I glanced at him. “Why me?”
He scoffed. “I’m not their favorite.”
I blinked again, ignoring the way Owen, the other guy who had been looking up, snickered.
“I don’t have your magic touch,” Miguel added.
“I don’t have a magic touch.”
He looked at Owen, and they both nodded and agreed at the same time, “Yeah, you do.”
“I need to go. I have a doctor’s appointment in—” I glanced at my watch. “—thirty minutes.”
The yelling got louder for a brief moment, making us all focus up at the open staircase and the landing that fed off from it.
“Do something, Luna,” Owen said. “It’s Rogelio’s last day. I don’t want today to be my last day. Miguel doesn’t want it to be his last day. Nobody else but Rogelio wants it to be their last day, either. You know how they get.”
I wanted to argue, I really did, but I knew when to pick my fights, and in this case, this wasn’t one I had any chance of winning. I already knew none of them were going to go upstairs and say anything.
“Chicken shits,” I groaned and couldn’t help but smile when they laughed.
I shouldered off my bag and dropped it on the floor by my feet. “You guys owe me,” I mumbled under my breath as I ignored my coworkers and headed up the stairs, shaking my head.
“I’ll buy you a Sprite tonight!” Owen shouted up.
“What’s going on tonight?” I stopped and called down to him.
“We’re getting together at Mickey’s. I told Jason to tell you hours ago,” my coworker claimed.
That freaking fart face. Man, he sucked.
Shoving that aside, it kind of answered my predicament for being home tonight, so I gave him a thumbs-up. “I’ll see you there then,” I told him before continuing up the staircase, listening.
The voices stopped for a second, yet still managing to be a loud, muffled buzz of anger, but right as I got to the top of the stairs, it started up again, less of an unidentified mumble and more individual words laced together.
“—so goddamn disrespectful!”
“I’m fucking disrespectful? Are you fucking with me?”
“No, I’m not fucking with you, Ripley! You hurt Lydia’s feelings! We went because she told me I should go.”
Ooh. I winced at that. I thought it had been long enough that they wouldn’t bring up Rip walking out on them during his birthday celebration. I was wrong. I took one step forward and then another. Still listening.
“I don’t give a fuck why you went or why you took her with you!”
“Because she’s my wife, and she has been for almost twenty-three years!” my favorite boss shouted back.
I took another three steps, passing the break room and approaching the office door when the words got real.
“Yeah, the wife you married a year after your last one died. You want to talk about fucking disrespectful.”
Mr. Cooper had been married before?
I blinked at the door, feeling… I don’t know. Shocked? Taken aback?
I had worked for Mr. Cooper for nearly ten years and had never heard anything about another wife.
There were plenty of reasons why people wouldn’t share information like that, I told myself as I raised my hand. If his wife had died and he didn’t want to talk about it… it wasn’t my business to get why, much less to judge.
There were more than enough things in my life I would rather not talk about with anyone.
But the knowledge that he’d had another wife before the one I knew…. That we had known each other for so long and I had told him things I didn’t tell most others, when he hadn’t ever said anything to me about this….
This isn’t about you, I reminded myself. It wasn’t. Not even close.
Then I knocked.
The voices went quiet.
The “Luna?” from Mr. Cooper was low and beyond strained.
Of course he knew it was me. No one else was dumb enough to come bother them while they were yelling. Or I could think of it like I was the only one brave enough to.
Those scaredy cats were downstairs hoping for a miracle.
What they were getting was me.
“I’m leaving for the day. I have my doctor’s appointment, and I left Jason in my room. Do either one of you need anything before I go?” I called out, rolling my eyes at my own words. I wasn’t even trying to be subtle about breaking their argument up. Did they need anything? When had I ever asked them that when I was about to walk out? Never, that was when.
There was a pause that I was pretty sure consisted of them either sitting or standing on opposite sides of Mr. Cooper’s desk, glaring at the door or at each other.
Then Mr. Cooper called out, “No, I’m fine. Thank you for asking.”
I made a face at the door, because we both knew that was BS.
Then there was a rumble of a “Go to the doctor, Luna” that I barely understood.
“Okay,” I called out again, wincing at just how fake happy I sounded. “Have a good night!”
I took three steps away and stopped. Then I listened and waited.
But there wasn’t a single sound from inside the office.
Until the doorknob turned suddenly and the next thing I knew the door itself was being opened.
Crap.
There wasn’t a point in hiding or running. It was just going to make it that much more obvious and worse. So, I walked like normal toward the stairs to go down, only glancing over my shoulder when I actually made it to the landing. That was when I saw that it was Rip who had followed me out.
His expression was that usual one that seemed like bottled-up thunder under skin and bone.
Screw it. I waved at him.
“See you tomorrow, boss,” I called out to him, knowing I wouldn’t get a response. He was a grumpy little goose.
My phone vibrated from my pocket, and when I picked it up, my sister’s name flashed across the screen.
It was a picture message of what she’d told me earlier was Jamaica Beach in Galveston.
Then another message came through.
Lily: WISH YOU WERE HERE
My poor little heart honestly ached, but I still texted her back.
Me: Me too. Love you and be safe.
I typed another message and then let my fingers linger over the screen, deciding whether to send it or not.
I sent it.
Me: Don’t forget about me.
Her reply was instant.
Lily: I could never forget about my FAVORITE SISTER.
Her favorite sister.
Well. Okay. She had never called me that before, but I liked it. I liked it a lot.
Just as quickly as I decided that, the idea of going home to an empty house seemed like hell. With my phone still out, I shot out a quick text to Lenny.
Me: I’ve got a gyno appointment in thirty. You free later? My coworkers are getting together after work, and the girl is gone, and I don’t want to go home too early.
Chapter 12
“Look, look!”
I was already looking at Lenny, who was behind the wheel of her car, gesturing to me with one hand as we left the Greek place we had gone to have dinner at. “No,” I cut her off. “I did look, and he’s out of my league.”
She groaned.
I looked down at the picture of a half-naked man on my phone and shook my head. “He is, Len. I can see it. He probably has girls hitting on him all the time. Just look at him.”
She didn’t bother arguing that the man she had apparently set me up on a date with—a retired MMA fighter—had plenty of girls hitting on him. She’d be a freaking liar if she did, and Lenny was a whole lot of things, but not a liar. That was me. The route she did decide to go down was, “Give me a break. You’re out of his league.”
I would have laughed, but she kept going like she knew exactly what I was going to say and wasn’t about to let me.
“You’re the fucking best, Luna.”
I smiled at her and lifted a shoulder. “I’ve got my moments,” I tried to joke.
“What have you got to lose? He’s hot, but you’ve got that Cinderella thing going,” she tried to say.
I rolled my eyes because I hated when she used the Cinderella example on me. I was usually dirty, cleaning up after others, working too much, and taking someone’s shit. The Life of Luna.