It wasn’t his fault I had started to believe he genuinely gave a shit about me. I could handle his moods at work. I could handle his secrecy. But making me feel dumb, pushing me away, those things I couldn’t.
It was my fault for thinking things had been changing between us. For being desperate and clingy. It was my fault.
Instead, I looked right up at my other boss and said, pretty freaking calmly and coolly, “Hi, Mr. Ripley.”
He had already been looking down at me. His face, that mask I never knew what to think of. It was that same mask that I tried to replicate, just for a moment, because that was how long I stood there before saying “Bye” over my shoulder to all three of them.
My chest hurt only a little as I left the hospital, and like so many other things, I squashed it down into an even smaller hurt and threw it away.
I was loved, and I had everything. I wasn’t happy then, but I would be again.
My chest had only continued hurting just a little every time I saw Rip at the shop.
The very first day, three days after our conversation in the waiting room, I’d had to find him to ask about some vague details on an order. He’d been on the main shop floor, pulling out upholstery inside a 1970-ish Ford Bronco. I had only stood in my room for maybe one minute trying to pump myself up to talk to him the way I envisioned I could and would in my head.
Like he hadn’t hurt my feelings.
Like he hadn’t been mean and cold and cruel.
I could do it, I had told myself.
I didn’t play games, and I wasn’t about to start then.
So in that minute, I got myself together and headed over.
“Mr. Ripley?” I called out, a little smug with myself for keeping my voice under control.
He had instantly stopped was he was doing, crouched in place just outside of the SUV.
I didn’t wait around to stop right beside him and thrust the invoice between us. “I was about to place an order, but I wanted to confirm what you marked off and scribbled in. There weren’t any notes added into the computer. You want the color you wrote, correct?”
Correct. Man, I was good.
Rip watched me silently, passively, for a moment before taking the sheet and looking it over.
I let myself take in his features, even though I shouldn’t have. There were bags under his eyes and serious tension at the corners of them as he read his scribbles. I bit the inside of my cheek as he glanced at me, all cool detachment, and said, “It’s right.”
I didn’t give him the smile I usually passed around. I had just nodded at him and, just as quickly, said, “Thank you” before I headed back.
And when he had come into my room a few hours later to take a look at a hood I had done that morning, all I had done was tell him “Hi” and then gone straight back to work taping. Just like he wasn’t there. Just like I should have done since he was my boss and I was his employee.
And if anger had ridden through my veins, leaving me hot and tense for a couple of minutes, I ignored it.
I wasn’t mad. I wasn’t hurt. I was fine.
I was always going to be fine.
And that’s what I was from then on.
I went to see Lily one weekend with Lenny. Another weekend, we had game night at Grandpa Gus’s place. I did some overtime but not much. I went to the gym, had one okay date that didn’t rock my socks off. I chugged along. I made it.
It had been two weeks, and the shop was surviving. I wasn’t sure who was doing payroll, but I was an employee, so I wasn’t going to worry about it. That’s what Rip was for. The only extra thing I had taken upon myself was ordering things for the break room and charging them to the shop’s account, but that was it.
Things were all right. Everyone at the shop was doing fine. From what I overheard from the rest of the guys during lunch and in bits and pieces when we’d happen to be in the break room at the same time, or they would come to my room to move something or pick something up, they told me about how much more short-tempered Rip was being, and how annoying it was when he was the only one they could ask questions to.
I didn’t say a word. I didn’t agree or disagree. I just patted them on the back or would try to make them laugh.
I wasn’t going to talk bad about him.
In that time, Mr. Cooper and I still hadn’t gotten a chance to talk. I had gone to visit him every other day at his home after he’d been released and brought him food and movies from the Redbox closest to his place, but he hadn’t told me much of anything.
It might have been because Lydia had never been far away.
If I had thought months ago that I would have a hard time cutting someone I saw on a regular basis out of my life, I would have been mistaken. I had forgotten how easy it was.
I had a feeling that was mostly because I hadn’t been able to get Rip’s words out of my head. I had them memorized. Or pretty close to it. Leave me alone, he had said to me in that waiting room.
I’d stopped pining for people who didn’t treat me as well as I treated them as a kid. I had promised myself back then that I would never fall for that crap again, and in a life where I had failed myself a dozen times, that one oath had been the only one I managed to uphold.
It was why I had no problem making my coffee and ignoring Rip when I walked downstairs and toward my room.
He wanted coffee? He could get it his own self. He wanted me to leave him alone? Sure thing. I wasn’t going to beg anyone for their time, their love, or attention. I definitely wouldn’t beg for friendship or company either.
Not anymore.
So when I had a dream about two weeks into Mr. Cooper’s recuperation about my dad again—a dream that was an exact replica of the night before I had left San Antonio for good—I was upset and irritated like I couldn’t even begin to explain. It didn’t help that my nape had itched and burned from the moment I had woken up. Or that it reminded me of having a very similar dream with Rip in the bed with me not long ago. A night when he’d pulled me close….
Even a busy morning at work and the entire Hairspray soundtrack hadn’t made me able to shake off the restlessness brewing under my skin.
When lunch came and I went upstairs and found the room full, I grabbed my food from the fridge—taco casserole that was dry and just weird— warmed it up, and decided I was going to do myself and my coworkers a favor and go somewhere else where I could be in a bad mood. It wasn’t because of Ripley either. He hadn’t bothered looking up when I had walked into the room. If that didn’t say enough about how things were between us, I didn’t know what else could.
So I took my food and ate it on one of the chairs set up around the back of the shop where the guys took smoke breaks. It was Northside Houston, warm and always humid, but in the shade, with a decent breeze, a lack of bugs, and away from the worst of the street pollution closer to the entrance of the shop, it was… fine.
Honestly, it was kind of relaxing, even if I was just around the corner from where my cousin had backhanded me. But I didn’t have a scab or a scar on my face, and I wasn’t going to focus on that dipshit. Not when he’d done similar things to me as a kid when I had been walking home from school.
Rudy was nobody. My dad was nobody. And nobodies didn’t hurt anyone.
I was fine. I had a job. I was loved.
Mr. Cooper was going to make a full recovery.
Lily was happy, healthy, and making lots of tip money.
Thea and Kyra were both alive, but I only knew that because Lily confirmed it.
My dad hadn’t called again.
Jason had never come back to work.
I was safe. I had a roof over my head and food to eat. I had so much. Not everything was perfect—and I hated how resentful I felt toward my sisters—but it was better than most people had it.
That’s what I kept telling myself as I sat there, all by myself.