I toldmyself that I wasn’t in a bad mood even as I slammed the door closed to my car.
I wasn’t mad.
I wasn’t.
Not even a little.
Nope, not me.
But I must have been the only person to believe that because even Hector asked me what was wrong.
Nothing was wrong, I had told him.
It was just that two of my sisters were talking to the one man in this world who I hated. That the two girls I helped as much as I could with their college expenses had gone behind my back to do something that they knew would wound me. That they had kept it to themselvesso that I wouldn’t get mad.
No. I wasn’t mad over that at all. Not even Hector’s niece’s lollipop took the edge off my anger.
So it was because of that, that I wasn’t paying even a little bit of attention as I walked toward the building, holding the paint pen for Miguel’s wife’s car in one hand and clutching my purse in the other.
And it was because I wasn’t paying attention that when someone hollered, “Hey!” I froze.
Turning in the direction of where the voice was coming from, I spotted a man standing just on the other side of the fence, right by a lowered red pickup truck. Forty-ish with a handful of tattoos spotted across one arm, I blinked and said, “Hey.”
The man grinned. “Can you do me a solid?”
I took a step forward. I had no reason to be mad at him or take it out on him. “Depends on what it is.”
His grin spread wider. “Can you get, ah, Ripley out here?”
I dropped my pleasant expression. “Who?”
“Ripley,” the man repeated, that grin going nowhere.
Never, not once, had Rip ever had anyone come over. Well, except for that one guy who I had caught him talking to, but… I hadn’t gotten a good look at the man. Was this one standing in front of me the same one as before?
I didn’t know, but if it wasn’t…
“I don’t know a Ripley,” I told him quickly.
His grin was this gap-toothed thing that magically got even bigger. “All right. Well, my name’s Gio, and I’ll be sitting out here for another—” He glanced at his watch. “—twenty minutes.” He winked.
I raised both my eyebrows. “Nice to meet you, Gio.”
He smiled and said, “Nice to meet you too, Luna.”
I was pulling open the door of the shop when I realized what exactly he’d said.
He’d called me by my name. I didn’t wear coveralls with my name on them, and even if I did, I wouldn’t have left the shop with them on. I was too paranoid for that.
How did he know my name?
Inside, I looked around the main floor for the biggest man at the shop but didn’t see anyone with the height or the right hair color. I didn’t need to look at my watch to know that I had twenty minutes to eat—eat whatever Rip had brought me—before I needed to get back to work. Or at least, should get back to work. I worked so much overtime it didn’t matter if I took another fifteen minutes, but as lonely and quiet as my home was, now that was where I would rather be.
Up the stairs, I heard two voices coming from the break room. Sure enough, Ashton was in there talking to one of the other guys, and right at the end of the table, sitting there quietly by himself, looking through a magazine, was Rip.
I smiled at the other two guys and watched as Rip lifted his head, watching me in return.
I kept the smile on my face as I opened the refrigerator and immediately found a glass container sitting on the top shelf with my name scrawled on a Post-it. Through the side, I could see what looked like noodles, beef, and vegetables—exactly what my lo mein should have looked like when I had made it.
