“Good,” he replied, brushing his hands on his pants.
“My day is going great too,” Jason mumbled.
I didn’t even bother giving him a glance. “You liking the shop so far?”
“Yeah,” he agreed, in the middle of shooting the human wart a confused look for his little comments. “It’s great.”
I smiled. “Thank you for helping Jason,” I said like he was my child who needed assistance.
Which I guess in a way he kind of was. He was my little shit, spoiled kid that I was still trying to mold into a decent person.
You know, without talking to him more than I needed to.
And he was twenty years old instead of an impressionable three.
“Sure,” the new guy said.
I’d swear on my life that Jason snickered as he turned around and left the booth. I really just wanted to smack him sometimes.
“Do you know any good places to eat around here?”
“Yeah. There’s a food truck about a block down with really good burgers, but I thought I saw you with a bag from there already. There’s also a Mexican place about four blocks down that a lot of us really like; it’s a little hole in the wall place, but it’s great. If you go between eleven and one, there are lunch specials. And two blocks away, there’s a barbecue place that’s pretty good.”
He shifted on his feet. “The Mexican place is your favorite?”
“Yeah. I don’t go there that often, but it’s the best around here.”
“You doing anything for lunch?”
“She’s gonna be busy,” a deep male voice answered from somewhere behind me.
A deep male voice that could have belonged to only one person.
As I looked over my shoulder, sure enough, Rip was there, standing at the entrance into the booth with those giant biceps crossed over his chest and a bland, bland look on his face.
I was going to be busy? Since when? I had just talked to him that morning when I brought down his coffee, and we hadn’t talked about any kind of projects he needed me for.
But he had given me that smirk I liked and asked, “Did you fuck up your lunch?”
And I had smirked back at him, remembering the two hours we had spent at the bar on Friday and mocked him with, “It’s only a little burned, thank you.”
He had let that smirk stay on his face as he shook his head and went back to work.
And that had been that.
More than anything before. And maybe I didn’t understand why he was being, at times, so much friendlier, but I wasn’t going to complain.
So, when Rip said I was going to be busy, all I could do was stand there and wonder what I was going to be busy doing.
Ashton was a good sport because he smiled at me and said, “That’s all right. Maybe tomorrow.”
Over my shoulder, Rip spoke up again. “Luna’s gonna be busy tomorrow too.”
Uh.
I saw Ashton make a funny face before he shrugged, easily, and said, “All right. I should get back to work, but I’ll come back later and see if you need more help.”
I didn’t have the heart to tell him that if I did need help, he would be the last person I would ask. I would always bother the guys who had been here longer first. But it was nice of him to offer.
And nice to invite me to eat, if that’s what he’d been about to do.
Even if I had a feeling that maybe it wasn’t as friendly as I thought it would be. Especially not because of that blush.
I thought he was cute, but that was the beginning and the end of that. Hector at the paint store was one of the hottest guys I had ever seen in my life, and that didn’t mean I wanted to date him. My eyes liked him. My brain liked him. But my heart wasn’t in it in that way.
“See ya, Luna,” Ashton said. Walking right by our boss, he dipped his chin toward him. “Rip.”
I blinked and followed Ashton on the way out. The second I couldn’t see him any longer, I looked back at Rip, who had moved his gaze back toward me by then. “What am I busy doing at lunch?” I asked. “Did you want to go pick out some more paint? Because I thought you were still working on the GTO and the SS.”
“No,” he answered, not moving an inch, but instead, just watching me. “I brought you fucking lunch.”
He brought me—did he just say lunch?
“There’s a thing in the fridge with your name on it,” Rip kept going, watching me steadily. “I could use your help later if you’ve got time.”
All I heard was something about him needing my help if I had time, but what I really focused on was the container in the fridge with my name on it.
“Come get me if you do,” he said, taking a step back like he hadn’t just surprised the crap out of me.
But I could still get a few thoughts together, at least enough to call out, “What am I going to be doing tomorrow?”
He was still walking backward as he told me, “I’m bringing you lunch tomorrow too.”
What was happening?
What was happening?
“You don’t have to bribe me to be your friend! I’ve been waiting for this for years, Rip,” I hollered after him, ignoring the way my stomach had just felt like we’d started a descent from a steep roller-coaster ride.
I’d swear I heard a chuckle as he answered, “Get to fucking work and come get me if you’ve got time to help me out.”
We were friends.
We were.
Favor or not, you didn’t bring someone food who you weren’t fond of.
I really didn’t want to smile, but I couldn’t freaking help it as he walked back out of the room. I was still smiling as Jason went to stand exactly where Rip had just been and asked, “If you’re done flirting, can I get started on those panels?”
That wiped the expression right off my face. “Say something like that to me one more time, Jason, and I will go rat on you, all right?”
The younger guy sneered, apparently back to freaking normal. “What I do with my fucking life is none of your business.”
So that’s where we were going today. “What are you talking about? I’m not bringing up what you do with your life, Jason. You said something rude, that’s what I’m talking about.”
“I’m talking about you not liking me and now he doesn’t like me either,” he tried to argue.
It was my turn to sneer at him. “If he doesn’t like you, it’s not because of anything I’ve said to him. Maybe it’s because you hung up on him that one time you called me, buddy, or you doing things you had no business doing. Have you thought about that?”
His mouth pinched, and he rushed out, “I didn’t hang up on him.”
I freaking knew he was going to lie about that. I hated to call people dumb, but he really was dumb. I didn’t feel like arguing with him over it. What I did instead was shrug at him. “I know you know why I don’t like you—and I’m sorry for saying that because I’ve never said that to anyone before, but you have never been nice to me. But I’ve never gone out of my way to be mean to you because of it. I don’t have to like you to work with you, but I wouldn’t whisper about things you did two years ago to make Rip not like you.”
“Look, you don’t even know what was happening between me and Kyra.”
I raised up both my hands between us and said, “I don’t care. You don’t have to explain anything to me.” Even if it made perfect sense, I still wouldn’t like him. “I wouldn’t like anyone who made my little sister cry, for whatever reason.”
“I’m not an asshole,” he tried to claim.
I stayed quiet.
“I’m not—”
My phone ringing from my desk had me shaking my head as I walked way around him and out onto the floor. “Start on the panel, Jason.”
He cursed, not loudly enough for me to hear clearly, but I ignored him and pulled my keys out to unlock my desk and pull out my still ringing phone, hitting the Answer button.
That was where I screwed up.
I was so riled up by Jason that I didn’t look at the screen first before I hit answer.
“Hello?”
I heard the “Don’t hang up” just as I was turning back around to make sure Jason’s annoying butt wasn’t flipping me off behind my back. “Luna, don’t you fucking hang up,” a semi-familiar male voice spat on the other end.
And maybe my brain didn’t automatically recognize it, but my instincts did.