This pause hung in the air in between us. Then, “What’s that mean?”
“I told you things are complicated. My dad used to tell me that he should’ve pulled out. Him and his wife… even though now that I think about it, I’m not even sure they were legally married… they were the worst people I’ve ever met in my life. They were mean and unhappy and selfish. I don’t… I don’t know why they were together in the first place. Misery invites misery or whatever that saying is.” I took a breath, thinking about them. “And my brother never did anything. He was never really around in the first place. He never defended any of us. I know he hated them as much as I did; he left the second he graduated high school and never looked back.”
I didn’t tell him the rest. About all the times my dad told me I was stupid and worthless. About that woman saying those same, exact things. About all the rest of the things I didn’t want to remember. Not ever.
Those eyes locked on mine and his grip tightened. “I thought you only had sisters.”
“No, I have an older brother too, same mom and dad. I just never talk about him. I haven’t seen him in eleven or twelve years now. I couldn’t even make it until I turned eighteen, you know. I left a couple months into my senior year of high school.” But I didn’t leave my sisters. That part I didn’t tell him.
“They kicked you out?” he asked in that quiet voice.
I sighed. “Not exactly.”
“What’s that mean?”
I scrunched up my toes beneath the blanket. “I mean, they had been counting down the days until I turned eighteen since I was like three. And one day they gave me no other reason but to go. So I left.”
“What happened?”
I squeezed Ripley’s hand and thought about that time in my life. “I did something,” I told him in a very small voice.
There was a pause. “What’d you do?”
I scrunched them again. “I don’t know if I want you to know.”
“Why?” he asked relentlessly, lowly.
“Because I don’t feel bad about it. I don’t even feel a little bad about it,” I admitted.
His breath was soft as he said, “I’ve done some bad shit too, Luna. I’d be the last person to judge you for anything you did.”
I held my breath.
Then he added, “Tell me another time, whenever the hell you want, yeah? Put it in our… what do you call it? Box of secrets?”
I didn’t think twice about it, or the fact he was acknowledging our box of secrets. I just agreed. “Yeah, okay.”
“Where’d you go after?”
I almost sighed in relief. I could tell Rip this at least. “I had made a plan with my grandmother that she would take my sisters since we both knew their mom couldn’t and wouldn’t want or be able to take care of them.” Oh, Grandma Genie. “She gave me some money, and I had some too, and I took the bus to Houston right after I left that house. I think I told you that. I stayed in just about the shittiest hotel in Houston. It was the dirtiest, crappiest place in Houston probably, but they didn’t ask for ID or a credit card or anything. I was so scared that I had to shove the dresser in front of the door the entire time I stayed there.”
I swore my heart started beating just a little faster thinking about those days when I worried so much about getting caught and sent back to San Antonio. Of not knowing how long I could really stretch the money my grandmother had left me. “I applied at just about every job opening I could find on Craigslist. About two weeks after I got to Houston, I applied here for a job as a receptionist, actually. Mr. Cooper had decided to take the listing down the day I showed up, but he didn’t tell me until I got there.”
“He told me he changed his mind about needing a receptionist and would be better off hiring another mechanic instead. I started crying in his office, you know. He asked me if there was something he could do, and I told him I really needed to find a job and asked if he knew anyone hiring. I didn’t tell him that no one would hire me for a full-time job because I wasn’t eighteen. I hadn’t even told him I was seventeen, but I’ve always looked pretty young so….”
There was a pause and then, “He found you a job?”
Thinking back on him taking on some random person to do a job that didn’t really need doing, was a risky business decision. Mr. Cooper hadn’t needed me, but he had taken me anyway. So I nodded at my newest boss. “He warned me that I might not like a lot of the things I’d have to do around the shop, and he said he wasn’t going to treat me any differently because I was a girl, but if I was fine with that, that he’d take me on as kind of a community assistant instead of hiring a mechanic after all. But I told him that I learned fast and that I’d do just about anything he or anyone else asked, and that he wouldn’t regret it.
“I literally would have scooped up crap with my hands at that point. I didn’t care what he asked me to do as long as it didn’t involve something weird. He asked when I wanted to start, and I told him I could start right then. He found me the smallest coveralls he could find, and I started cleaning up the shop.” I scratched my upper lip remembering that day, taking in the confused looks from my new coworkers who wondered what I was doing.
“That day, at six, when everyone was going home, Mr. C told me it was a tradition for new employees to go eat at his house… He promised me he was married and that it really was for dinner and that his wife would be at the house. I’d been eating off the dollar menu and those noodles in a cup every day at that point. So I went, and Lydia fed me. They said they would give me a ride back to my hotel, and even though I told them they didn’t have to, they did anyway. They took one look at that motel and both of them went into the room with me, got my things, and told me I was going to be staying with them until I decided to move out.”
I swallowed thinking about how they had lied about the tradition for new employees to come over and eat. He had to have known I needed a meal. He had to have known something was wrong. And Mr. Cooper had stepped up to the plate. “I stayed with them for four years. I could have stayed longer, they told me, but my sisters had already been living with them for a while too by that point, and I didn’t want to take advantage… and I moved out afterward. Mr. Cooper begged me not to, but I did. We lived in a two-bedroom apartment for the next few years, and then I bought my house. And now I’m here.”
Rip’s big chest went in and out as I spoke, and stayed sucked in while he said, “I can’t see you ever taking advantage of anyone.”
I smiled at him. “That’s nice but I wouldn’t. I’ve had too many people try and take advantage of me to do that to someone else.”
Rip let out a breath so deep and slow, his chest reminded me of a balloon that had been pierced with a needle, slowly losing all of its air.
I didn’t expect the next question out of his mouth. “Why do you still work at Cooper’s? And don’t give me some bullshit answer about owing Cooper or liking your coworkers either.”
It only took me a second to think of the truth. “I like fixing things and making them look nice again.” I bit the inside of my cheek, not sure how that sounded, but at this point, I was beyond worrying what impression Rip had of me and the things that came out of my mouth. He should have been used to it by now. “Like… it’s no big deal they aren’t perfect anymore—you know, if they were in an accident—because they’re still going to run. The cars I mean. They’re going to look and run better than before and still have a long, perfectly good life ahead of them. It’s like we’re giving them a second chance.” Well, hell. “I can relate to it a lot, I guess.”
He watched me for a long, long moment.