Lola #2
“I’ll be here.” Kal followed my lead, pulling his soiled apron over his head, his wet shirt clinging to his abdomen.
Don’t look, Lola. Do not look.
I looked. Shamefully and regretfully, my gaze traveled over his arms and the flat plane of his stomach, across his face, and landed on those emerald green eyes.
“Before I forget…what is a busser?” Kal asked, head tilting to the side.
Oh my god, I really was making a mistake. And the worst part: I knew exactly what I was doing wrong, yet I chose to walk into the trap anyway.
It was so typical of me, too. I was such a sucker. My grandma used to call it being tenderhearted, but life had taught me it was called being a fool. I pinched my fingers over the bridge of my nose and massaged the spot. In for a penny, in for a pound.
“I’ll…I’ll tell you on Monday.”
With that, he said his goodbyes, tossed an unusual-looking backpack over his shoulders, and pushed through the swinging door.
And because my life was an uncanny combination of sitcom and tragedy, my ex walked through that very same door a few minutes later.
“Get out.” I glared at him, hands bunched into fists on my hips.
Walter held his hands up, a stupid, cocky smile on his face. “Nice to see you, too, Lo.”
I flinched at the use of my nickname. That’s for friends and family only. Not exes, and certainly not him.
Walter and I had history—a lot of it. I think that’s why I’d lost my mind and rekindled things last year when I moved back home.
He’d been my high school sweetheart and on-again, off-again boyfriend during college.
We’d both gone to the same culinary school and run in the same professional circles for a few years.
For a brief time, we’d even worked in the kitchen at the same fine dining restaurant. It was a cruel twist of fate that he had moved back to Roswell Falls about a year before I returned. I quickly fell back into old patterns that I had dumped when I’d sent him packing from my life that last time.
The only plus side to making the mistake of dating Walter again when I moved home was that I slammed that door shut when we broke up for the final time last fall.
We got into a fight over something small—the way the biggest arguments always start—and it ended with Walter laughing in my face and telling me that I would never succeed at running a restaurant without him.
Any lingering questions about what could have been were long gone. Too bad they couldn’t have taken my ex with them.
“Just dropped by to pick up Julian’s knives.”
Of course. I had conveniently put it out of my mind that Walter and Julian were buddies. Birds of a feather flock together, after all.
“I texted you about it this morning,” he added in a bored tone.
“I have you blocked.” Obviously. If he had a single iota of shame, he would have known that. But since he cheated on me with another woman in my own family’s restaurant, I guess he lacked any sort of common sense or decency.
He shrugged, nonchalant. “Not my fault you can’t be civil.” He set the knife bag down and unrolled it, dutifully checking each slot. “But you definitely can’t keep these. They’re German engineered.”
I rolled my eyes. “Whatever.” I was wiping down the already spotless counters for lack of something better to do while Walter rerolled and fastened the bag. When I didn’t hear any movement toward the door, I paused. This was a horror movie.
“Yes?” I asked, arms crossed and face set.
“Just wondering if you heard about the Greatest Restaurants of the Great Smoky Mountains Contest yet,” Walter said. “I got my invitation email this morning.”
Walter got an invitation to participate in a restaurant contest? Last I’d heard, his restaurant had just opened. It was brand new. I also had no clue what he was talking about. A restaurant contest for what? But with my ex looking at me so smugly, I didn’t want to let on how clueless I was.
“Duh,” I said. My hair swished as I shook it from my face, trying my best to radiate confidence.
“Interesting,” Walter said in a way that let me know he didn’t think it was interesting at all. “I didn’t think Southern Charm would get an invitation. What with your restaurant being so…”
He waved a hand around to indicate that my restaurant was just so whatever negative descriptor he was thinking but didn’t have the guts to say aloud.
Which was especially annoying because I knew he wasn’t keeping it to himself out of politeness—he was letting the pause hang so I would fill in the blank.
Then it would be me who said the bad thing, not him.
Another convenient weapon to add to his arsenal.
I wouldn’t do what Walter wanted. If he had something to say, he needed to own up and say it.
“So what, Walter? Finish your statement.”
Walter smirked, running a finger over a spot on the counter. “Old-fashioned,” he said.
I ground my teeth and glared at the smudge left on the stainless steel. It seemed like Walter had reentered my life for the singular reason of creating a mess. And while I couldn’t exactly blame him for my family’s restaurant troubles, it was safe to say his input never, ever helped.
When I decided to come home to take over the restaurant for Dad, I had run into Walter at the grocery store.
That led to dinner, then drinks at The Local Watering Hole (yes, the real name of a real bar in downtown Roswell Falls), then his place.
I confided in him about our restaurant woes, sharing some of my ideas to turn things around.
I realized later that he was using that conversation as another way to put me down.
It’s an established family restaurant in a tourist trap town, he’d said. Do you know how much money you should be making in the busy season? It’ll just take a few tweaks. Any idiot with a spatula could do it.
In my drunken haze, that had felt like a vote of confidence. In retrospect, it was a delicately layered insult-tiramisu that took a swing at my dad and me for not making something so “easy” work. The perfect one-two punch.
“Whatever, dude. You got the knives—you can go now. Unless you wanted to say something else?”
Like, I’m sorry, Lola. I’m an asshole. I’ll leave town, and you’ll never have to see me again. Obviously, Walter would never say those words to me, but I was always a bit of a dreamer.
“Yeah, actually,” Walter began, and I actually reared back in surprise. Was he…was he going to say those things after all?
“You’ve got gravy in your hair.”
My hand shot up to my head and, yep, there was a clump of dried pepper gravy in my bangs. While I fiddled with my gravy hair, Walter left as he entered, always leaving me worse than how he found me.
I was tired. I’d already let everyone else go home, and I was nearly finished with the closing tasks. But my curiosity had gotten the better of me. I needed to know what this Greatest Restaurants of the Great Smoky Mountains Contest was, and why Walter had brought it up in the first place.
If he got an invitation, surely Southern Charm had, too. With that in mind, I booted up the ancient desktop computer to check the business inbox. My stomach flipped when I saw a new email from a sender I didn’t recognize. It flipped even more when I read the full message.
Dear Lola Maloney,
You are cordially invited to participate in the first-ever Greatest Restaurants of the Great Smoky Mountains Contest, hosted by Appalachian Living magazine.
Our panel of judges will be traveling the area to find the best innovative and up-and-coming restaurants in the Smokies.
Your restaurant has been added to the shortlist of places to visit.
There are many wonderful reasons to participate in this contest, including showcasing the wonderful small businesses of your region, highlighting must-visit eateries for seasonal tourists, and, of course, to show off your food!
After judging, the winners and runners-up will feature in an upcoming issue of Appalachian Living. The first-place winner will receive a $10,000 prize and a special feature in a future issue of the magazine.
If you are interested in participating, please respond to this email ASAP. A coordinator will reach out to you with more details.
Sincerely,
Miles Bryant, Editor-in-Chief
Ten. Thousand. Dollars. Don’t get me wrong—the rest of the details sounded good, too. Supporting the local economies, getting free publicity. But ten thousand freaking dollars?
That was enough to help Southern Charm catch up on bills and give me more room to breathe. If we won, it would be almost like a fresh start—a new beginning. I so desperately wanted a new beginning.
I could do it; I could help Southern Charm win this contest, then use the money to turn our luck around. It was a no-brainer.
Then my heart immediately sank, Walter’s earlier criticism coming back to me.
Outdated. Old-fashioned. Tired.
Wasn’t there a reason customers weren’t flooding our tables like they’d used to? Our older customers weren’t around anymore, and younger folks usually walked right on by, opting for one of the cooler, trendier places in town.
I dropped my head in my hands and allowed myself to feel hopeless.
A minute to panic. Sixty seconds to let self-doubt creep in.
The chances of winning would surely be slim.
It would mean more stress, potentially more work for myself.
Could I handle it? It seemed more likely that I would crash and burn than win ten thousand dollars.
Then I picked my head up, catching sight of a poster hanging on the opposite wall. It was old and faded—something my dad had put up over twenty years ago, if not longer. But the words were still legible.
Do or do not. There is no try.
It would be ridiculous to take advice from an alien in a movie from the seventies. But my life was already leaning toward the absurd, so…why not?
In the grand scheme of things, it was clear that I had two choices. Win the contest, or don’t. I just had to figure out how Southern Charm could win.