Luna and the Lie

by Zapata, Mariana

  After fifteen minutes, I would have taken anyone attempting to look around, so at least there had been some hope that someone was looking for me. But the only looking-around going on was people coming in groups looking for a table. I had taken up a two-seater in the middle of the room.

  There wasn’t anyone though. Just me, sitting alone, watching other people. The story of my life.

  I checked my phone one more time and didn’t even bother sighing when nothing had changed on the screen. One of the waitresses walked by me with a tray of potato wedges covered in melted cheese and what I was pretty sure was broken up bits of bacon. My stomach grumbled. I should have gotten at least a snack before I’d come.

  Ten more minutes. Ten more minutes and I’d leave and not feel guilty because I had come. That was it. I wasn’t going to stay a minute longer; I was starving. If I wanted potato wedges, I could settle for a stop at the Jack in the Box on the way home.

  Across from me were a group of men standing right by a dart board, already halfway trashed if how bad their aim was meant anything. One of them threw a dart that hit about three feet to the right, bouncing off the sheetrock covered wall that already had a bunch of holes on it from other drunk guys in the past trying to play the same game. The men in the crowd started laughing, but the same man went again and did just as bad.

  I glanced at my phone.

  Three minutes down, seven to go.

  “All alone?”

  I must have been that distracted that it took me a second to process who was standing there in front of me, holding something dark and amber in a glass. It was the big hand with fingers covered in tattoos that I caught onto first. Then it was the long sleeve ending right at the man’s wrist that I took in next.

  There was only one person I knew who would wear a long-sleeved shirt in the summer. And when that wrist connected to a big, muscular arm, and then a wide chest, a thick neck, and finally a face I had seen countless times…

  I’m sure my eyes were bugging out of my skull.

  “Rip?” I might have gasped like I didn’t know his name.

  Those teal-colored eyes didn’t shine, and his mouth didn’t form the shape of a smile. He went right on looking at me as he stood there, tall as ever, broad as ever, and just too handsome as I sat there, getting stood up. “You here alone?” my boss asked.

  Was… was I here alone?

  I had lost my mind. Crap. I must have been that surprised I couldn’t think straight. “Hi. Yeah.” I smiled, confused as to why he was here. “I was supposed to have a date, but I don’t think he’s showing up,” I babbled.

  He scratched at the side of his nose with the thumb of his free hand. Then he pulled the only other chair at the table out and wedged that huge body into it. His forearms went to the top, and those eyes came back to me.

  Did he have a funny look on his face or was I imagining it?

  “What are you doing here?” I asked, looking around—I wasn’t sure for what, a beautiful woman with giant knockers coming toward us or something.

  But no one was even paying the smallest bit of attention toward our table.

  Rip had his focus on the group of men throwing darts as he replied, casually, “Getting a drink before I head home.”

  Well, that made sense.

  Grabbing the tip of the straw in my drink, I fidgeted with it as I kept an eye on the man on the other side of the table. “Do you live close to here?”

  He was still looking at the group of men. “No.”

  So…. “Are you here by yourself?”

  “Yeah.”

  Rip turned that perfectly profiled face over to me as he took a sip of his drink. Lazily, those dark eyebrows went up a little. “This is a shitty place to meet a stranger, baby girl.”

  See? There was that tiny bit of fondness again. “It’s public.”

  “It’s dark,” he countered.

  I blinked. “There’s a lot of people here.”

  “A lot of people drunk or about to be.”

  “The bouncer is almost as big as you are,” I told him.

  That other eyebrow went up and he said slowly, “The parking lot is fucking dark.”

  I’d swear on my life that he smirked, and I ignored the little pleasure I felt at it. At being the one he would do something like that with. But it didn’t mean anything. I couldn’t forget that. He was my boss, and… he was fond of me. He was. I knew it. He’d shared his lunch with me. If that wasn’t fondness, I didn’t know what was. I knew how to share, and everyone knew that. But Rip? Rip had hidden his birthday cake so no one else could have any.

  “Why’d you choose this joint to meet up at?”

  It finally hit me right then that he was here watching me wait around for my date. Watching me get stood up. Fantastic.

  Absolutely fantastic.

  Why was he always around when my Luna Luck kicked in at its worst? Literally, my cousin trying to hurt me? He was there. My sister kicking me out of her apartment after a four-hour drive? He was there. Me screwing up at work? He was there. Me getting lied to by the same sister? He was there.

  I wasn’t sure I believed in signs, but if I did, those would have been major ones. At least that’s what I’d figure.

  I sighed, shoved those worries aside, and sipped out of my straw just to kill time before I told him the truth. “Because it isn’t that far or that close to my house.”

  I didn’t imagine that his look was pretty freaking close to him being amused. “Pretty smart.”

  I tapped my temple.

  Wanting to change the subject, and taking advantage that he’d come over to sit with me, I leaned forward and put my chin on top of my opened palm. “Will you tell me where you live or is that too personal? I can put it in our box of secrets, if you want.”

  He moved his head from side to side before replying with two major streets I recognized being further up north.

  “House, duplex, apartment, or complex?”

  “Shithole.”

  I shouldn’t have laughed… but I did, and when I caught him smirk-smiling, I knew he had said that on purpose. He was playing again. Why now? After all these years? I wondered, but did I care that much? No.

  “It’s shit. Just somewhere to sleep and eat,” he explained, smoothly.

  I took a quick sip of my Sprite. “How long is your lease?”

  “I don’t have one.”

  He lived in a shithole, but it wasn’t a rental. I didn’t want to say that didn’t make sense, but… it didn’t.

  “It’s not that kinda place.” His mouth twitched, and he said out of the blue, “I got a mobile home on a lot.”

  “It’s yours?”

  Rip nodded.

  “That’s not a shithole then.”

  “Whatever you say,” he said, keeping an eye on me. “It’s shit, believe me, but it’s a place to sleep, shower, and make food.”

  “That’s all mine has too,” I told him. “My place isn’t amazing or anything, but it’s mine, so I think it’s pretty awesome.”

  The little smile that he gave me at my words egged me on to keep talking.

  “You should have seen my house when I first bought it. It looked like it could have been the setting for a movie about a family who moved in and the children get possessed by poltergeists that had been in the house for the last two hundred years. My little sister, Lily, used to shove a chair under her closet door because it freaked her out. I slept with a lamp on for like the first year, but don’t tell anyone I told you that. I always told them all they were overreacting, but it really was creepy in there. Half the time I expected something to grab my foot off the edge of the bed and pull me under.”

  Ripley’s eyes lit up and my chest filled with pleasure. “That bad?”

  He had no idea, and it made me laugh. “Yeah. I couldn’t shower in peace without opening up an eye every two seconds just to make sure nothing was lurking in the bathroom with me.”

  Rip made this hoarse noise that almost sounded like a chuc
kle, and I wasn’t about to let myself react. Nope.

  “You can come over one day if you feel like maybe getting possessed or want to get an idea even though a lot of it looks pretty different now. There’s still a lot I want to do to it though.” Was he smiling? “But it’s mine, and as long as I pay the mortgage and the property taxes, no one can take it away but the ghosts and the little kids who live in the walls.”

  He chuckled at me. For real. And that dimple was kinda-sorta in full view when he asked, “How long you had it?”

  “A year and a half. How long have you had your place?”

  “Three years,” he replied without thinking twice.

  Since he’d come to Cooper’s.

  Then he decided to switch the conversation on me. “You were pretty young, getting your own place.”

  I took a sip of my Sprite. “I didn’t want to live in an apartment longer than I needed to. We moved around a lot when I was a kid, and I hated it. So when I got a job, I set aside as much money as I could, even if it was only twenty bucks a week. My goal had been to buy something when I was twenty-two, but after my sisters came to live with me, there was always something else to spend money on. Mr. Cooper offered to cosign for me if I needed it, but I got the house for such a good price and had built up my credit over the years, so I didn’t have to. They’d already done enough, cosigning my car loan for me when I was eighteen.” I smiled at him and hesitated with what I wanted to say next. But screw it. “I know you two aren’t exactly best friends, but Mr. C is the most generous man I’ve ever met. He’s been better to me than my own dad, but I’m sure you’ve put that together by now.”

  Strangers had been better to me than my own dad, but nobody needed to bring that up.

  Luckily, Rip didn’t get all hot and bothered by my comment. He just looked thoughtful for a second before he seemed to shrug it off and aim that intense gaze on me again. Even his body seemed to lean forward as he asked, “Why you here, Luna?”

  “Because my sister has bad radar for men and she set me up with someone who couldn’t even find it in his heart to reschedule our date or at least tell her he wasn’t interested anymore?”

  His gaze didn’t move away from me. Nothing about him did, and it made me wonder if that wasn’t exactly the question he’d asked.

  “Or are you asking why I’m trying to go on a date period?”

  The look he gave me confirmed that had been his original question.

  Well. “Because” was my brilliant freaking answer.

  That got me an eyebrow raise. “Because?”

  Why did I feel so uncomfortable all of a sudden? I lifted a shoulder. “Because. Why do you date?”

  He blinked. “I don’t.”

  It was my turn to blink. “What do you mean you don’t date?”

  “I don’t date,” he confirmed.

  I stared. “Why?”

  Those teal eyes were totally centered on me. “Because I don’t know. Never wanted to. Didn’t want to be tied down. Didn’t like anybody enough, you choose,” he replied easily, like it was a fact. And maybe it was for him.

  I couldn’t help myself, especially not when he was being so open. I figured he’d turn this around on me sooner or later, I knew how persistent he could be, but I was going to milk this as long as he was willing. “You’ve never had a girlfriend?”

  That got me a nostril flaring. “No.”

  “Never?”

  He gave me one of his “duh” looks. “No.”

  I made a face that had him doing that low barely a chuckle thing.

  “Have I seen the same woman a few times? Yeah…”

  That wasn’t jealousy or anything that made my stomach tense.

  “But a fucking old lady? A girlfriend? Like we’re friends and talk about shit and go over to spend time with each other? Nah.” He shook his head. “Nah.”

  Sex. He was trying to tell me the only interest in women he had was only if it was sex-related. I couldn’t say that it didn’t leave a weird feeling in my gut, but… it explained some things. I wasn’t going to worry about that bitter thing in my stomach at the idea of him having sex with people.

  It wasn’t like I was a virgin.

  But his comment and his look helped me understand why I needed to settle my expectations for what they were.

  He was here, talking to me, and he could be kind and nice and caring when he wanted to be, but that was it. It wasn’t like that should be a surprise or anything. If I looked at it a certain way, maybe it would actually make me feel nice that he saw me in a different light… in a way.

  I guessed.

  “Why you here, Luna?” he asked again, going back to the topic of me a lot sooner than I had hoped.

  I shoved his previous words aside and focused. “Because I’d like to meet somebody to be my friend and spend time with me.” I turned his words around on him.

  He rubbed his fingers against his glass. “Why don’t you already have somebody?”

  Why?

  “Thought you were dating somebody when we first met,” he kept going.

  Oh… “We had already broken up by then, but… you know, things just ended. He wanted something that I didn’t, and we broke up,” I told him, knowing it was coming off as mysterious, but hoping he wouldn’t hook onto the bait.

  He was nosey enough that he did, and I couldn’t help but feel his surprise. “What he want?”

  I had walked right into that, hadn’t I? I fidgeted with my straw again. “Between us?”

  He nodded.

  “A threesome.”

  Nothing on his features registered surprise.

  “With his ex-wife,” I finished, giving him a smile and kind of raising a shoulder. I was over it. Now it just made me laugh.

  Rip blinked, took a drink, and then took his time with his next question, making an almost stunned face. “Say that again.”

  I finally did laugh. “He wanted us to have a threesome with his ex-wife. Apparently that’s something he did sometimes with other people, even after they divorced, but I had no idea until he asked.”

  That big body leaned back in his chair, but that funny face didn’t go anywhere. “He broke up with you over it?”

  I fiddled with the straw again, looking down into the Sprite before raising my gaze back to him. “I broke up with him over it. He said he was sorry and that he shouldn’t have asked, but it was too late. It hurt my feelings, and I couldn’t get over it. I mean, I don’t think I was being overly dramatic, but it’s a little weird that a man still has sex with his ex-wife. They had two daughters together. You know?

  “He swore it wasn’t a big deal if we didn’t, that they were over for a reason and that it didn’t mean anything, it was just sex, he’d said. But back then, he’d been the only one I’d ever…” Crap. He didn’t need to know where the rest of that had been going. Did he? Nope. “He was really nice, and he treated me really well, and I know he cared about me, but in that question… he broke my trust, and I knew I would never be able to get over it. What, he’d bring up having a threesome with her again later on? Or get bored with me and then find someone else to suggest? I don’t think so. So I broke up with him, and that was that.”

  That story stung a lot less this time than it had every other time in the past I had retold it.

  He hadn’t broken my heart, but he had my trust.

  I had been sad for about two days, and then I got over it. I didn’t let people take too much of my time away, and that’s what mourning and whimpering were. Time and energy wasted.

  Maybe some people would be able to have a threesome… maybe I could have if we hadn’t been in a relationship and he hadn’t been the same man I had lost my virginity to… but I was pretty sure that there was something in me that wouldn’t let me ever be in that kind of relationship.

  I’d had to share so much in my life. I thought that if I wanted to be selfish every once in a while, there was nothing wrong with that.

  I shrugged again. “And right aft
er him, I saw this one guy for a few weeks… kind of like a rebound, I guess… and that’s been it, except for a couple of dates here and there every few months, but none of them ever worked out.” I plastered a smile on. “But now that Lily is gone, everyone talked me into giving it another try. So I’m here, getting stood up. Yay.”

  Rip’s nostrils flared again, and one of those thick fingers went to the rim of his glass, circling it while his eyes strayed to mine. “But why are you here, baby girl?”

  Why was I here?

  That wasn’t a loaded question.

  I glanced at the group of men still trying to play darts. “I’m happy, but I know people who are even happier because of the people in their lives, you know? I’ve always liked seeing elderly couples walking around, holding hands and stuff; I want the same thing, or at least I want to try for it. I want a partner. I want someone I can rely on. Someone to snuggle with would be nice. I like snuggling.

  “And if I have to meet a bunch of guys and sit at a bar getting stood up a few times until I find one who makes me feel… happier than I am by myself, then it’ll be worth it someday.” I smiled at him to make the conversation not seem as heavy as it felt for me.

  But it was all the truth. I just… wanted somebody. Not just anyone, but someone special. A best friend and a lover. A partner. A life partner. I was fine being alone, but I didn’t want to be lonely, and there was a clear difference.

  Rip watched me, and I mean, he really watched me right then. Whether he was trying to figure out if I’d lost my mind or if I was something to be pitied, I had no idea.

  Maybe I should have kept my mouth shut. “Anyway, I should probably get going.”

  That big, beautiful man leaned forward in his chair, his eyes sweeping over my face and the hair that had gotten pretty wavy because of the humidity. I had almost forgotten I’d put a silver glitter clip into it that morning to keep it out of my face. “You’re gonna leave me here alone?”

  “You really want me to keep you company?”

  His response was a long, long look.

  For some reason, it made me feel oddly vulnerable. He thought I was pathetic. I knew it. But pathetic or not, well, he was kind of hinting he wanted me to keep him company. “I can stay if you want.”