When the time came to get back to work, I didn’t even do more than glance at him as I collected my stuff and headed back to my room more than half an hour after he’d appeared.
* * *
The very nextday went a lot like every other day before it, at least since Mr. Cooper’s heart attack.
I showed up to work. Ripley was already there. I pretended not to see him as I headed into my room, and then pretended not to see him some more when I went upstairs to prepare my coffee or when I went back downstairs with it in my hand. Just mine. Not his. Like it was our new thing, because it was. I shouldn’t have to go out of my way to be nice to my boss when he didn’t want it, and when it wasn’t like he was doing me a favor by employing me.
He couldn’t fire me without going through Mr. Cooper. Because even if chances were very, very high they were related, I knew that when it came down to it, I had a better relationship with him than Rip did. I had gone to see Mr. C the night before, had dinner with him and Lydia, and stayed to watch a movie. I knew my place in the older man’s life.
But just like every other day lately, at some point in the beginning half of the morning, I had a visitor stop by my room.
A six-foot-four-inch visitor who I would bet weighed around two hundred and fifty pounds.
The man I didn’t want all up in my space anymore.
“Can I help you with something?” I asked, using the same exact words I had used every other time he’d come in. Calm, cool, professional.
Unlike every other day though, my boss didn’t use an excuse about wanting to check something or see something.
He just stood there with his hands on his hips, gritted his teeth, and said, “You done?”
“Yes. I just finished the hood in the booth, and I’m waiting a minute before I get it out of here and start on the panels. Ashton already said he’d help me move it out.”
He stared.
I stared back.
Then he let out a deep, deep sigh, cocked his jaw to the side, and grumbled, “You know what I’m talking about. You done for real?”
I used my nicest voice as I asked, “With what?”
Lord, he was staring right at me as he held his hands out to his sides. “With this.”
“With what?”
He pressed his lips together. If I looked hard enough, I bet I could see how white they became as he did it, but I didn’t. I didn’t even look a little bit. “Withthis, Luna,” he replied, flipping his hands again.
Looking back on it, I should have chosen a different approach. But that was the thing with looking back on your actions: life didn’t have a rewind button. Unfortunately.
But at least I could look back and remember that I’d held my head up high, kept my voice even, and looked my boss right in the eye as I told him, “I’m treating you the way you wanted me to treat you, Mr. Ripley. With respect. Like you pay my bills. I’m leaving you alone. I’m not annoying you. I’m not forcing myself on you or asking you to do things you wouldn’t want to. I don’t know what else you want from me.”
That intense gaze didn’t stray a centimeter. Not for a second. Not for a millisecond. He stared at me like his gaze was made of laser beams and he wanted to burn me to ashes.
And then he tried.
“Would you fucking stop with the Mister Ripley?”
I didn’t flinch. Didn’t move. I just looked at him like his words didn’t affect me at all. “That’s your name, sir.”
Maybe the “sir” was overdoing it.
“You fucking kidding me right now?” Rip’s asked, his voice starting to rise.
All right, it was a little much, I guessed, but that didn’t change a single thing. Not about me, not about this situation. “No, I’m not,” I answered him calmly. “And I don’t understand why you’re raising your voice. I’m not doing anything.”
Rip’s eyes almost,almostbulged out of his skull as he leaned forward. “The fuck you’re not doing anything. You’re talking in circles, doing exactly what you know is gonna bother me.”
“I’m not doing anything to botheryou. I’ve done enough to bother you in the past, remember? So I’m stopping. I’ve stopped. All I’m doing is exactly what you asked.”
