Luckily, he wasn’t watching my face twist up into a grimace every time he drove over even a tiny pothole, because he would have known I was full of it. “Bad enough,” I told him, fighting the urge to reach up and try and massage my neck.
His nod was a slow tilt forward of his head.
That was when I knew I needed to strike. “Say, Rip?”
“What?”
What. I wasn’t sure why that amused me so much. “I’m all right, okay? My neck hurts and so does my shoulder, but it’ll go away. You don’t have to come get me from home because you feel guilty.”
He cut me off. “I don’t feel guilty.”
“Oh,” was the super smart thing out of me. Well. Okay. “All right then.”
Then I thought to myselfliar, because why the hell else would he show up here to get me? Because he wanted to? Because we were friends and he cared about me? Nah. I flip-flopped almost daily on the signs he gave me that he might be a little fond of me. Then he would do something like what had happened on Monday and make me rethink it all.
“It was the other asshole’s fault,” Rip stated after a second. “I know you’re gonna be fine, just like I knew you’d come to work today even though you’ve gotta be in pain and probably won’t be able to work long before it gets too bad.”
I made a face to myself. “I can work the whole day.” I had worked with the flu before. I could survive a day with a little strain.
A little strain that had me hiding a groan when he went over a speed bump a little too fast.
One glance at his face had me wondering if he’d done it on purpose to prove a point.
Those teal-colored eyes slid toward me, and I’d swear one corner of his mouth went up a fraction of a millimeter. “I know.”
Hehaddone it on purpose. I wasn’t sure how I knew, but I did. Fine. He didn’t want me to suck it up? I wouldn’t. What I would do was continue being a decent person. “I’m glad then that you don’t feel guilty, because there’s no reason for you to be. But I promise you didn’t need to come get me. I can drive myself.”
Rip waited so long to say “Luna?” that I half expected him to change the subject.
That didn’t happen.
“Yeah?”
“If I want to come get you, I’m gonna come get you. Deal with it,” he stated, or more liketoldme. “You wanna stop at that donut place you like or what?”
I jerked a little in place, telling myself to not take his first comment too seriously. “We can go to the donut place if you want.”
“All right.”
I faced forward again. “Okay.”
“Sure you’re not mad anymore?”
“I’m sure.”
He glanced at me. “Do you even know how to sulk?”
I gave him a little smile. “No, not really.”
I heard Rip take a breath before his voice filled the cab. “Luna?”
“Hmm?”
“My mom died in a car accident when I was eighteen. I was with her when it happened,” Rip said, making me freeze in place as his words settled in. “That’s why I… that’s what happened yesterday. Just wanted to say thanks for what you did.”
His mom had died in a car wreck? The mom who scratched his head and bought him ice cream to make him feel better?
Then he kept talking, and I didn’t know what to say. “Add that to our secrets, all right? Just thought you deserved to know.”
