“It’s…,” I started to say before lowering my fork and knife to the plate. “It’s Rip.”
Both of them blinked and stayed very, very still.
“Did he finally decide to get his head out of his ass?” Mr. Cooper asked with a wary smile after a moment.
“What?”
He repeated himself. “Did he finally get his head out of his ass and tell you to save those dates for him?”
My mouth gaped open, and I was really, really glad that I had set down the knife and fork. Out of the corner of my eye, I could see the cautious little smile on Lydia’s face as she bent toward her food and started cutting her chicken while Mr. Cooper and I made eye contact.
“I knew you didn’t see it, little moon. I knew it from the first moment that I saw that look in Ripley’s eyes. Didn’t I tell you, Lydia, honey?” he asked his wife.
Lydia nodded as she chewed her food and then held a hand up to cover her mouth as she agreed. “You did, and I saw it with my own two eyes too.”
“What did you tell her?” I asked slowly, trying to process what he was implying.
He cocked his head to the side. “That you didn’t know.”
“Didn’t know what?”
His smile was bittersweet. “That he took one look at you and knew.”
“Mr. Cooper, you know I’m not that great with puzzles and contexts clues. What did he know looking at me?”
“The same thing I knew when I looked at Lydia.” His smile changed from a bittersweet one to a soft one, and I could see in his eyes that he thought about another woman he had known once. “My daddy was the same way. His daddy was the same way. Us Coopers, we just know. The only difference is, Ripley got his stubbornness from his mom’s side of the family. I didn’t fight it.”
“You think Ripley… likes me?” I asked.
The older man cocked his head to the other side and went about cutting a piece of his chicken as he answered, “I don’tthink. I know. I’ve seen it on his face a thousand times, Luna. Especially when he was being hard on you. I’ve tried telling him a few times that he should do something about it, but God knows when he sets his mind to something, there’s no convincing him to change it unless he decides to. And I know that takes an act of God. Just like his mom. He’s got that Ripley blood in him.”
He still didn’t look back up at me as he continued going. “I don’t know him that well anymore, but I still see the boy he used to be in bits and pieces of him. He’s got the thickest skin I’ve ever seen, but I know those bones are still made out of love like they were… before.”
Before his mom’s accident? Before he’d left Houston and done all those things he didn’t want to talk about?
“Luna, honey,” Lydia spoke up. “Our relationships with Ripley are what they are. I couldn’t hold it against him, but I wish he would forgive us after so long. I never had kids, but I was close to my mama and daddy, and if my daddy would have married some strange woman a year after my mama died, I can’t say I would have behaved any better than he did. I knew what I was doing coming into Allen and Ripley’s life back then. I’ve gotta live with knowing that because I loved someone, his son packed up his things and left him for twenty years,” she paused. “We both have to live with that.”
It all made sense all of a sudden. Rip’s reaction to Lydia. And as much as I would want to think that if I had a healthy relationship with my dad that I would want him to be happy… well, I wasn’t sure what I would think if or when he got remarried.
I tried to think of how Lenny would have reacted to Grandpa Gus getting married again, and really, it wasn’t a pretty scene when I imagined it.
A large hand drifted over my forearm and settled there, and even though I knew it was Mr. Cooper’s, I still glanced at his face. “He’s a difficult man. Trust me. Nobody knows that better than me. But he pushes the people that love him, pushes them like he’s trying to make sure they won’t go anywhere. Rip is the total opposite of you. God knows I love him and I will until the day I die, but I love you too. And you both deserve to be happy. He thinks the world of you, and I can’t help but think God brought you into our lives for a reason.”
I stared at this man, feeling the fear in my chest, and I asked him, “But he loved you and he left you for twenty years, Mr. C. That’s not… what I want.”
His smile was slow and honestly heartbreaking. “Luna, he threatened to quit on me a hundred times in the first year he came back.”
I blinked.
“He hasn’t stuck around because of me, honey.”
* * *
Why was I even here?I asked myself as I put my car into park and then turned off the ignition.
Why was I? I should have cancelled the dumb date. I was wasting my time, gas, and money, and doing the same for whatever poor fool was meeting me here.
Because I didn’t want to meet this guy that my sister Kyra had set up for me over a month ago.
