What did he want now? I wondered as Thea’s voice mail picked up.
“Thea, it’s Luna again. I hope you’re okay and you’ll call me back, all right?” I said, trying not to sound mad or sad before ending the call.
Picking up my fork from inside my bag, I stabbed at the mush of rice and ground beef, making sure to focus on it and not the man making his way toward me. I managed to poke my fork through something that looked a little too brown and even got it into my mouth before the big man walked in front of me.
He didn’t say a word, and neither did I as he went to the chair on the other side of the table and pulled it forward until it lined up with the one I was in.
I watched him as he set his glass container on the table between us and took a seat.
Just as I was about to ask if there was something I could do for him, I stopped myself. I was on my lunch break. I didn’t have to do anything then.
And he had his lunch, same as me.
So…
I just didn’t understand why he was out here too all of a sudden.
I kept my curiosity to myself and made sure to look away from him as I chewed my food and brought my phone onto my thigh.
Whatever he was doing out here… it was none of my business.
The light pop of the lid coming off his food filled the air between us, punctuated by the occasional sound of him chewing or taking sips of whatever he was drinking.
Me on the other hand, I sat there and sucked back my can of Sprite and ate my casserole while I started looking up prices for television screens.
When my lunch hour was almost up, when there was sweat at the base of my neck and lower back from the heat, and when the skin on my legs was tight from too much sun, then I got up.
Neither one of us said anything as I walked away.
Chapter 27
My lunch break the next day was a repeat of the one before it, and I honestly didn’t know what to think of it.
Or even if I should waste my time thinking it over.
I went outside, had all of my food out, my clothes were rolled up the way I liked them, and I had my legs stretched out in the sun when the door opened and out came the same man I had just seen hours ago when he’d come into my room and peeked through the window of the booth while I sprayed. That day, he had on a gray compression shirt and another pair of jeans that were somehow dirty even with the coveralls he wore over them.
Everything on him was covered like usual.
From his neck down over his wrist bones, everything accentuated that big, muscular figure I had checked out every chance I could without getting caught for years.
But this time, it wasn’t so hard to look away. It really wasn’t hard at all.
I’d had another dream about my dad the previous night, the same one as before that left my head uncomfortable and tight and left me in bed sweaty and out of breath. It had only taken me a couple hours to shake it off. All it did was remind me of why it wasn’t hard to look away from Rip right then.
The thing was, I didn’t need to use my eyes to know what he was doing.
Rip did the same thing he’d done the day before. He came over and sat beside me, and neither one of us said a word. Not while we ate. Not in the sparse minutes I had after I’d forced down my food. Not while I looked at my phone and scrolled through reviews of couches that were on sale.
When the time came to get back to work, I didn’t even do more than glance at him as I collected my stuff and headed back to my room more than half an hour after he’d appeared.
*
The very next day went a lot like every other day before it, at least since Mr. Cooper’s heart attack.
I showed up to work. Ripley was already there. I pretended not to see him as I headed into my room, and then pretended not to see him some more when I went upstairs to prepare my coffee or when I went back downstairs with it in my hand. Just mine. Not his. Like it was our new thing, because it was. I shouldn’t have to go out of my way to be nice to my boss when he didn’t want it, and when it wasn’t like he was doing me a favor by employing me.
He couldn’t fire me without going through Mr. Cooper. Because even if chances were very, very high they were related, I knew that when it came down to it, I had a better relationship with him than Rip did. I had gone to see Mr. C the night before, had dinner with him and Lydia, and stayed to watch a movie. I knew my place in the older man’s life.
But just like every other day lately, at some point in the beginning half of the morning, I had a visitor stop by my room.
A six-foot-four-inch visitor who I would bet weighed around two hundred and fifty pounds.
The man I didn’t want all up in my space anymore.
“Can I help you with something?” I asked, using the same exact words I had used every other time he’d come in. Calm, cool, professional.
Unlike every other day though, my boss didn’t use an excuse about wanting to check something or see something.
He just stood there with his hands on his hips, gritted his teeth, and said, “You done?”
“Yes. I just finished the hood in the booth, and I’m waiting a minute before I get it out of here and start on the panels. Ashton already said he’d help me move it out.”
He stared.
I stared back.
Then he let out a deep, deep sigh, cocked his jaw to the side, and grumbled, “You know what I’m talking about. You done for real?”
I used my nicest voice as I asked, “With what?”
Lord, he was staring right at me as he held his hands out to his sides. “With this.”
“With what?”
He pressed his lips together. If I looked hard enough, I bet I could see how white they became as he did it, but I didn’t. I didn’t even look a little bit. “With this, Luna,” he replied, flipping his hands again.
Looking back on it, I should have chosen a different approach. But that was the thing with looking back on your actions: life didn’t have a rewind button. Unfortunately.
But at least I could look back and remember that I’d held my head up high, kept my voice even, and looked my boss right in the eye as I told him, “I’m treating you the way you wanted me to treat you, Mr. Ripley. With respect. Like you pay my bills. I’m leaving you alone. I’m not annoying you. I’m not forcing myself on you or asking you to do things you wouldn’t want to. I don’t know what else you want from me.”
That intense gaze didn’t stray a centimeter. Not for a second. Not for a millisecond. He stared at me like his gaze was made of laser beams and he wanted to burn me to ashes.
And then he tried.
“Would you fucking stop with the Mister Ripley?”
I didn’t flinch. Didn’t move. I just looked at him like his words didn’t affect me at all. “That’s your name, sir.”
Maybe the “sir” was overdoing it.
“You fucking kidding me right now?” Rip’s asked, his voice starting to rise.
All right, it was a little much, I guessed, but that didn’t change a single thing. Not about me, not about this situation. “No, I’m not,” I answered him calmly. “And I don’t understand why you’re raising your voice. I’m not doing anything.”
Rip’s eyes almost, almost bulged out of his skull as he leaned forward. “The fuck you’re not doing anything. You’re talking in circles, doing exactly what you know is gonna bother me.”
“I’m not doing anything to bother you. I’ve done enough to bother you in the past, remember? So I’m stopping. I’ve stopped. All I’m doing is exactly what you asked.”
My boss took a step forward. “Quit talking to me like that.”
“Like you’re my boss?” I asked slowly, knowing I was baiting him but not sure what else I could say. “Like an employee who didn’t lie to the cops for you when they showed up one morning asking where you’d been? When I gave you an alibi because I believed that you were home alone? So I told them I had been with you that night and you let me give you a kiss on the cheek?”
“Goddamn it, Luna,” he griped.