Luna and the Lie

by Mariana Zapata

I didn’t like to get into trouble. My friends had said more than a few times that I was allergic to having people mad or disappointed with me. It was a curse I hadn’t managed to shake off, no matter how many times it worked against me.

Literally same

Taking responsibility for my actions and not blaming other people for things I brought upon myself was one of the few positive lessons I’d learned from my family, even if it was something they hadn’t tried to teach me on purpose. I cut that train of thought off real quick. Some things and people were so acidic, even thinking about them could destroy. I was going to choose to be happy, and that meant not thinking about old crap. Today was going to be a good day, and so was tomorrow, and the day after that, and the day after that. It was with that thought that I kept the smile on my face and let it linger on the man staring at me. It took a lot more than Rip in a white shirt to make me frown or hurt my feelings. It took a lot more than thinking of certain people for all of a second to do it either. The point was: I was tired. I’d closed my eyes. He’d called me out on it. There was nothing to get upset about.

Ykw I like u alr

Yet packaged together it was an unforgettable face. A stunning face. And I’d known instantly that his face and those thigh-sized biceps and calf-sized forearms that were covered in a tight long-sleeved shirt were going to haunt me. And that had surprised me.

Looking back on it though, there had been no way for me to know then how much Lucas Ripley would haunt me in the future. I’d had no idea as I had walked into that room to introduce myself what he would end up owing me. And I definitely hadn’t known how much that debt would end up bothering him day in and day out.

Share w the class 🤨

In the blink of an eye, that look turned into a glare. And my heart did what it always did when I met someone who didn’t want to like me—it made the rest of me want this person to like me, this maybe-possibly new boss of mine. That was another curse I hadn’t been able to shake off even after all these years; the need to be liked. Realistically, I knew I could and would survive someone not being a Luna Allen fan, but… I had always tried. I could blame Those People I Wasn’t Going to Think About for that need, if I ever let myself think about it. But I wouldn’t.

Ykw dats valid

But life was all about the little things, and getting a rise out of Rip without exactly pissing him off was a game I liked playing more than I should have. Every once in a while, if the situation was right and he was wearing his navy-colored compression shirt, I could get a smirk out of him. And on really rare occasions, I might sneak a quick half-smile out of him that was gone in a blink of an eye later. And if my little heart sighed over that sneaky little smile or smirk, it was nobody else’s business but mine. And my siblings. And my best friend. But that was it.

Real 😭

And that was because he was wearing that white shirt, and I usually had a 40 percent success rate of getting out of conversations with him not griping at me on white days. Gray shirt days were about 70 percent. Navy shirt days were about eighty-five. On navy days, I knew I could slap him on the back and not get even a side-look. Those days were my favorites.

This is so cute to me

Maybe I had spoken a little too soon about having a good day. My day didn’t instantly start going bad after the meeting ended, but… it went downhill soon afterward. Things could always be worse though. Always.

Girl u better than me

“What’s wrong, little moon?” I couldn’t help but smile at the term of affection the older man called me when we were out of the shop or when no one else was around while we were working. We had never talked about it, but I knew he did it so that no one would assume he had favorites. I was pretty sure everyone knew I was his favorite anyway. It wasn’t just anyone he took into his home and into his life and family. We didn’t hide that we spent birthdays, Thanksgivings, and Christmas Days together, and in years past, New Year’s Eve too. Now he claimed he was too old to stay awake until midnight. He was part of my family and had been for going on a decade. Just like his wife was. Just like my siblings were too.

Oh- idk why that caught me so off guard but good for u

I had told him a couple times in the past about a certain coworker that I swear went out of his way to not just be a jerk, but a pain in the ass. But only to me. Because that was my luck. I didn’t say anything to get the guy into trouble but just to vent. Mr. Cooper was mature enough and professional enough to take my words one day at his house for what they were: his daughter-like figure complaining to her father-like figure about someone who had cheated on someone she loved. Except I had never told him that part. That “someone” being the middle of my younger sisters. So,

Oop- nah I’m petty u best believe he gettin fired

I knew he was lying. I just knew it. But the idea of him getting into trouble because I complained to one of the bosses—a boss that would do just about anything for me if I asked—made me feel bad. He was a lying turd, but you never knew what someone had going on in their life to get them to act like a jerk.

Nah u too nice bestie

Mr. Cooper knew my sisters almost as well as I did. And because he did, and because I talked to him about them pretty often, he had a decent idea just how often Thea and Kyra cancelled on me. Even though it was always for a good reason.

Girl u need someone to appreciate u fr

“—but I also didn’t want to confirm that you work here. You know, just in case.”

U a real one bestie

Sometimes he’d come up for lunch at the same time I did. Sometimes he’d sit next to me and eat. His elbow would brush mine. Maybe his forearm would touch mine. If it was a good day, he’d give me an eyebrow raise that I would take like it was a smile. If it was a really good day, I could talk to him about the car he was restoring, and we might talk about it for a few minutes.

I love

But this was going to be hundreds of dollars’ worth of work that was going to need to be redone because of me. That money being mostly what they paid me hourly for labor and the paint I’d just wasted. All because I hadn’t taken the time to find both orders and look at the stupid freaking dates.

This is giving me anxiety bruh I’d kms

I wasn’t going to be even more of an asshole and pretend like nothing had happened. I had messed up. I took ownership of my actions. I didn’t run away from my problems, even if I sometimes ignored them. I was better than that. I was better than that. I wouldn’t be that person.

Good for u bae

Owen and Miguel weren’t even trying to hide that they were eavesdropping. I wasn’t even sure what Miguel was doing here so late, much less why he was helping Owen, but oh well.

GAY

At some point, his elbow stopped moving. Hell, I was pretty sure he even stopped breathing because the two inches of his upper half that weren’t hidden inside the car weren’t moving either. Oh, hell.

Oh we’re cooked I fear

“And I’m gonna have to pay you overtime for work that was already done?” He narrowed those intense eyes. “I have to pay you to fix a mistake you did?”

ok wait when u put it like that-

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.

U just like me fr bestie. Also I feel like it coulda been worse. I mean he didn’t insult u or anything😃

It could have been worse.

Right

Now, I just accepted that the man with the voice I liked listening to—and the face I liked looking at—picked arguments with Mr. Cooper for no reason at all. The sky was too blue? He’d blame him. There was some part that he needed that hadn’t been ordered? He’d blame him. I didn’t get it, and I doubted I ever would; Mr. Cooper was great. Greater than great. I would give him any organ in my body if he needed it. As much as I eavesdropped, I hadn’t been able to figure out what had happened to make them the way they were. If I really thought about it, there were a lot of things about them I hadn’t been able to figure out. None of us had, and we had tried. I had spent a lot of time listening to Mr. Cooper and Rip because something about their arguments felt… weird. I was pretty sure there was some serious resentment, at least on Ripley’s part, but I couldn’t figure out why.

Conspiracy timeee

Because even if I only thought about him once a day, it was one time too many. I knew where we stood. I also had an internal radar for pointless things, and he was one of those. I wasn’t in love or anything, but I liked a lot of things about him. What I honestly probably liked the most was that he didn’t take anyone’s BS, even if he did take that a little far sometimes. I admired Lucas Ripley. I admired a lot about him. Maybe he wasn’t the kindest or the sweetest man in the world, but he wasn’t mean or unnecessarily rude… the majority of the time. The other guys at the shop called him a hard-ass, but I thought he was a decent man.

What I didn’t like was how grouchy he was with Mr. Cooper, but Mr. Cooper had told me three years ago, not to let it bother me after I had brought it up. I’ve known him forever, little moon. He’s a good kid beneath it all. Don’t think twice about it. I can take it.

Hmm 🤔

“Happy birthday.” I pulled the metal pan with the plastic cover over it out and then held it in his direction, still smiling. “It’s chocolate with vanilla frosting,” I explained, still holding it out toward him. Those blue-green eyes widened. Then those eyes—those freaking eyes that were a shade of color that didn’t seem natural—flicked down toward the cake then back toward my face. His eyes widened just a little more. Then he did it. For the first time in months, his mouth tipped up maybe a millimeter. At the most a millimeter. But it was a smile. A tiny smile that might have been interpreted a dozen other ways by people who hadn’t spent a whole lot of time looking at this man’s face… but I had, and I knew what it was. A little smile. All because of a birthday cake. Like a hopeless dummy, my heart thumped.

This makes me irrationally happy

That and he wouldn’t want anyone to make a big deal about his forty-first.

…imma pretend he’s mid thirties

Those almost teal-colored eyes were still on the red lid when he basically muttered, “You coming to Mickey’s tonight?” Mickey’s was the bar a few blocks down where everyone at the shop celebrated birthdays or just randomly met up for drinks sometimes after work. He had never made it a point before to spend time with any of us though. Not even on his last birthday or anyone else’s. So…. “Sure,” I told him, just barely holding on to my smile. I’d have to tell my sister I was going out, but according to her work schedule on the fridge, she’d be waiting tables until ten anyway. Rip nodded, that tiny smile melting off until his facial expression was just… more easygoing than usual. “All right.” That was the level of excitement I was expecting, and it made me smile.

He’s so-

It was Mr. Cooper who spoke first. “She’s such a nice girl.” There was a pause that I wasn’t sure what to do with and then a response of, “Yeah.” That was probably the nicest thing he’d ever said, other than the occasional compliments he gave one of my paint jobs.

:D

“Unfortunately, Miss Miller passed away Saturday evening.” I swallowed and blinked at the timeframe. “I attempted to contact you when she first went into the hospice…” He trailed off before clearing his throat. “She specifically requested that I reach out to you.” She had wanted me to know that she was sick? I hadn’t…. Something heavy—guilt, it was freaking guilt—settled right onto my chest. Had he called me before because she’d been asking for… maybe not me specifically, but my sisters? To see them one last time? To make sure we got to say goodbye, even if she wasn’t aware of it?

Omg that’s tragic

My grandmother had wanted me to go. Or at least one of my sisters. Otherwise she wouldn’t have asked her lawyer to contact me. She had wanted us to know. I didn’t want to go. I felt terrible for thinking that but… I didn’t want to go. I didn’t want Kyra or Thea or Lily to go either. No. Way.

I can’t blame u fr

I thought I was better than this. I thought I had gotten over it. I had grown up. Gotten stronger.

It’s okkk bestie

I didn’t want to ask him for anything. The problem was, I didn’t want to go to my grandmother’s funeral alone. Just the idea of going by myself made me more nauseous than asking Rip for something.

Road trippp

I was going to ask him to go with me to my grandmother’s funeral so that he’d hopefully stop my family from trying to talk to me? I was pathetic.

Nah do what u needa do

“I’m not exactly anybody’s favorite, Luna.” The smile fell right off my mouth, and I couldn’t help but frown at him. At the harshness of his words. At the… fact-like nature of them. That wasn’t very nice for him to assume. That wasn’t very nice to assume at all, and it bothered me…

I just stared right back at him, one single memory flipping out of me as I thought about why I had never planned on going back home. I’m gonna fucking kill you, Luna! You ever come back, and I will literally fucking kill you, you little piece of shit! I can’t fucking believe you!

Oh nah

“Happy birthday, Ripley,” came the feminine voice that I knew belonged to Mr. Cooper’s wife. If I wouldn’t have moved my gaze back over to Rip, I would have missed the way that, with each word that came out of Mrs. Cooper’s mouth—Lydia was her name—the harder Rip’s face became. It had gone from pleasantly blank while we had been making arrangements to an instantly guarded expression when Mr. Cooper had spoken… and then with Mrs. Cooper’s words, his jaw became more defined. The tendons at his neck became more pronounced. Then he slowly sat up in the chair he had just begun relaxing into. Ripley had never been a comfortable, easygoing person. But he had never looked the way he did right then either. At least never in front of me, and I had seen him pissed off and angry with the other shop guys before.

What happeneddd

“Didn’t I—” he started to say before cutting himself off with a harsh grunt. Didn’t he… what? His voice got even lower. “Didn’t I tell you not to do anything to it until we talked?”

My brotha do u not remember the call we just had 🤨

But the thing was, I had tried to talk to him about it. I had called him. I just didn’t think it was the right time to argue that. From the way he was still looking down at me. I didn’t think that time was going to change anytime soon. “Why would you paint the goddamn car after I told you I wanted to talk to you about it?” he griped, honestly, truly angry.

…does he genuinely not remember

“I painted it because I called you to talk about the car, and you said you had no idea what I was referring to.” I kept my voice steady. “I did my job.” I had. His fingers went loose, and he swallowed again. “But I specifically fucking told you to wait for me to talk to you about it.”

Then why didn’t u just say let’s talk abt it later instead of acting like u ain’t know what she was talking abt 😑

There was something going on with him. I knew it. This wasn’t like him. He couldn’t have hidden this kind of crazy for three years, and I had to understand it. I bit the inside of my cheek and just went for it. What was he going to do? Yell at me some more? So I asked him, even though I wasn’t sure if this would just come back and bite me in the butt even more. “Rip, what’s wrong?” Those teal eyes stayed zeroed in on me. His body almost too still, but he said, “You fucked up the car, Luna. What do you think?” “That’s not what I meant.”

Aye u better than me cause I woulda either cried or tried to argue cause ain’t no way

A small white paper bag hung from where it was being pinched at his side by his index finger and thumb. I bit the inside of my cheek, remembering just how unfair he’d been yesterday.

Stop like we tryna be mad at u

“I can’t let you get away with things that I wouldn’t let the rest of the guys get away with,” he kept going, watching me closely with that face I wasn’t sure how to take from how serious it was. “Making me a birthday cake doesn’t get you a Get Out of Jail Free card.”

…what is u talm bout rn my brotha like work w me here

He gave the white bag a light shake, inching it even closer to me. “I brought you that donut shit you like. Take it. It’s the twist one,” he went on, like I had no idea what my favorite donut was.

This would work on me I fear

Ripley wouldn’t be the first person to blame me for things they had caused. If anything, he might be one of many, but he was one of the few to ever apologize… in his own way. That was worth something. More than something really. And if I really thought about it, I might have appreciated the effort it took to even do as much as he just had.

Yay bare minimum

I took in the other man. He looked about Rip’s age, if not a little older and leaner. But it was the tattoo he had on one side of his neck that had me focusing. I glanced at Rip, then back at his friend, and kept my gaze there. Tattoos poured down the man’s arms in thick, black marks that were really hard to distinguish, but something about them….

This starting to feel like a mystery romance I swear 😭

His eyes seemed to sweep over my face and head, and I didn’t miss the way he positioned his body to block me from seeing the man he had been talking to.

U bein sneaky for whattt

I had barely made it down the hall when my little sister called out, “I love you, Luna! I’m not mad at you! I just want you to be okay!”

So cute

I was looking at Rip as his attention went from the people in the pews that I didn’t want to look at for another second to me, then back to them. They finally went back to me just as I stopped a foot away, his jaw doing that tensing thing again. Okay.

How does he know them bruh

I knew something was wrong the second we got into his truck and he slammed the door shut, my name slithering out of his mouth, ending on a hard vowel. “Luna?” I was looking out the window at the side mirror. My cousin was out of the door, his head swinging around the parking lot. Probably looking for me. “Yes?” His breathing had gotten loud, but it was steady; I had no problem hearing it. “Is your last name really Allen?”

I knew it like what’s going on w him

It hadn’t been a huge bust. Dad had only gone to jail for three years. His brother was a different story. But while I’d been growing up, everyone knew the Miller last name hadn’t been the greatest. Maybe they hadn’t known specifically about the meth, but they had known there was something, and no one ever did anything. Until I did.

Ah