Then Mr. Cooper kept talking, “You should—”
The response came in the form of one word. “No.”
No.
No what?
What the hell was Mr. Cooper trying to say before Rip had cut him off? He should what? Tell me thank you? Buy me a card? Be a little friendlier? Not be so abrupt with someone who was slightly fonder of him than he probably deserved? I had never said anything to Mr. Cooper, or anyone at the shop, about finding Rip attractive or anything like that. I couldn’t see him making such a forceful “no” to Mr. Cooper suggesting he tell me thanks or buy me a card being worth that, but…
There was no way it would be anything else. Like Mr. Cooper would tell him to be interested in me. And like Rip would even put thoughts into his head like that. Yeah, right.
I couldn’t even—
What was I doing? Was I really going to let a dumb dream about my dad get me down? Was I trying to feel sorry for myself? Was I going to get flustered because Rip didn’t like me? I knew damn well that had never even been a possibility in the first place. He could barely talk to me without huffing and puffing half the time. He’d agreed I was a nice girl, not that I was pretty or that he should ask me on a date or anything like that.
I needed to get to work and forget all of this. I was going to ball all this up and just… throw it away. I’d done it enough over the years. I could do it again.
And I did. I wrapped up the tiny bit of hurt I felt at the idea that Rip would never be interested in me, my dream about two people who didn’t know what kindness was if it kicked them in the face… and I dropped it into the imaginary trash can that was full of other things I didn’t let hurt me anymore.
I was fine. The heart is more resilient than anyone ever gave it credit for, and I liked to think mine was a bad bish.
I rushed through pouring way too much milk into my cup, mixing in the coffee, giving it all a stir, and then hauled my ass downstairs so I could get to work.
I was fine. I was loved. I had everything I really needed. And my sister had made cherry pie, and I was pretty sure she’d put some into my lunch bag. That was definitely something great about today.
I’d been at Cooper’s for so long I could have gotten around with a blindfold, luckily. Down the stairs and straight forward was the main floor where the repairs and remodels happened. Down the stairs and to the left, then straight, I could take the hall that would lead to the part of the building where I worked. It wasn’t anything fancy, but there were two big bay doors. One that led into the hallway connected to the main floor and another that opened to the parking lot surrounding the building. The rest of the room was pretty sparse, containing a desk with a computer and printer on it, three different machines used to agitate the paint, a big industrial sink with soaps and products beside it, and a couple of chairs. The big, white booth set up against a corner took up a third of the room.
I’d already dropped off my things when I’d first showed up. I set my tumbler on the desk and went to unlock the drawer to get the folders for the projects I’d be working on. I opened the first one and had just started reading through what needed to be done, when my ringtone went off.
With my eyes still on the folder, I opened the drawer my purse was in and pulled my phone out.
I only hesitated for a second. It was the same number that had called and texted me last week. The one I had ignored.
Screw it.
I answered it. “Hello?”
There was a sound on the other end of the line before a voice I didn’t recognize answered, “Hello, can I please speak with Miss Luna Allen?”
Miss Luna Allen? That was formal. I couldn’t remember the last time anyone had used the m-word on me. “Hi, this is me.”
“Oh,” the unfamiliar male voice answered. “Hello, Miss Allen. How are you today?”
“I’m doing great,” I lied a little. “How are you?”
“I’m well. Thank you for asking,” the man replied. “My name is Julius Randall, and I’m calling on behalf of Miss Eugenia Miller.”
At the mention of my grandmother’s name, my chest went tight. I hadn’t heard her name in… years. Not since I had gone to pick up Thea, Kyra, and Lily from her house.
Don’t come back here, Luna, she had told me the last time I’d seen her. Take them and none of y’all come back.
And I hadn’t. None of us had.
“Is everything… okay?” I asked, ignoring how quiet my voice had gotten.
“Unfortunately, Miss Miller passed away Saturday evening.”
I swallowed and blinked at the timeframe.
“I attempted to contact you when she first went into the hospice…” He trailed off before clearing his throat. “She specifically requested that I reach out to you.”
She had wanted me to know that she was sick?
I hadn’t….
Something heavy—guilt, it was freaking guilt—settled right onto my chest. Had he called me before because she’d been asking for… maybe not me specifically, but my sisters? To see them one last time? To make sure we got to say goodbye, even if she wasn’t aware of it?
“I’m so sorry,” I muttered, trying to process his words. “I haven’t spoken to my grandmother in years.”
There was a pause on the other end. “I apologize for being the bearer of bad news, Miss Allen, but she made it very clear that when the time came, that she wanted you to be informed.”
It seemed like the words got sucked straight out of my mouth. I didn’t wonder why she wanted that. I knew she had cared for my sisters. She had taken them in for three years before she had decided they would be better off far, far away from the rest of the family. She had told us not to come back.
We had never been that close in the first place, and… because life had gotten so crazy after that, I hadn’t kept in touch. I hadn’t realized that my siblings wouldn’t have either. We rarely ever talked about life before they had come to Houston.
“Can you tell me what happened?” I asked, heaviness still weighing down on my chest.
“She suffered complications from pneumonia,” the man on the line explained in a gentle but professional voice. “She had been diagnosed with dementia a few years ago. The funeral arrangements have been settled. There was an announcement in the paper. The funeral will be this upcoming Thursday.”
“This Thursday?”
“I apologize if this seems last minute,” the man apologized, too polite to say that he’d tried to warn me she wasn’t doing well. “I can provide you with the service information if you’re interested in attending.”
Interested in attending her funeral?
The reality of what that meant suddenly clicked but…
My grandmother had wanted me to go. Or at least one of my sisters. Otherwise she wouldn’t have asked her lawyer to contact me. She had wanted us to know.
I didn’t want to go.
I felt terrible for thinking that but…
I didn’t want to go. I didn’t want Kyra or Thea or Lily to go either. No. Way.
She had known there was a reason why we hadn’t physically seen each other since I was twenty. Yet she had still asked at some point when she had been well enough to make that kind of request. After everything Grandma Genie had done… taking in three kids while I’d been off in Houston, hundreds of miles away, working and trying to piece my life together, I could do it. For her.
Oh, God, but I didn’t want to. I didn’t freaking want to. I didn’t, I didn’t, I didn’t.
The idea of my little sisters going was even more unbearable.
Memories of my life before I’d been seventeen, before I’d gotten the hell out of that house, ripped right through me and one of my knees instantly went numb.
I didn’t want to go.
“Miss Allen?” the man spoke up.
I swallowed and clenched the muscles in my quads to wake my leg back up. I remembered everything good in my life.
And I still didn’t want to fucking go.<
br />
I didn’t want to see anyone, not in this lifetime or the next, if I was going to be totally honest.
“Miss Allen, are you there?”
I didn’t want to see any of them. I had told myself that when I left, I never would ever again. I had promised myself that I wouldn’t.
But Grandma Genie asked. Grandma Genie who had taken care of the girls when you couldn’t. Who had called you to come for them.
I fisted my free hand and felt this horrible sense of anxiety wrap around my heart, stealing the breath right out of me.
She had asked for me specifically.
It was the least I could do.
I don’t want to go.
I didn’t want to see the biggest assholes on the planet.
But Grandma Genie….
“I’m here,” I muttered, flexing my quad muscles again. I couldn’t even stand the sound of my own voice as I replied, and I sure didn’t like the sound of it as I said, “Can you give me a second to get a piece of paper so I can write down the information?”
“Of course, Miss Allen. While you do that, I would like to inform you about a matter of an inheritance that Miss Miller endowed on you in her will. There are some forms you’ll need to fill out and return to me—”
I hated how much my hand shook as I wrote down the name and the address of the funeral home, memorizing the time for it. I let the information about inheritance go in one ear and out the other. None of that mattered to me even a little bit, especially not when I was too focused on all the rest of the news that came with Grandma Genie passing away in the first place. On what going to her funeral might mean.
I thought I was better than this. I thought I had gotten over it. I had grown up. Gotten stronger.
I didn’t want to go. I didn’t want to go. I didn’t want to fucking go. Not to San Antonio. Not to anywhere near San Antonio.
Part of me wanted to believe they wouldn’t be there. Or maybe if they were, they wouldn’t have the balls to say anything to me. They picked on people they thought were weaker than them. I was older. Not tougher, but I was older and stronger.
Lily and them might be mad when I told them that I didn’t want them to go, but they’d get over it.
We had made a pact when I had picked them up and taken them back to Mr. Cooper’s house. We weren’t going back there. We were going to start over again, together. We were going to do great.
I stared at the notes written on the work order I needed to get started on, but not remembering a single word of it because...
I didn’t want to go.
Just as quickly as that thought entered my head, another one did too.
Hell.
I had something to think about.
Chapter 5
I had made a lot of dumb decisions in my life.
A lot.
I could be honest about it, mostly because I had learned valuable lessons from each screwup in my life.
Don’t waste your time expecting people to change, and if you think you might be starting your period, don’t risk it and leave your house without a tampon.
Honestly, the list was pretty freaking long, but those were my favorite lessons.
But as I sat there at the bar, at an empty table, all by myself, I accepted the fact that coming here tonight could easily go down as one of those dumb decisions. Dumber than when I’d bought clothes a size smaller than what I usually wore to “motivate me to lose weight.” They were still in my closet with the tags on. The problem with this dumb decision was that I doubted there was some lesson to be learned from it.
Nobody had forced me to come to the bar. No one had whispered into my ear, “Luna, ruin your entire day by contemplating the idea of asking Rip to cash in your favor. Rush through work, head to the bar to sort-of celebrate his birthday, and then act like everything was fine.”
I was going to ask Rip for a favor.
A favor he technically did owe. A favor he usually asked me about every single day we worked together, unless it was one of those mornings that had me breaking up an argument between him and Mr. Cooper and then we didn’t see each other the rest of the day.
I didn’t want to ask though.
I didn’t want to ask him for anything.
The problem was, I didn’t want to go to my grandmother’s funeral alone. Just the idea of going by myself made me more nauseous than asking Rip for something. But the near panic I got at the idea of having my siblings go with me trumped everything else by far, and asking Mr. Cooper or one of my friends to go with me and possibly see up close who I was related to…
No. Just, no.
It was just a trip to San Antonio. Nine hours total. He would just have to sit there and possibly give people that death glare he’d perfected before he had started working at CCC.
It was nothing to worry about. If anything, Rip should be happy this was all I was going to ask of him. Shouldn’t he? Maybe he’d be in a better mood, not having to ask me the same question only to get the same answer all the time.
He’d wanted to get rid of this loose end between us from the very beginning. He had never hidden that. Not once. So I was going to do him a favor and get it over with after so freaking long.
Maybe he’d even thank me.
Yeah, right. I’d lost my mind. I was seriously going to ask Rip for a favor? Ripley the same man who, based on the scarring on his knuckles that marred the letters he had tattooed on them, had more than likely gotten into more fights in his life than a professional MMA fighter? I was going to ask him to go with me to my grandmother’s funeral so that he’d hopefully stop my family from trying to talk to me?
I was pathetic. I really was. Just like my dad had said for so much of my childhood.
Sad, stupid-ass.
That memory came out of freaking nowhere.
I stomped it back down into its little box.
I was having a good day. My sister had put a piece of cherry pie into my lunch, and that was something great about today. I had gotten all of my work done and then some.
I was happy. I was loved. I had everything and more I could have wanted.
I could do it. I had done scarier things than asking for something. I was past all this crap.
That’s exactly what I was going to think to myself as I sat there, alone, watching Rip at the bar as he got a drink, and waiting for more of my coworkers to show up because so far no one else had gotten there yet even though I’d been the second to last one to leave. Knowing most of my coworkers, they either wouldn’t come or they were at home pre-gaming, aka having beers so they wouldn’t spend as much drinking at the bar. It wouldn’t be the first time they did that.
The good thing with me was, I didn’t drink that much in the first place. I didn’t like the idea of being in a car with a stranger drunk or even slightly out of it. Plus, there was also that worry that I had always carried inside of me about how I would act if I was under the influence of anything.
Was I really going to ask him?
My phone buzzed from inside my purse. I took it out and saw my best friend’s name on the screen, and an idea came to me. If Rip told me to fuck off, I could always tell her to ask one of her friends to go with me. One of them would say yes. I wouldn’t care what someone I didn’t know thought.
There was always a plan B.
Lenny: What are you doing tonight?
I didn’t hesitate texting her back. It wasn’t like there was anything else to do but look around and stress.
Me: It’s my boss’s birthday and I’m at the bar.
Lenny: Rip?
Me: Yeah.
I realized right then that I had been so busy I hadn’t texted her all day.
Me: My grandma died a few days ago. Her lawyer called to tell me about the funeral arrangements. She had asked that he let me know….
A wave of sadness and guilt had me holding my breath before I kept typing.
Me: The funeral is next week in San Antonio. I don’t want to go, but I kinda owe it to
her to have one of us go. Better me than Lily, Kyra, or Thea.
Was my head starting to hurt or was I imagining it?
Gripping my phone in my hand, I glanced up and took in the man ten feet away. I studied his wide back, no longer covered by a gray shirt but instead by a deep green Henley that hugged the flat expanse of his stomach, every notch of his spine, and curve of his lateral muscles, yet managed to still cling to his waist. He was plain big all over. Everywhere. I’d watched him enough to know. I could live the rest of my life and not forget any part of what he looked like.
I sighed, but I still didn’t look away. He’d already been standing at the bar for at least five minutes, either still waiting for his drink or pretending like I wasn’t the only person from work here.
My phone buzzed again.
Lenny: That blows. I’m sorry.
Lenny: I’ll go with you. I ain’t scared.
I bit the inside of my cheek and typed my response.
Me: I know you would, Len, but you’re still healing from your surgery and can’t choke anybody out.
I knew I should tell her that I was thinking about asking Rip, but she didn’t know about the favor. She had heard, better than anyone, just what I thought about him. It wouldn’t make sense to her why a man who barely spoke to me would go with me back home.
I had buried myself in a lie by not telling the truth, and now there was no way to get out of it without having to explain the whole thing, and as much as I loved and cared for Lenny DeMaio, it wasn’t my business to tell her what had happened.
Rip and I were the only two people in the world who needed to know the truth.
Me: Next family funeral.
Next family funeral. Like there was someone else in my biological family other than my sisters who I would miss or go visit when they were gone. How sad was that?
When I’d been growing up, I would have done freaking anything for a dad to tuck me in. For a mom who would hug me and put Band-Aids on my boo-boos. For an older brother to protect me when people were mean. For my dad to play with me. For the person I had called my mom for years to hug me. For my older brother to just pay attention to me.
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