Lola
I wish I could say that the most stressful things happening in my life were my failing restaurant, my injured wrist, and the fact that I was harboring an alien from another planet in my parents’ garage apartment. That would have been a reasonable amount of yikes to deal with.
But, unfortunately, life stopped for no one. Even when you were really, really, really at your limit.
First, Nat texted me a photo of a menu along with a message.
Nat
Walter’s new place. Look familiar?
My heart sank as I zoomed in on the text and recognized immediately what my best friend was trying to show me.
My ex’s restaurant menu boasted a list of classic Southern dishes. But not just any Southern dishes—my Southern dishes. Staring back at me from my phone was the exact menu Grandma Gladys developed for Southern Charm—down to the names and dish descriptions.
Immediately, I saw red. How dare Walter call my restaurant old-fashioned when he was poaching our menu the entire time?
Then, I felt nauseous. I had shared some of those recipes with Walter when he offered to help me out in the kitchen for a couple of weeks after I’d just moved back home.
Walter couldn’t be serious. It was too messed up, even for him. Stealing family recipes? Creating a carbon copy of our family restaurant, just because he could?
There was a time when I’d thought Walter might have actually respected me as a peer, unlike most other men in the industry.
But when push came to shove, he was just like the rest of them.
Only worse, because he knew my biggest worries about keeping Southern Charm afloat, and then exploited them for his own benefit.
Briefly, I considered confronting Walter about it.
Possibly unblocking him on my phone and giving him a piece of my mind.
But we had been together long enough that I could predict exactly how he would react.
My ex would tell me that I was being dramatic, and that his menu was just another interpretation of Southern classics—and when you really think about it, isn’t all food derivative anyway?
I could have screamed.
My vision blurred as I thought about all the work I’d already done to restore the restaurant to its former glory.
Hours spent updating the dining room, so it looked as good as new, adding new specials to the menu, doing everything I could to appeal to the customers we’d lost. What did all of that matter now?
There was another restaurant in town serving the same exact food, poaching customers I was just starting to lure back.
It might not seem like a big deal to someone else, but I knew the deal.
Walter’s restaurant was also participating in the Greatest Restaurants of the Great Smoky Mountains Contest. We simply couldn’t have the same menus.
Not because I thought he could out-cook me (he couldn’t), but because his restaurant was newer, and he was a man.
The reputation Southern Charm had gained over fifty years didn’t matter in the face of newness and maleness in the food world.
Which meant I only had one option available to me to boost my chances of winning, and it was a terrible one: change up the menu, and with the scheduled judging date just two weeks away.
Everything was looking up…until it wasn’t.
That was bad enough news to wake up to, but it wasn’t long until something even worse happened. Mom called, and I was stupid enough to answer.
It was right after breakfast service, and I needed a break.
My wrist, even wrapped, iced, and heavily medicated, was hurting.
Unfortunately, I’d had to power through as the only one on staff who could handle cooking.
It was just a sprain—just a tiny minor sprain, and those healed on their own, right?
But I already wasn’t in the best mood when I answered the phone, and Mom’s call just made it worse.
“Shirley Johnson said she saw you with some new fellow last night,” Mom’s voice floated through the phone speaker. “She said it looked like you were getting real cozy.”
I pulled the phone away from my sweaty ear and slid into the office desk chair.
I had never liked Shirley Johnson, the self-appointed leader of a neighborhood watch group that didn’t exist, and I liked her even less now.
Of course, my nosy next-door neighbor saw me walking with Kal last night. Kal, who was taking me home because of injury…that I got when I realized he was an alien…after I kissed him. Kal, who I had reassured just last night would be safe, because Jacob and I would keep him safe.
I thought about that saying, when it rains, it pours, referring to bad things happening all at once. Personally, I hated when idioms turned out to be true.
“It’s no one, Mom,” I said, trying my best to be casual. “Just someone I work with.”
“Doesn’t sound like no one,” Mom said. I could hear the implied air quotes through the phone. “Buzz Wilson said you were at the store with some young man the other day, and that you called him your boyfriend.”
Oh good. Everyone in town was in my business just when I needed them to mind their own. They couldn’t discover the truth about Kal. But I didn’t have time to focus on this new realization before Mom continued her tirade.
“And that was news to me, as you can imagine! My own daughter meeting a new lover, and her mother being the last person to find out.”
I shouldn’t have expected anything less, but she was really laying it on thick. Also, ew.
“Mom…please don’t say lover to me again.”
“Well, I would call him by his name, dear, except no one has bothered to tell me what it is.”
There was a screech of brakes followed by a litany of swear words. Mom behind the wheel of the car was a traffic hazard all to herself.
“Where are you going?” I asked when the cussing died down.
“Garden club,” Mom replied primly.
“I thought they kicked you out.”
She scoffed. “I’m a paying member. They can’t just kick me out. They strongly suggested that I find a different hobby. And I strongly suggested they could shove their suggestion up their—”
“Mom!”
“Lola, I didn’t raise you to be a prude,” she said. “And stop changing the subject! You have a boyfriend, and I want to meet him.”
“But he’s not my—”
“Tonight, for family dinner. I’m making spaghetti.”
“But—”
“Lola Gladys Maloney.” Mom’s tone was stern in that way that meant don’t even try it. So I didn’t even try it.
Instead, I sighed and gave in. “What time?”
“Seven sharp.”
Mom hung up. I buried my face in my hands and flinched when the motion sent a shooting pain through my injured wrist.
Everything had gone from good to bad to worse in about twenty-four hours.
I had just learned that my employee-slash-work-crush was an alien from another planet, I needed to change Southern Charm’s entire menu in less than two weeks, and now I had to introduce said employee-slash-work-crush-slash-alien to my entire family. Over spaghetti.
And of the list of predicaments, I was most concerned about Kal meeting my family.
I looked at the clock. Moved my hurt wrist experimentally. Immediately regretted doing that, then popped two painkillers in my mouth, hoping they’d be enough to get me through the lunch shift.
There was always a point when I was ready to make a big change where everything felt worse and more chaotic. I called it the spring cleaning effect.
Everything came out of hiding—all the junk I’d been storing away, all the bills and other official paper copies of things I had no clue what to do with, all the clothes I would never wear.
I’d go through it all, and turn my home into a disaster zone.
About halfway through, I would always get overwhelmed.
Happened every time without fail. I would end up surrounded by piles and piles of my own entropic undertaking, crying my eyes out with Celine Dion playing in the background.
But then it would get better. Slowly and surely, it would get better. I just happened to be in the big pile of trash phase, and that sucked.
I had so much to do and no immediate plan to handle all of it, other than to keep pushing through.
I considered my situation. There was the fake-boyfriend thing, which I was handling poorly.
The sprained wrist thing—not being dealt with on account of not having health insurance, but having a million other responsibilities on my plate.
The new challenge of having to completely revamp a restaurant menu so that I could maybe win a regional contest, so that I could maybe save our family business.
That priority was pretty high up there. And, of course, the harboring an alien factor.
All of that, and I was still dealing with the fact that aliens weren’t creepy little green dudes with big heads and huge eyes. Because my alien was basically a non-creepy green supermodel with a heart of gold. And tentacles. Can’t forget about the tentacles.
But I needed to forget about the tentacles because I needed to focus.
I closed my eyes and made a mental list of what needed to happen next, in order of importance.
Update Southern Charm’s menu. Confirm the date the contest judges would be visiting. Freshen up the exterior of the restaurant to actually look the part of a first-place winner. Kiss Kal again.
I shook my head. Eyes on the prize, Lola. Stop thinking about that. Get back to the menu.
I rolled back in my chair and opened the drawer, pulling out the one thing I knew would help, and found myself in a one-on-one standoff with Grandma’s recipe book.
I stared at its cover while it judged me from the desk. Nearly all of my favorite meals from childhood were written down in that notebook. It was the culmination of years and years of my grandma’s cooking, and the basis for everything on Southern Charm’s menu.
In that moment, the recipe book felt more like an anchor than inspiration.
I had always loved cooking with Grandma Gladys, but when I went to culinary school, I was ready to do something different. Don’t get me wrong—her food was delicious. But it was hers, not mine. And now they belonged to Walter.
Coming home and cooking the same dishes as they’ve always been reminded me of being stuck in an airport and realizing you’d forgotten your passport. So close to the next step, but so far from the final destination.
My fingers lingered over the grease stains and flecks of ancient, mysterious kitchen grime so petrified it wouldn’t come off. The words across the front still made me giggle. Foolproof Recipes for a Damn Good Home-Cooked Meal.
She was always so serious, my grandma, but to the point of paradox.
So serious that it looped back around to being funny.
And despite her rules and hard stances, she never actually took herself too seriously.
I’d loved that about her. She owned the many facets of herself.
Never backed down from her convictions, but always stayed humble and so, so fierce.
I picked up the notebook and held it in my hands, then instinctively turned to the back pages.
They were full of recipes Grandma and I had developed together.
My first love was cooking new things, and Grandma Gladys was the first to encourage me.
In the evenings after customers left, she would invite me into Southern Charm’s kitchen so we could experiment with flavors and techniques.
None of the recipes in her notebook ever made the cut for the restaurant, but they were probably some of my most creative ideas.
I paused. When had I stopped getting creative with food? And why?
This used to bring me so much joy until the reality of working in kitchens outside of Southern Charm kicked in.
I used to love this part of cooking—being creative. Developing new menu items, new combinations. I hated doing things by rote. Wasn’t that one reason I had burned out so hard in my career? If I loved it once, surely I could love it again.
My chest tightened at the implication, though. Changing Southern Charm’s menu also meant losing one of the most important things Grandma created. It was her. Could I really do that and still honor her legacy? Could I do that without losing a part of her?
I closed my eyes again.
I used to love cooking; I will again. Change is okay, as long as you stay true to what you believe in. Do or do not. There is no try.
About an hour later, I was having second thoughts. Two hours later, I was having third, fourth, and fifth thoughts. My wrist was killing me. Customers were only trickling in—a bad sign for a Saturday—and when they did come, I kept messing up their orders.
And just when I thought I was getting back on track, the call came in.
“We’ve had a bit of a scheduling conflict,” chirped the voice on the other end. She then introduced herself as Eileen Watley, senior coordinator for the Greatest Restaurants of the Great Smoky Mountains Contest, at your service.
I didn’t know how to respond since she called me. I let the line sit silent.
“As I was saying, we’ve had a bit of a scheduling conflict. Our panel of judges was supposed to visit the participating Roswell Falls restaurants the Friday after next, but…”
Eileen Watley, senior coordinator for the Greatest Restaurants of the Great Smoky Mountains Contest, at my service, stretched out the but for so long that I thought my phone was glitching.
Eileen Watley, senior coordinator, finally finished her but with a hard T that sounded like a hiss. “Someone accidentally put the wrong date down.”
Eileen Watley said it in a way that let me know Eileen Watley was probably the one responsible for the case of the mistaken calendar fiasco.
“So you’ll have the privilege of hosting our panel of judges this coming Friday,” she added.
“What?” I nearly dropped the phone. Surely she’d gotten the dates wrong. “This coming Friday?” I asked. “Like…today is Saturday, and then there’s Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, then Friday. That Friday?”
“Yes, exactly!” said Eileen Watley, my new worst enemy. “You’re very good with your days of the week.”
Well, one of us has to be, I wanted to shout. And it’s certainly not you.
“Anyway, have to dash! I’ve got about a dozen other calls to make!”
Eileen Watley hung up.