It wasn’t just anyone he took into his home and into his life and family.

We didn’t hide that we spent birthdays, Thanksgivings, and Christmas Days together, and in years past, New Year’s Eve too. Now he claimed he was too old to stay awake until midnight. He was part of my family and had been for going on a decade. Just like his wife was. Just like my siblings were too.

Because he was my family, because he had gotten to know me so well, I couldn’t hide the fact that something was bothering me—specifically, a person who worked for him.

The same person I had never totally been honest with him about.

“It’s no big deal,” I lied, trying to give him a genuine smile, but I must have failed because the worried expression on his face didn’t change.

The seventy-one-year-old man, in a brand-new olive green collared shirt with COOPER’S COLLISION AND CUSTOMS stitched onto the breast, who stood right around six foot three, just kept on frowning. “Luna,” he said as I walked behind him, setting my hand on his shoulder for a moment before heading to the fridge. “Even if it’s a little deal, what’s wrong? Is it the girls?”

“No, the girls are fine,” I replied, knowing he was referring to my younger sisters.

“Something wrong at the house?”

“No, everything is fine, Mr. C, I promise,” I partially lied, grabbing my lunch bag from inside the fridge, finally wondering for a moment what my little sister had made. I’d worked late the night before, and by the time I made it home and showered, she had already loaded my bag up and set it back in the fridge for the next day.

That was definitely something I could be grateful for today. Thank God my little sister makes me lunch every day. She was the best cook in the family and wasn’t stingy about it. And I wasn’t going to let myself be sad that I had less than two months left of having my own personal chef in the house before she left me.

“Tell me what that face is for.” Mr. Cooper’s quiet, careful voice brought me back from the brink of being sad over something I had promised myself I wouldn’t be upset about. My baby sister was growing up and going to college. I had always known it was going to happen. It was what I had hoped for. I had already gone through it with my other two sisters, and I was proud of her—them—and happy. I was.

But I was never going to tell anyone that I’d cried twice already just thinking about Lily leaving.

And I was definitely not going to get upset about it at work. No, siree.

“Are you sad or mad, Luna? I can’t tell.”

Setting my bag on the table beside the seat Mr. Cooper was in, I started pulling containers out of it, eyeing the plastic Rubbermaids. There were three. One was full of chopped greens. The second one had what looked like rice, beans, and ground beef, and the smallest looked like it was full of pico de gallo. Yum.

“I’m not sad. I promise.” Liar. “The car I needed to start today wasn’t ready is all,” I told him, prying open the lids to take a peek inside of them, trying to ignore feeling like a snitch for even saying that much.

“That looks good,” the much older man commented as I turned around to stick the bean mix into the microwave. His voice was almost a whisper as he asked, “Who was supposed to be working on it first?”

I bit my lip as I pushed buttons on the screen. I wasn’t going to get mad. I wasn’t going to assume the worst. “You know who,” I told him in my normal voice, because I wasn’t doing anything wrong telling him, so I wasn’t going to be secretive.

And he did know. Mr. Cooper might be the boss—one of the bosses—but I rarely complained to him about anything, mostly because there were rarely things to complain about. I wasn’t going to tattle on anyone and get them into trouble. I was never going to abuse my relationship with Mr. Cooper, which was why I was totally fine with us usually being mostly professional at the shop.

But…

I had told him a couple times in the past about a certain coworker that I swear went out of his way to not just be a jerk, but a pain in the ass. But only to me. Because that was my luck.

I didn’t say anything to get the guy into trouble but just to vent. Mr. Cooper was mature enough and professional enough to take my words one day at his house for what they were: his daughter-like figure complaining to her father-like figure about someone who had cheated on someone she loved. Except I had never told him that part.

That “someone” being the middle of my younger sisters. So, of course that was already going to be a strike against the jerk who had made my sister cry. The fact that he wasn’t very nice to me even now didn’t help our relationship.

But in this case, Mr. Cooper, the owner of the business, peeked into our conversation, and I saw his head swing toward me, a frown on his well-loved face. “Again? Didn’t he do something like that a couple weeks ago?”

He had. Two weeks ago exactly. And a month before that, he’d done it too, but on a smaller scale.

But I did the same thing I had done every other time; I sucked it up and did what I needed to do. It was my job, and I wasn’t going to get in trouble because someone didn’t do theirs. The only reason Mr. Cooper had found out about two weeks ago was because he’d walked in to find me putting filler on a car and hadn’t understood why I’d been the one doing it when he knew I had other things on the schedule.

I watched the seconds count down on the microwave screen. “I’ve worked on it for two hours, Mr. C. I still have another two before I can even start priming it. I’m supposed to work on another one after that too.”

Goodbye, my plans tonight.

I was getting aggravated again. Not because I was going to have to stay late, but because I had to stay late because my gut said my coworker hadn’t finished the job on purpose. He would deny it for the rest of my life, but I knew the truth. I’d heard him snickering that morning when Rip had gotten on my case.

“Did he explain why he didn’t finish?” he asked, sounding genuinely baffled.

I didn’t blame him. At the same time, it warmed my heart that he didn’t expect the worst out of people… even if I had a feeling that he should expect the worst out of the person we were talking about. I doubted Jason ever messed up things Mr. Cooper asked him to do.

I bit the inside of my cheek again and kept my voice low as I glanced toward the door to make sure a certain someone wasn’t standing there, listening. “He said something came up with another car and he didn’t get a chance to finish it.”

I wasn’t sure he knew that I’d had the same job as he did at one point. Cars that were on the schedule to go to paint took priority over everything else. There was no reason why Jason, the pain in my ass in question, would have just not gotten to it when he knew damn well I needed him to.

That punk that Mr. Cooper had hired six months ago—without me knowing it was him that had gotten hired until it was too late—would try and give me more work to do. Jason wasn’t technically a body guy. He got stuck covering for whoever was on vacation or had a personal day; he was basically me when I’d been his age, doing whatever anyone asked me to do.

“It’s all right,” I trailed off, reminding myself again of everything I had. I was loved, I had a good job, I had a home. I was happy, and I was safe. Most importantly, so were my sisters. So this was no big deal. “I’ll still get to everything.”

But Mr. Cooper seemed to be hesitating, probably still trying to work out a reason why something like that would have happened that wasn’t malicious. “Do you want me to talk to him?” he asked after a moment.

I blew out a breath as I dumped one container into the other before grabbing the container of pico and putting it in with the rest of my food.

I was a little pissed, but was I pissed enough to get the human yeast infection in trouble?

I hated how guilty just thinking about it made me feel.

“No,” I found myself muttering to him. “I’ll give him the benefit of the doubt.”

There I went lying again. I definitely wasn’t going to give him that. I knew he was lying. I just knew it.

But the idea of him getting into trouble because I complained to one of the bosses—a boss that would do just about anything for me if I asked—made me feel bad. He was a lying turd, but you never knew what someone had going on in their life to get them to act like a jerk. Even if the acting like a jerk part had lasted for the last six months—and the six months he’d dated my sister before sleeping with some other girl. Maybe he needed money. Maybe I looked like his mom and he had mommy issues. Maybe he was stressed and I happened to be the easiest person to be mean to.