All I could do was stand there.
I had messed up. There was no escaping that. “Rip, I’m sorry. I’ve never made a mistake like this before—”
That giant hand speckled in some kind of oil or grease sliced across the center of his body. “That’s not the fucking point, Luna,” he snapped, looking up at me. “It’s a waste of time. It’s a waste of money. It’s a waste of fucking paint.” Rip shook that dark brown head of hair that had just a few lines of silver through it, just in time for his birthday that upcoming Monday.
He was laying it on real thick, and I was taking it all in, feeling worse and worse by the second. He was right. He would have gotten mad at anyone who made the same mistake; that only microscopically made me feel better. “I’m sorry. I’ll stay late, and you don’t have to pay me. I know it’s my fault,” I replied, hoping Owen and Miguel couldn’t hear how pitchy my voice had gotten. I had to clench my fists when the urge to crack my knuckles got bad.
My boss raised his thick, dark eyebrows in a way that confirmed I wasn’t going to get out of anything, and I definitely wasn’t going to get absolved of a freaking thing. “Now you’re gonna try and give me a goddamn guilt trip for telling you shit any boss would?” His eyebrows lowered, and that mouth I thought was pretty sexy on good days stayed in a scowl. “You’re not gonna make me feel bad, Luna. You fucked up and that’s the end of the story.”
I had fucked up. I wasn’t trying to make it seem any other way. I nodded at him, making sure to avoid glancing over at where I had last seen my coworkers standing. “I know, Rip. I’m not trying to. I’m sorry,” I told him.
He shook his head. Shook me off. The man pulled out a clean-ish rag from inside his coveralls and swept it over his face as he muttered, “Sorry doesn’t fix shit.”
Of course it didn’t. I’d learned that lesson long before he’d come into my life.
“I know that. I’ll do everything myself. I’ll get started on it—”
His face was still covered as he breathed out, “Don’t bother.”
What did that mean?
“But I can do it. I know it’s my fault—”
“No.” He moved the cloth away from his face and zeroed in on mine instantly. His jaw was set, and if I’d had any doubts he was pissed, I would have gotten a confirmation then. There were more lines at his forehead than I had ever seen before. “Keep the paint the same goddamn color you already did,” he grumbled, dragging the rag roughly over his hands as his eyes pretty much burned a hateful hole straight into the middle of my features. “For the record, it’s fucking bullshit.”
“I’m sorry,” I murmured, ignoring the fact that I was pretty sure my coworkers had started creeping closer to us to hear better.
Rip shook his head again. “Sorry doesn’t fix your mistake. Go paint the car the color you already started.”
“But—”
“I don’t want to talk about this shit anymore, Luna.” He glanced up at the ceiling before saying in a crystal-clear voice, “And this is going down in your file.”
In my file? As in strike one? Strike one of three that would get me fired? Was that how these things worked? I hadn’t even known that was a thing.
I stared at him, pressed my lips together, and then I sucked in a breath through my nose. I wasn’t going to get upset over getting in trouble. I wasn’t.
Rip, on the other hand, watched me with that quietly furious freaking face that said he didn’t even want to look at me in the first place. He didn’t want to look at my face that was usually makeup-less minus the pink lipstick I wore every day. He didn’t want to look at the cotton-candy blue hair I had kept over the last year. He didn’t want to look at me.
He wouldn’t be the first person.
“I am sorry,” I said to him, trying to cling onto whatever was left of my pride while feeling all of about an inch tall.
He just stared at me, and I knew he wasn’t going to say anything else.
I’d apologized and I’d meant it. That was all I could do. I turned around and slowly headed the way I’d come, purposely avoiding making eye contact with the guys watching because I didn’t want to see pity on their faces. I’d probably only gotten about two lanes away when I heard Rip call out, “You all gonna get back to work or what?”
I pressed my lips together and glanced down at my donut bracelet, rubbing my thumb over one of them. It could have been worse.
He could have fired me, and maybe then he could have gotten himself out of repaying the favor that he had felt like he’d owed me for the last going-on three years. I bet that would have made him happy.
Everything was fine, even if it didn’t feel that way.
Things could always be worse.
Chapter 3
Every single light was on inside the house when I pulled into the driveway at ten that night.
Literally every one.
I sighed as I turned the ignition off and told myself that soon there wasn’t going to be anyone at the house to turn on a single light. Or make my lunch. Or give me a hug when I needed it. Or talk me into staying up late to watch a scary movie.
That reminder just made me sigh again, but for a totally different reason.
Then I remembered how high my electricity bill was going to be this summer if my little sister didn’t calm down, and I opened the door and got out.
In the dark, it was too hard to see the old house except for the squares and rectangles of light behind the curtains that Thea, my slightly younger sister, had bought as my birthday present a year ago.
Up the two steps, I swung my keys around my index finger and then slipped the right one into the lock and turned it. The television blared, but somehow my baby sister, Lily, heard me open the door because she called out, “Luna? Is that you?”
“No, it’s the ax murderer.” I dropped my keys into the bowl my other sister had bought for my birthday the same year. “Did you make something for dinner?” Please, please, please….
“No, I ordered pizza!” my little sister replied from where she usually was stationed on a rare Friday she wasn’t working—in front of the TV because senior year of high school was exhausting apparently. Not that I would have known that.
I’d always been able to see right through my sister’s BS. She stayed home on no-work-Fridays so that she wouldn’t spend money. She was always saving for something. For the last year, she’d been saving for college expenses. The year before that, she’d been saving for a car—a car I had ended up splitting with her.
At the thought of pizza, my stomach grumbled, reminding me I hadn’t finished my lunch, and since then, I had only stuffed down a banana and a handful of Skittles from my not-so-secret stash after my incident with Rip. I thought it was some kind of miracle I hadn’t ended up with a headache, but the Coke I’d had with the Skittles had probably helped.
I was tired. Inside and out. No matter how much I had tried not to wallow in the guilt I felt for screwing up—and how much I tried not to think about how unforgiving Rip had been about it—it had happened. His facial expression, tone, and the guilt in my gut just kept running on a loop in my head. The tightness in my chest hadn’t gone anywhere in hours.
It was still hanging around the general vicinity of my heart. I was embarrassed and disappointed in myself.
Sorry doesn’t fix your fucking mistake.
I sighed once more as I untied my boots and then toed them off, leaving them right next to Lily’s black Converse, eyeing the pair of checkered yellow Vans and pink New Balances there too.
Rubbing my brow bone with the back of my hand, I dragged my feet in the direction of the living room down the hall. Passing through, there were still so many things I wanted to redo to the house, and tearing down some of these walls were next on my list. Hopefully I could get Lily to help me before she left, and if my other sisters came to visit, I could get them to help too. There weren’t enough hours in the day or days in the year.
In the living room, I found her sitting in between a girl and a boy her age that I had met before. I lifted my hand at them but blew a kiss at the dark blonde in the middle.