There had to be a reason why a man had shown up one day and become our newest boss, almost without warning, without anything more than a strained smile from the owner of the business and a “I’d like you all to meet Ripley” in the break room.
Ripley, this man who constantly kept his skin covered with long-sleeved shirts. I had never, ever seen him wearing anything else. Not when we worked until midnight. Not when we worked until two o’clock in the morning. Not at seven in the morning. Not even on a Saturday. He constantly hid whatever tattoos he had.
At first, I had wondered if they were ugly or old, but he didn’t strike me as the type to care what other people thought. Plus, wouldn’t he have just gotten them redone if that was the case? Mr. Cooper had never been slumming it financially, and the business had only boomed in the years since it had expanded into the restoration business—specifically with the cars Rip bought, restored, and then sold. I couldn’t think of a single car he’d worked on that hadn’t been flipped in a matter of weeks for a lot more than he had invested in them. He could have easily afforded getting tattoos redone if he didn’t like them. The only reasonable explanation I could think of was that some tattoos were intensely personal to people. I didn’t walk around flashing the one I had around.
A part of me was holding out hope that one day he’d slip up and tug his shirt up his forearm or something. He could accidentally pull up his shirt too if he wanted, and I wouldn’t complain. Knowing him, that day was never going to come. If he hadn’t shown them off already, I really doubted he ever would.
Then again it wasn’t my business what they were. If I wanted to know bad enough, I guess I could have used the favor he owed me to get him to tell me, but I didn’t. I wouldn’t, either.
Focusing on that moment though, I decided to do the same thing I always had when I overheard them. While I was at it, I could drop off the cake that I had made for Rip. Up until last year, I hadn’t even known what day his birthday was; the only reason I found out was because he’d tossed his wallet at me one day so I could grab his credit card and buy his lunch, and his driver’s license had been right there.
Last year, he had looked like he didn’t know whether he wanted to throw his cake away or eat it, but he had still thanked me.
I was expecting pretty much the exact same thing this year, but that was good enough for me.
After filling the coffee pot with water and a brand-new filter, I pulled out the secret container of decaf I hid in one of the cabinets and scooped some into the basket. Then, turning around to make sure no one was hiding in a corner and watching what I did, I filled up the rest with regular caffeinated grounds. So far, in the years since I’d taken over making the first pot of coffee, no one had caught onto my blend. Otherwise, there would be a whole lot of crying over drinking decaf.
The fact was, I didn’t need my hands shaking from too much caffeine when I had to deal with paint, and the last thing most of the people I worked with needed was anything else to get them even more wired than they were on a normal basis.
I watched the pot and waited.
I also kept listening to the two men in the room next door because there was nothing else to do. At least that’s what I told myself to justify eavesdropping. I wasn’t standing outside the office door with my ear pressed to it or anything. It wasn’t my fault the building wasn’t soundproofed that well.
“Last time I checked, this is our business and we make decisions together,” the deeper voice grumbled.
“You’re getting mad over an ad?”
“I’m getting mad over you not including me in decisions that affect me,” the younger man replied.
I had to give it to Mr. Cooper. I wasn’t sure why Rip was picking an argument with him over an ad for a job opening. I mean, really?
“Ripley, I didn’t hire anyone. All I did was place an ad.”
“It’s not that you placed an ad. It’s that you didn’t tell me about it. I’m sick and fucking tired of you doing things without telling me. You don’t listen.”
“What haven’t I listened to you about?” Mr. Cooper asked, finally sounding a little impatient.
“Where do you want me to start? You want me to work my way back or work my way in order to this?”
I winced.
This wasn’t going to get any better. I didn’t need a crystal ball to know that, if anything, this was going to go downhill real quick. Crap.
So I did what I’d been doing when I thought their arguments were on the verge of spiraling out of control—like that one time I’d heard something break from inside the office and then hadn’t seen Mr. Cooper at the shop for days afterward. He had finally told me, weeks later, that he wasn’t used to having someone else to answer to and had needed time to get away because his blood pressure had gone up so much his chest had ached.
I didn’t want Mr. Cooper, who had been taking blood pressure medicine for as long as I’d known him, to have an achy chest. So I was going to have to be the one to do something. No one else would.
A memory of my dad calling me a nosey-ass slipped into my thoughts for a second, but I forced the memories down and snagged two mugs from the drying rack beside the sink and poured identical amounts of sugar into each.
The light on the coffee maker came on just as I finished pouring the last of the creamer into one of the mugs. At the same time, I heard Mr. Cooper raise his voice on the other side of the wall, sounding more frustrated than I had heard him in a long time. “What have I honestly done lately to make you be like this with me?”
Part of me wished that wasn’t about the tenth time I’d heard those exact words said out loud.
It only made me wonder even more what the hell that even meant.
What have I honestly done lately to make you be like this with me? I mean those were some harsh words. Resentful words. But it was as far as they went.
Filling the cups with the hot coffee, I stirred both of them with the same spoon and slipped the loops of the shopping bag carrying the cake container around my wrist. Then I picked up the mugs by their handles, ignoring how many times I had done this exact same thing for other people in my life—except in those cases, the coffee never did anything, no matter how much I would have wanted it to. It had always come back around to bite me in the ass.
But anyway.
“Mr. Cooper?” I called out as I walked out of the break room and turned to the left. Making sure I didn’t spill coffee on myself, I tapped my elbow against the closed door directly next to the one I’d just come out of. The only thing that told anyone what was behind the door was a small faded green plaque that said OFFICE. We had brought it with us during the move from the original CCC building.
There was a pause before Mr. Cooper’s familiar voice called out, “Morning, Luna. Come in,” like he had every time I knocked on his door.
I made myself smile as I pushed the door open and found Mr. Cooper behind his desk, looking pretty worn out for how early it was. His hair had already been a mix of silver and white by the time I’d met him, but it was hard not to notice how much more there was now. The lines at his eyes were deeper than I remembered, and his thin lips were pressed tight so often now it was hard to remember what they looked like when they weren’t.
The man needed a vacation, and not just a quick weekend getaway but a nice long one. I should mention it to Lydia. He needed to start cutting back on his hours too, while he was at it, but that was another battle.