Luna and the Lie

by Zapata, Mariana

  I dated this older guy for a while, and he was the reason why I got the apartment I was at. We split up and things got weird, and… to make a long story short, it was him who got into my apartment that night. He was jealous over my new boyfriend, but I got a restraining order now and I’m moving out when my lease is over in January.

  You always do the right thing, and I didn’t want you to get mad at me. By the time I knew I had to say something, it had been too long and I don’t know how to fix any of this anymore. Lies always spiral out of control, even if you don’t mean for them to, huh?

  I love you, Luna. I’m sorry for fucking up so much and lying to you and just being a shitty sister, but I want you to know everything.

  Please don’t be mad.

  Love, Thea

  P.S. You should know Rudy went to your house and job on his own. Dad didn’t send him there. He said that Rudy overheard me telling him about getting broken into and got the idea to try and get away with it. Dad had asked me to check with you that one day to make sure you were okay. He had a feeling Rudy would try to do something. I should have warned you, but now I have to live with that too if it makes you feel any better. I’m really glad you’re okay. Lily told me all about it. Not that it means much, but I’m sorry.

  That’s what I’d gotten.

  So I was going to blame my sister’s kind of passive-aggressive note on why I slept like shit.

  I was still mad. Me. Who was rarely ever mad. But how could she think I would give a single crap about her stripping? I wouldn’t care what she did.

  Why couldn’t she just call me? Why couldn’t she just tell me? I wasn’t scary. I understood, I guess to a certain point, but it still just felt like BS.

  What I was, was mad.

  And that was what I was going to blame as the reason why I lost it.

  Then again, maybe it was finding Ripley bent over the engine of a Corvette he was restoring and getting a great view of his butt that might have been the icing on the cake.

  Maybe it was the six red roses cut short and sitting in a glass bowl-like vase that were the icing on the cake. They were beautiful. But they were too beautiful. And when I really took in the vase and saw that it was spotless, without a single fingerprint on the glass, and imagined Rip carrying something super delicate in his hands and then wiping it down with maybe his shirt or a rag before leaving it there for me to find it….

  I lost it.

  It was that simple.

  I barely remembered dropping my bag and things on the floor and heading back out to the main floor to find the man who had left my gift there.

  “Rip!” I called out, knowing exactly where he was.

  There was no lapse in response. “Yeah?” he responded from the furthest end of the floor, still looking at something inside the Corvette.

  My coffee was sitting in a mug with the poster of the Rocky Horror Picture Show on it.

  That hadn’t existed in this building before. Had he bought it… for me?

  I sucked in a breath, eyeing it until I was right beside him before I forced myself to look over and say, “Rip,” I started, not even realizing I’d forgotten the “mister” part, “you can stop now with the flowers, all right?”

  He didn’t look up as he asked in that congenial, soft voice, “You didn’t like ’em?”

  “It isn’t about whether I like them or not—”

  He still didn’t glance over as he cut me off. “You liked them then?”

  “You know I do. They’re beautiful—”

  “You don’t like them in your room anymore?”

  I blinked. “No, I like them there—”

  “So…?” he asked, still busy doing whatever it was he was doing.

  I didn’t glance at his butt.

  I didn’t.

  “So then, you don’t have to keep buying them, okay? I told you already, I’m over what happened, if that’s why you’re doing it.”

  Now that had him straightening, his head just barely missing the hood of the Corvette.

  “You can stop. I get that you’re trying to make it up to me, but you’ve done enough. It’s just messing with my head and confusing me, and I would rather you stop now than stop a month from now or six months from now or a year from now when you decide you don’t want to do it anymore, okay?”

  That had him turning around slowly to meet me. He waited until he was fully facing me, that giant body tuned into mine, as he said, “I’m not trying to make anything up to you. I told you that already.” He set down the wrench in his hand and took a deep breath, watching me closely. “I’m getting you flowers because I want to. Because you said nobody has ever given them to you, and I’m not about to let anyone else do it. This isn’t some boss shit, baby. This doesn’t have shit to do with Cooper’s. This is Luna and Rip. This is me trying to get you to give me a chance. Understand me?”

  Oh hell. He was being serious. Luna and Rip.

  He was trying to… what? Win me over? I wasn’t being delusional. Just stubborn. And scared.

  You only miss the shots you don’t take, Lenny had texted me. Was that what I was doing? Not wanting to take a shot because I didn’t want to miss? Was it so bad to want to protect myself from getting hurt?

  I wasn’t sure, but some part of me must have been because I asked, “You’re not?”

  His smile grew slowly. “No, baby, I’m sure as hell not.”

  “Why?” I asked him as slowly as his smile had grown.

  “Because.”

  My heart was beating fast. When did it start beating so fast? Damn it. “You don’t get to just decide all of a sudden you want me to… to…” What was I going to say? Have a crush on him? I had no experience on how to talk to people, men specifically, without sounding worse than a teenager. “You don’t get to decide all of a sudden that you want me to like you—”

  “This isn’t me wanting you to like me. That’s not what I want. That’s the smallest part of what I want, Luna.”

  For some stupid reason, I took a step back and bumped into the car right beside the Corvette. “What do you want then?”

  Rip took a step forward, and then his hand came up toward my face. The backs of his fingers grazed my cheek… and they stayed there, just touching my skin, just barely. “I want what I should’ve been taking from you from the moment you started being sugar sweet to me. From the first time you went out of your way to make me feel good... made me feel better than anyone has for the first time in a long fucking time.”

  He licked his lips, and I watched every second of it as his hand stayed exactly where it was. On my cheek.

  His fingers trailed down my jaw and lingered on the side of my neck. “You calm me. You know that? You do to me what all that jewelry you wear does for you. Just looking at you makes me feel better. And not just fucking better but better. Different. Like you look right through me and my bullshit and you know what’s in there better than I do.”

  I stood there with my mouth open, not knowing what to say.

  “Lady at the flower store said orange means admiration.”

  My brain and nervous system decided all I was going to be capable of doing right then was blinking and, even then, that seemed almost like too much for me to handle.

  Because… excuse me?

  “Pink’s happiness… gratitude… appreciation. Those purples are desire… love at first sight… Yellow is affection. Red is love. I owe you a couple of white ones, but I was going to wait a while more because I know I fucked up.” He dropped his hand. “But I’m not going anywhere. Not today. Not tomorrow. I thought you were the most beautiful fucking girl I’d ever seen when you walked into that tiny-ass office three years ago being all cocky and shit. And I think about that girl every single night as I go to bed, Luna. I know I’ve walked away from some shit in my life, but the last thing I want… last thing I could handle is going through you not talking to me anymore. You spoiled me, Luna, and I know I’ve been a real piece of shit a lot. I know you deserve better than
somebody like me. I’ve told myself that a thousand times but it hasn’t changed a single thing. I fucking miss you, and my greedy ass needs you around.”

  Chapter 30

  “What’s that troubled look on your face for, little moon?” Mr. Cooper asked later that day.

  Sitting across from him at his dinner table, I took a second to finish chewing the lightly seasoned chicken breast that Lydia had made that night. The same piece of chicken breast that I had more than likely been chewing for the last two minutes while I’d been busy thinking about the first part of the day. Specifically, the part of the day that involved my interactions with Ripley.

  The part where he told me he wanted me in his life in a way that had nothing to do with work.

  That entire conversation that had left my heart pounding, my brain confused, and my entire existence uprooted.

  That was what I’d been thinking about all day. Even right then, while I ate with the Coopers and spent time with them… until my date in two hours.

  My date.

  What the hell was I doing?

  “Problems at work? Ripley said Jason never came back,” Mr. Cooper kept picking, his face genuinely concerned, which pulled at my heart.

  Finally swallowing the chicken, I shook my head, not sure what I should say. Sir, your estranged son of twenty years that was in a motorcycle club says he needs me. I love him, but I’m scared he’ll change his mind and won’t care about me someday, or he’ll tell me to leave him alone again.

  That wasn’t going to happen.

  “Yeah, he never came back. He probably knew the guys would kick his butt if he did,” I told him with a smile that was mostly genuine, at least beneath the confusion screwing up the rest of me into Gordian knots.

  That had Mr. Cooper grinning. “Doesn’t surprise me. I’m too old to be fighting with boys young enough to be my grandchildren, but I have to say, I would’ve put a world of hurt on that boy if I were ten years younger. Gus”—he was referring to Lenny’s grandpa—“called me after he found out what happened and tried to talk me into doing something about it.”

  The smile I gave him that time was totally genuine. I could already imagine Grandpa Gus’s crazy self wanting to do something about it. He hadn’t gotten the memo he was in his seventies.

  “What is it then, honey?” Lydia asked from her spot across the dining room table from me.

  It comforted me. They comforted me. Living with them had been the first time ever I’d sat around a dining room table to eat. We had done it every night after work unless we all went out to eat, or they went out and I stayed at the house. It had been one of my favorite things about living with them. The sense of family.

  It had made me want that for my own someday.

  They deserved more than me keeping things from them, even if those things revolved around a man who they both had strained relationships with. But I guess life was just one big complication any way you looked at it.

  Life wasn’t easy or black and white.

  And I really did need to tell them the truth.

  Because if Rip wasn’t lying….

  “It’s…,” I started to say before lowering my fork and knife to the plate. “It’s Rip.”

  Both of them blinked and stayed very, very still.

  “Did he finally decide to get his head out of his ass?” Mr. Cooper asked with a wary smile after a moment.

  “What?”

  He repeated himself. “Did he finally get his head out of his ass and tell you to save those dates for him?”

  My mouth gaped open, and I was really, really glad that I had set down the knife and fork. Out of the corner of my eye, I could see the cautious little smile on Lydia’s face as she bent toward her food and started cutting her chicken while Mr. Cooper and I made eye contact.

  “I knew you didn’t see it, little moon. I knew it from the first moment that I saw that look in Ripley’s eyes. Didn’t I tell you, Lydia, honey?” he asked his wife.

  Lydia nodded as she chewed her food and then held a hand up to cover her mouth as she agreed. “You did, and I saw it with my own two eyes too.”

  “What did you tell her?” I asked slowly, trying to process what he was implying.

  He cocked his head to the side. “That you didn’t know.”

  “Didn’t know what?”

  His smile was bittersweet. “That he took one look at you and knew.”

  “Mr. Cooper, you know I’m not that great with puzzles and contexts clues. What did he know looking at me?”

  “The same thing I knew when I looked at Lydia.” His smile changed from a bittersweet one to a soft one, and I could see in his eyes that he thought about another woman he had known once. “My daddy was the same way. His daddy was the same way. Us Coopers, we just know. The only difference is, Ripley got his stubbornness from his mom’s side of the family. I didn’t fight it.”

  “You think Ripley… likes me?” I asked.

  The older man cocked his head to the other side and went about cutting a piece of his chicken as he answered, “I don’t think. I know. I’ve seen it on his face a thousand times, Luna. Especially when he was being hard on you. I’ve tried telling him a few times that he should do something about it, but God knows when he sets his mind to something, there’s no convincing him to change it unless he decides to. And I know that takes an act of God. Just like his mom. He’s got that Ripley blood in him.”

  He still didn’t look back up at me as he continued going. “I don’t know him that well anymore, but I still see the boy he used to be in bits and pieces of him. He’s got the thickest skin I’ve ever seen, but I know those bones are still made out of love like they were… before.”

  Before his mom’s accident? Before he’d left Houston and done all those things he didn’t want to talk about?

  “Luna, honey,” Lydia spoke up. “Our relationships with Ripley are what they are. I couldn’t hold it against him, but I wish he would forgive us after so long. I never had kids, but I was close to my mama and daddy, and if my daddy would have married some strange woman a year after my mama died, I can’t say I would have behaved any better than he did. I knew what I was doing coming into Allen and Ripley’s life back then. I’ve gotta live with knowing that because I loved someone, his son packed up his things and left him for twenty years,” she paused. “We both have to live with that.”

  It all made sense all of a sudden. Rip’s reaction to Lydia. And as much as I would want to think that if I had a healthy relationship with my dad that I would want him to be happy… well, I wasn’t sure what I would think if or when he got remarried.

  I tried to think of how Lenny would have reacted to Grandpa Gus getting married again, and really, it wasn’t a pretty scene when I imagined it.

  A large hand drifted over my forearm and settled there, and even though I knew it was Mr. Cooper’s, I still glanced at his face. “He’s a difficult man. Trust me. Nobody knows that better than me. But he pushes the people that love him, pushes them like he’s trying to make sure they won’t go anywhere. Rip is the total opposite of you. God knows I love him and I will until the day I die, but I love you too. And you both deserve to be happy. He thinks the world of you, and I can’t help but think God brought you into our lives for a reason.”

  I stared at this man, feeling the fear in my chest, and I asked him, “But he loved you and he left you for twenty years, Mr. C. That’s not… what I want.”

  His smile was slow and honestly heartbreaking. “Luna, he threatened to quit on me a hundred times in the first year he came back.”

  I blinked.

  “He hasn’t stuck around because of me, honey.”

  * * *

  Why was I even here? I asked myself as I put my car into park and then turned off the ignition.

  Why was I? I should have cancelled the dumb date. I was wasting my time, gas, and money, and doing the same for whatever poor fool was meeting me here.

  Because I didn’t want to meet this guy that my sister K
yra had set up for me over a month ago.

  I didn’t want to meet any of the guys that I had. The more I thought about it, the more I accepted it.

  This whole thing was a mess I didn’t know how to handle or what to think of.

  Mr. Cooper had been adamant as I’d left, that regardless of what had happened between him and his son, that Rip did care about me. And Rip had been Lucas Ripley Cooper at one point. He was still in there.

  But why he’d waited until now, I would never know.

  Or maybe I would.

  Did I want to though?

  That was a stupid question. Of course I did. I wanted to know everything.

  I wanted it to be true.

  I wanted it to be true, but I also knew what it was like to hope and dream for things and not have them happen.

  I was being a chicken. I was being a giant chicken, wasn’t I? I gave Thea hell for not telling me the truth, because it seemed so easy for me, and here I was, doing the same thing as her.

  With my phone on my lap, I sent Lenny a text.

  Me: Do you think I’m being a coward with this Rip thing? Tell me the truth.

  Not even a minute went by before I got a response.

  Lenny: Yes

  Lenny: I didn’t make a chickenshit my best friend.

  I ignored the guilt and nerves floating around in my stomach as I sat there, reading Lenny’s message over and over again.

  There was no reason for my stomach to hurt.

  Luna, Luna, Luna, my conscience seemed to whisper in disappointment. You’re lying to yourself now.

  I was. I really was. I was being a coward. A chickenshit. A freaking scaredy cat.