“Morning, boss,” I called out, hopefully sounding normal.
He didn’t peek out while under the hood, but I did hear his low, nearly grumbled, “Morning.”
At least he’d replied. I’d take it.
“Leaving your coffee on the blue bench,” I told him as I was setting it down on one of the many tool chests along the wall.
There was a pause and then a “Thanks, Luna,” that didn’t soundasgrumbled as his “morning” had come out. Maybe because it was the first time in forever that he hadn’t needed to ask if I had decided on a favor I wanted from him.
Maybe.
I took a step back and eyed the butt partially outlined beneath the baggy material of the coveralls he already had on. Just for a second. His shoulders and arms were so wide he had to squeeze into an extra-large that was baggy around the middle. I let myself look once more before basically yelling, “You’re welcome!” Asking him how the rest of his night had gone seemed like a terrible idea, so I didn’t ask. You didn’t storm out of the bar on your birthday and have a good rest of the night.
I managed to take maybe three steps backward and hadn’t even turned around to head back, when I heard, “Hold up a sec.”
I stopped in place. “Need something?”
Halfway hidden inside the car, he didn’t raise his voice as he said, “I want to talk to you about that Mustang you’ve got on the schedule. Hold off on it until I think through it some more. I’ll come down and tell you what to change later. All right?”
I hadn’t looked through the paperwork yet, but okay. “Okay. I’ll work around it.”
“’Kay,” he echoed from under the hood.
I made my way toward my room, holding my coffee and trying to remember what exactly I had to do. I was trying my best not to think about my grandmother. Or the funeral. Or going to San Antonio period. Or my sister’s graduation and how it meant the beginning of the end. Instead, I thought about how nice the evening had been after Rip had left. I’d had a good time with the Coopers and the two CCC employees that had eventually shown up.
So that was what I was going to try and do, and if it required me to zone out everything else going on in my life, well, I could do it.
I managed to make it into my room and open my drawer to pull out my files, finding the one I was looking for. It was a Mustang that I had put primer down on last week, but they had held off on me finishing it. That kind of thing happened often enough, I didn’t think anything of it.
Luckily, there was always something for me to work on. I went through the albums on my phone, picked out theGreasesoundtrack and started my day.
* * *
I had just finishedwhat I could for the day when I went looking for Rip.
“He left,” Miguel, one of my favorite coworkers, told me.
I blinked at one of the only two men at CCC who had been there almost as long as I had. “Where did he go?”
My coworker squinted an eye. “I think he went to the yard to look for some parts he couldn’t find.”
Figures.
His light brown eyes slid to the side before coming back to me, and he couldn’t hide the hesitation in his tone as he asked, trying not to make a face as he probably silently begged me not to take him up on his offer. “Want me to call him?”
I shook my head. Even if it wasn’t a huge difference, he was a little nicer to me than he was to the rest of the guys at the shop. Rip rarely cussed at me at least. But I still appreciated Miguel offering to take one for me. “It’s okay. I can call him.”
He didn’t even bother trying to hide his relieved sigh. “Let me know if you need help.”
“I will. Thanks, Miguelito.”
He grinned at the nickname I had taken from his wife one day a long time ago. With another smile aimed right at him, I headed back to my room and dialed Rip’s number from memory.
He answered immediately. “This is Rip.”
“Hi, boss-man, it’s Luna—”
“Yeah?”
