I almost crossed my eyes. Then I asked myself why he was in the brush section to begin with. Then I reminded myself that I didn’t need to wonder over it.
“Sup, Luna?” a voice called out from behind the counter at the back of the store.
I couldn’t help but immediately smile as I craned my neck toward the counter along the far back wall of the paint store. “Hi, Hector.”
“I had a feeling today was gonna be my lucky day,” the really good-looking man, who had worked at the shop for as long as I could remember, replied from where he stood. He was already smiling that giant, white smile that had to be one of the nicest I’d ever seen.
I snorted. “You say that to everybody.”
“Only you.” He grinned. “Whatcha need?”
I stopped right in front of the counter and took a peek over my shoulder as I said, “My boss wants to do something custom for two cars he’s going to start working on, so I had to bring him to the best.” Standing on the tips of my toes, I called out, “Rip?”
What might have been a grunt answered me from the direction of where I had last seen him. The storefront was pretty small. I wasn’t positive what he was looking at, or why I couldn’t see him, but all right.
I turned back to my friend and rocked onto my heels. “He’ll be here in a sec.”
Hector leaned forward, planting his elbows on the counter between us, and asked the same question he always did when I came to see him. “What are you doing for lunch?”
Then I told him the same thing I always did. “I already had lunch. What are you doing for lunch?”
He laughed, like this was new, and it was just as nice as his smile. Just as nice as everything about him. “Nothin’ now that you aren’t coming with me.”
“You’re so full of it.” I snorted again and glanced over my shoulder once more. Rip still hadn’t come. I turned back to the other man before asking, with my eyebrows raised, “You got one?”
He raised his eyebrows right back. “I always got one for you,” he said, making it sound way flirtier than it was.
He always had them, period, but this was our game.
I dug through my purse for a dollar, then thought twice about it and grabbed another one before holding both between us. “Can I have two, please?”
“Two?” he asked as he took the bill, then opened a drawer on the other side of the counter and pulled what I wanted out as he traded it for the money. “She’s saving for a bike now.”
“A bike? What happened to the cell phone she wanted?”
Hector snickered as he closed the drawer. “That’s how long it’s been since you dropped by. She already sold enough of those things to buy her cell.”
“No way!”
“You probably paid for a quarter of it,” he said.
The sound of a throat clearing behind me told me Rip had appeared, and when I turned, I was more than a little surprised to find him looking past me. He was staring.
At Hector.
And because I knew his features well enough, I knew that face that might look carefully blank to everyone else was a lie.
He was irritated.
But by what, I had no clue.
And it wasn’t any of my business.
“How’s it goin’?” Hector asked, being as friendly as usual. “What can I help you with?”
When a moment passed and my boss didn’t say anything, I glanced at the other man and said, “Hector, this is my boss.” Like that would explain everything. “Rip, this is Hector.”
Rip though, didn’t respond, and his eyes still didn’t stray from the dead-eyed stare he was shooting the man on the other side of the counter.
