eyes flick to the lines alongside his mouth from all the scowling he did. His voice was gruff and irritated. “You get started on that Thunderbird yet?”
“Not yet.” Should I tell him about what happened? I eyed his shirt once more and thought about how grumpy he’d been at the meeting that morning. Because of Jason’s screw up, it pushed back me getting to the car he was asking about.
“Do me a solid.” His eyes stayed on me so intently it made me feel like I’d done something wrong by letting Mr. Cooper give me a hug. But I hadn’t, and Rip was well aware of the father-daughter relationship I had with the older man. I had invited him to my house twice for Thanksgiving, making it clear that Mr. Cooper and his wife would be there too so that he wouldn’t think I was trying to flirt with him. He didn’t show up either time. “I changed my mind about it and left a new work order for it on your desk. Take a look at it. I know we’ve got the color in the back, so use that one instead, got me?”
I nodded. New work order. New color. He was using that barking, something-up-his-butt voice. All right.
Ripley’s blue-green eyes narrowed as he watched me from the doorway, pointedly still not looking at the man beside me. “Do you need to write it down?” he asked, dipping into that condescending tone just a little.
I let it slide right off me. “No, I’ll remember.”
From the doorway, Rip gave me a nod before walking off. I didn’t need to watch him leave to know what his butt looked like in those coveralls. It was perfectly proportionate in comparison to the rest of his six-foot-four built-like-a-tank body. Big and thick.
Beside me, Mr. Cooper let out a sigh that I’d heard a hundred or two times before. I couldn’t blame him. The less they communicated, the better everyone’s day was.
Especially his.
But at that moment, I couldn’t focus on Rip’s butt, or relish in the fact that I’d gotten to see his face not completely scowling in my direction, even if it was only for a second. Sometimes he’d come up for lunch at the same time I did. Sometimes he’d sit next to me and eat. His elbow would brush mine. Maybe his forearm would touch mine. If it was a good day, he’d give me an eyebrow raise that I would take like it was a smile. If it was a really good day, I could talk to him about the car he was restoring, and we might talk about it for a few minutes.
I had given up trying to ask him personal questions about two months into him arriving at CCC.
But on days when Mr. Cooper and I happened to eat at the same time, none of that ever happened. I’d watched Rip turn around and walk out, noticing how Mr. Cooper sat there and tried not to let it bother him.
On this day, it was impossible not to notice that getting ignored was eating up the kindest man I had ever met.
So I turned my head to my favorite boss and gave him a smile he probably saw right through. “Have I told you that color shirt looks really nice on you? You don’t look a day over sixty-five in it, Mr. C.”
*
It was hours later when I realized how bad I’d screwed up.
I wasn’t sure what exactly had snapped together for me at the last second just as I had started to crouch down to keep moving the gun across the surface of the quarter panel I was in the middle of painting. But something had just clicked as I stood in front of the section of the car between the rear door and the trunk. That click had said Luna, wait a minute.
Wait a minute.
“Shit.” I pulled the hood of my coveralls down, raised my goggles to rest at the top of my head, and tugged my respirator to my chin, trying to think as I stared at the panel in front of me.
But the color on the car didn’t change without the goggles.
It was still a silvery blue.
It was still Silver Mink.
I left the work order for you at the top of your desk, Rip had said during lunch.
I had picked up the work order on the desk. I knew it. Silver Mink, it had said. I knew it. I wouldn’t have screwed up reading it.
But… Silver Mink…. Something about the color, about the name, didn’t sit well.
Silver Mink, Silver Mink, Silver Mink….
Wasn’t Silver Mink the original color he had requested?
Had I read the wrong order?
Heart freaking instantly pounding, I swallowed and tried to think about what I’d done. I had picked up the invoice, read through it three times, and gone to get the paint. I knew that for sure. I knew it.
But…
I ran back to my desk and went through the invoices sitting on it. About a minute into looking, I found it—them more like it. I freaking found them.
It only took a second to look up the work order on my computer to confirm my suspicions.
I had started painting the car a different freaking color.
Holy crap.
Not Brittany Blue.
Not Brittany Blue like one of the invoices requested. The right invoice.
Why hadn’t I double-checked? I always did. Always.
“Shit.” I blinked down at the sheet, the urge to throw up getting strong and stronger. “Shit, shit, shit!”
I wanted to punch the wall. Punch myself more like it. But the fact was, I remembered that I’d been thinking about the phone call Mr. Cooper had mentioned and my sister bailing on me, and being frustrated with my coworker for screwing me over. I’d gone back downstairs after lunch, still thinking about things that I couldn’t change even if I wanted to, gone to my room, spent another four hours sanding down the car then priming it. I let it bake while I picked up the first file I found for the Thunderbird, read it, and finally pulled the paint from the locker where we kept all the extra unused supplies.
The rest was history. I grabbed the paint, prepared everything, Miguel helped me move the cars around. Then I got in the booth and started spraying, my head going back to the text and the phone call despite the headphones I had on blasting the Wicked soundtrack into my ears. Then, then, it had clicked.
Holy freaking shit, I had read the wrong work order.
Oh no. Oh no, oh no, oh no.