Luna and the Lie

by Zapata, Mariana

  What had to be his hands draped themselves on my shoulders, over what had to be his jacket, and slid down over my arms, his hands molding themselves loosely over my muscles and bones. The skin on his palms and fingers eventually landed on my wrists. He was warm. Those palms kept moving downward until they were cupping my hands. His fingers lingered there. Holding them there.

  Then they dropped away.

  I always knew he was really a decent man.

  That was when I forced myself to take a step back. To breathe. There at the cemetery, with Ripley’s jacket on my shoulders, I sniffled and wiped under my eyes with my finger one more time, looking at everything and nothing at the same time.

  It wasn’t so hard to glance up at Rip as I wiped at my eyes again. His face was back to that cool, detached expression. Not mean. Not surprised. Just… cool.

  “Thank you,” I told him in a voice I was honestly proud of. “Can we go now?”

  It was only his nostrils flaring that said something was going through that brain of his because his features didn’t tell any other story.

  The only words we shared over the next three hours were when he pulled up to a gas station and asked if I wanted to get something quick from the fast food inside, but that was it.

  When he pulled up to my house after all that—my phone telling me I had an hour until Lily got home—I reached over and put my hand over his where it sat on the steering wheel. We hadn’t done more than accidentally brush fingers in years, and here, twice in a day, we had done more than that. Weird how things like that worked.

  “Thank you, Rip.” I met those blue-green eyes and told him, “My sister is graduating on Saturday. If you’d like to come over after six, you’re more than welcome to. We’ll have food and drinks and stuff.”

  I gave it a squeeze, just one, and then pulled away.

  I opened the door and slid out. Then I closed the door, took a step onto the curb and lifted my hand.

  He didn’t wave back.

  But he waited until I’d opened my front door before he drove off.

  I went to my room, changed out of my clothes and then, then, I cried.

  For Grandma Genie.

  For my sisters.

  For the mom I had never met.

  For the past, the present, and the future.

  But mostly for myself.

  Chapter 9

  While I didn’t love Friday morning meetings, I didn’t hate them on the same level that I did cooked carrots.

  But that Friday might have been the exception.

  The day before had just been… not the best day of my life, but not the worst either. Even after getting dropped off at home, it hadn’t gotten much better. I’d cried for what I guessed was close to an hour before wiping my face off and reminding myself of how many wonderful things I had.

  By the time Lily burst into the house screaming, “LUNA!” at the top of her lungs like she was expecting me not to have made it back home, my eyes had still been red and puffy.

  She had run to my room and busted inside. My little sister had taken one look at me sitting on the edge of my bed and crawled onto it behind me, wrapping her arms around me.

  “Did it go that bad?” she had asked.

  “It was a C minus. It could have gone better, but it could have gone worse,” I admitted to her, sneaking my hands up to rest over the forearms covering my neck.

  Lily had just hugged me tighter. “You want to tell me what happened?”

  “They were there,” I told her vaguely. “Your mom is still on drugs. Dad looks like hell. Rudy grabbed my wrist, but I got him into an armbar, and Rip pretty much threatened to kick his ass, and then he left me alone.”

  My beloved little sister kissed my head at least five times before saying, “You should’ve broken his arm.”

  “I know.”

  “Kicked him in the nuts.”

  “Twice at least.”

  “Spit in his eyes.”

  “Vinegar would hurt more,” I tried to make her laugh, and I did it. It wasn’t a great, big laugh, but it was something.

  “I’m glad Rip went with you,” she kept going, her voice lighter than it had been a minute before.

  “Me too,” I told her forearm, resting my chin on it.

  She hugged me even closer. “Tell me what your boss likes, and I’ll make it for him. He deserves it for threatening stupid Rudy.”

  She didn’t know what I had done and had no idea that we had basically performed a business exchange. I wasn’t about to correct her. She had enough to worry about, so I had just nodded.

  Her hand rubbed my back as she said, “Come on. Let’s go to Red Lobster and take advantage of my employee discount before it runs out. My treat.”

  That was how we ended up going to Red Lobster for an early dinner and then going to the movies afterward. To keep my mind off things, Lily had claimed, and it had done the trick, at least until I tried going to sleep. Then it had all come back to me. The way my dad had ignored me, like I was dead to him. What my cousin had done. The hundred and one memories I didn’t let myself think about from years ago.

  Nothing helped me wind down, and nothing had kept me asleep when I had managed to doze off. I tossed and turned the entire night, thinking about all the things I should have done differently and all the things I wouldn’t have done any differently.

  I was healthy. I had somewhere to live. I had people who cared about me.

  And I had found a brand-new lipstick in my underwear drawer that I’d forgotten all about.

  Lily and I had had some good bonding time.

  I managed to leave for work before my sister left her room. I had forgotten all about what day of the week it was and what it meant.

  There were our weekly meetings, and then there were our monthly meetings. Our monthly meetings were that one time every four weeks where the employees got to vent, not just Mr. Cooper or Ripley. It was everyone else’s turn.

  I hated them.

  Maybe it was mostly because of the day before, or maybe it was because I would have rather been in the booth working instead of sitting in a chair in the break room, listening to the guys complain about each other.

  Because that’s what the meetings were for: bitching. Lots and lots of bitching. I hated it.

  The meetings were a necessary evil though. Over the years, I had seen things get so heated between the guys that fights would break out. I’d worked around this many men for so long that I got that they couldn’t just get over things eventually. The problem was, if anyone got into an altercation, they would get fired.

  It had happened before, and I was sure it was going to happen again, monthly meetings or not.

  So, for an hour, maybe an hour and a half depending how stressed out and pissed off the guys were, I mainly just sat there and stared off into space so I wouldn’t get called out for having my eyes closed. I’d spent most of my childhood zoning out people arguing; this was nothing.

  Nothing but boring.

  And annoying.

  And honestly a little painful.

  With the exception of Jason, I really liked everyone I worked with. I couldn’t get why they didn’t let the petty crap go.

  “…and it’s bullshit that I’m stuck doing all the sanding while everybody else pretends they’re busy doin’ somethin’ so that they can jump in and do the filler. My fu—damn arm gets tired too,” Jason muttered from his spot on the opposite side of the table, elbows on his knees, his face looking as irritated as his voice sounded.

  Even I rolled my eyes.

  It was Miguel who tossed his hands up in the air. “You’re full—”

  Mr. Cooper sighed and shifted in the seat beside me. I hadn’t gotten around to telling him how the day before had gone, but he’d given me a hug when I sat down beside him, so I figured he had an idea from my body language that it hadn’t been great.

  There was a groan before Miguel continued talking. “You don’t always do all the sanding. Quit exaggerating.”
/>   I kept from making a face and let my eyelids hang low.

  “Seems like it. Everybody needs to pull their weight around and do equal work. I wanna do the body filler too. I do bodywork. I don’t just sand.”

  “And I don’t just…” my coworker went on while I zoned him out to focus on the man who had held my hands and put his jacket around my shoulders not twenty-four hours before.

  My eyes zeroed in on the sliver of tattoos along Rip’s neck. I had brought him his coffee just like normal that morning, and he’d told me thank you just like normal too. There hadn’t been anything that indicated things were different.

  That had made me feel a lot better about the day before than I would have expected.

  The guys babbled on for a while longer, but I took the time to go through my mental list of what I needed to pick up at the store today for Lily’s graduation before I went home. She didn’t want balloons because she didn’t want us to waste helium on her. I had already called to make a reservation at a restaurant for a late lunch after the ceremony, but I knew that there would be at least a few people who went back to the house with us. So I needed to grab some snacks to feed them. Drinks. Ice. Chips—

  “…spend this week in the booth.”

  The booth? The words snatched me right out of my head. I glanced over at Mr. Cooper, who had started talking at some point, and focused on my favorite older man.

  “You good with that, Luna?” His eyes focused on me like he hadn’t noticed that I wasn’t paying attention.

  Shit.

  “What was that?”

  His expression said he was fine with repeating himself. “Jason will be helping you out in the booth for the next few weeks, starting today.”

  Oh, no.

  No, no, no, no.

  “I’m not that far behind on things.” I smiled, pressing my hand against my stomach subconsciously. “If I need help, I know I can ask.” I made sure to keep my eyes on my boss and keep a smile on my face.

  “We talked about Jason learning the booth, remember?”

  Everyone in the room turned to look at Jason. Jason, the guy who purposely didn’t finish projects so I would get stuck doing so. Jason, the one who got way too much enjoyment when I got in trouble. Jason, the jerk who had cheated on my little sister.

  Jason, the guy who knew I knew he sucked and hadn’t liked me since.

  Great.

  All I managed to get myself to do was nod and let my smile turn tight.

  I didn’t want to even look at him. I didn’t like him, he definitely didn’t like me, and the only way we worked together was by giving each other a ton of room and space.

  Double great.

  “I know you can catch up, but you don’t need to stay late if you can get some help and knock things out faster,” Mr. Cooper continued, giving me a warm smile like he genuinely thought he was doing me a favor.

  I didn’t need to glance at Jason to know why I would rather stay until midnight than have him help.

  What was up with me and these jerks in my life? It was like God wanted me to meet the best and worst in extremes. There was no in-between with anyone I met.

  “You good with that, Jason?” Mr. Cooper asked him.

  From behind me, the guy I honestly couldn’t stand said, “Yup.”

  Yup.

  Of course this would happen.

  I had survived my grandmother’s funeral yesterday. My sister was graduating tomorrow. I guess I could make it through this too.

  “Great,” I found myself mumbling.

  Today was going to be a good day. Somehow.

  * * *

  I could count on one hand the number of people in my life that I genuinely hated.

  Most of the people I could technically call my family.

  Honestly, that was pretty much it.

  Hating someone for me meant that if they needed a transplant and I was the only person in the world capable of giving them what they needed, I still wouldn’t.

  But I would more than likely give a complete stranger a kidney if they were nice and asked.

  To me, there was a difference between disliking a person and hating them. There were plenty of people who I disliked for one reason or another—they were selfish, mean, rude, stuck-up, and any combination of all of those things. But if they absolutely needed something that I had, chances were, I would give it to them. Maybe I wouldn’t smile as I did it, but I would do what needed to be done. If it was the right thing to do.

  I’d met a lot of assholes in my life—I was related to most of them—but Jason… Jason was in a league of his own.

  That was saying a lot.

  I was pinching the tip of my nose so I wouldn’t be tempted to pinch him instead that afternoon.

  “Why did you do this?” I asked him slowly, trying my best to sound like Ripley, all nice and calm even though I didn’t feel either emotion… On the inside, I’d kicked him in the balls at least four times in the last five minutes.

  Maybe even twenty times.

  The smirking-shrugging-useless papercut lifted his shoulders like he didn’t know why he had clearly ignored the instructions I had left him to do while I’d been at lunch. They couldn’t have been any more precise.

  Two coats of primer. Two coats of primer. Two. Not one. Two.

  And what had he done?

  One coat.

  And in the time it had taken me to go to the bathroom, talk to Mr. Cooper about what had happened at the funeral, and for him to tell me that he was pretty sure he’d found a replacement for the mechanic leaving, Jason had gone ahead and started adding color without giving the primer enough time to dry. I wasn’t even sure where he had gotten the paint from.

  It wasn’t even a rookie mistake. It was an idiot mistake.

  I had told him at least five times we had to let the primer dry for at least twenty-four hours after the final coat. Not ten minutes. Especially not when one coat hadn’t been enough in the first place.

  I could feel my left eyelid begin to twitch already. I took another deep breath through my nose and then let it out of my mouth. He’d done it on purpose. I knew he’d done it wrong on purpose. I’d bet my life on it.

  “It looks all right,” he tried to say, turning his back to me to do who the hell knows what.

  My eyes took in the wheels and unease slithered right around the collar of my shirt. “Jason, it needed two.”

  “But it doesn’t look bad.”

  I blew air into my cheeks and let them stay puffed out for a second while I tried to think about what I could—and should—say. “That’s not the point,” I said as patiently as I could, before dropping to a crouch to look at the wheels sitting on top of a thick blanket. I didn’t need a flashlight to see there was a line of uneven color all along the side of it. I could see hints of gray beneath the red, easily. I wanted to tell him he’d screwed that part up too, but… he had messed up enough by just missing the coat of primer in the first place. I had a feeling he hadn’t even agitated the can of paint in the first place.

  “I won’t tell if you won’t,” my new—and hopefully very temporary—assistant tried to snicker.

  I stood up and sighed. It was done. There was nothing I could do about it now. There was no point in being upset. I wasn’t going to remember this ten years from now, but…. “Everything has to come off, and now we’re going to have to do it all over again from the beginning,” I told him, crushing his dreams.

  I didn’t need to look at him to know he had to be giving me a “are you fucking kidding me” face. But what did he expect?

  I should have said something to Mr. Cooper the instant he mentioned this happening.

  But I hadn’t, and that was my fault.

  “And it needs to dry properly,” I explained, walking around the other side of the wheels and leaning back to take in another line of uneven color across the entire thing. He was rushing. That’s why it was so bad. Why he’d decided to rush, why he’d decided to even do this in the first place, wa
s beyond me.

  We all had to start somewhere. We all screwed up. I could keep it together. I could give him another chance.

  It was just going to be hard when every time I looked at him, I thought about all the times in the past that I was pretty sure he’d tried screwing me over.

  “Once it dries, I’ll help you do some of the sanding if I have time, and you can try doing the primer again,” I told him.

  He gawked. “Help me do some of the sanding?”

  “Yes.” I glanced at him to find him making a face at me… and not doing anything with that face even afterward. “I’ll help you. I can’t fall behind now because of this. If I get a chance, I’ll help you, and I probably can.”

  My coworker blinked, and the man who had to be twenty—too old to be such a crybaby—practically squawked. “But that’ll take hours!”

  Duh. I gave him the same shrug he’d given me. It was his fault he either hadn’t read the instructions or had decided to ignore them. What was that saying? Measure twice, cut once?

  “Mr. Cooper said I’m supposed to help you in the booth,” Jason started, his voice already outraged and surprised.

  Here we go.

  I nodded. “This is part of it.”

  “But what about the body guys? Why can’t they do it?” he tried to ask.

  “Because they already have their own work to do.” Which he knew. “They already worked on this. You can ask them if they’ll help if they get a chance, but usually they’re busier than I am, and I’m not going to ask for you. If I was the one who messed up, I wouldn’t want anyone to know. I would do it all myself, but it’s up to you what you want to do.”

  Maybe mentioning that I would be embarrassed if I were him wasn’t the nicest thing in the world to bring up, but…

  This guy had gotten another girl pregnant while dating my eighteen-year-old sister. In the time he’d worked here, I had never heard anything about him having a son or daughter. But that was none of my business.

  I couldn’t find it in me to scrape up any sympathy for him. The other girl, sure. But Jason? Not even a little bit.

  “But…,” he started to choke.

  I really wasn’t anywhere near being in the mood to deal with him. “Look, Jason, go tell Mr. Cooper or Rip about it if you don’t want to do it. I have too many things to do, to do it for you. I already screwed up this month and had to own up to it. I left instructions and they weren’t followed. I’m not doing it for you. Period.” Sorry not sorry, buddy.