Lola
Despite being exhausted and despite the heaviness of whatever was going on with Kal, I still managed to get so caught up in celebrating the success of Southern Charm’s reopening with my family that I’d lost track of time.
Dad had already gone to bed, and Mom was yawning loud and long enough for me to take the hint.
But Jacob was still awake, and I was enjoying our easy banter as we played a very non-rules-compliant game of Uno for two.
It wasn’t until the lights began to flicker and the electronics started to glitch—static, erratic beeping—that I even thought to look at the time. I tried to read the clock over the kitchen sink, but the lights went out completely.
They came back on a second later, and the clock told me it was nearly midnight. I needed to go home to be with Kal.
But as I uncrossed my legs to stand from the couch, the dark night sky outside the living-room window split in two from a streak of blindingly bright purple lightning. The foundation-shaking boom came next. And then, like déjà vu, the lights went out all at once. Complete darkness.
“It’s happening again!” Jacob rushed to the window. His body was silhouetted by the dim glow of the moon.
“What’s happening again?” Mom called from down the hall. I could hear her flipping the light switch off-on, off-on. “And can someone go down and check the breaker?”
For some reason, it was that mundane question that got my butt moving.
“Kal!”
“Lollipop? Is everything alright?” Mom called after me as I streaked across the living room and fumbled with my shoes by the door. Why was everything so much more difficult in the dark?
“No!” I shouted, trying to hold back my rising panic. I couldn’t be sure, not until I saw for myself, but I had a gut feeling that everything was not alright.
A knot formed in my stomach and traveled up my throat as I pummeled across the yard and up the stairs to my apartment. The lights were off, and my heart dropped.
Kal wasn’t home? Kal wasn’t home. Kal wasn’t home.
When I’d moved back to Roswell Falls a year ago, I told myself it was just temporary.
It would be a much-needed pit stop, a stepping stone for my career, something to pad my resume.
Of course, I had underestimated the hold this place had on me, how inextricably connected I was to this small mountain town.
And I didn’t understand until that very moment how much Kal’s presence made Roswell Falls truly feel like home.
I read once that humans are all made of starstuff.
The elements that made stars, that made entire planets, came from the same endlessly expansive universe.
Even then, I’d decided that my particular starstuff was derived from misty mountain ranges, long days in the kitchen, a loving family in a lived-in house, and buttermilk biscuits with blackberry jam.
But I could see now how the same starstuff that created me and everything I loved had also created Kal—because I loved him, too.
My sweaty hand tussled with the doorknob. “Kal?” I called out to the dark room.
Slapping at the wall, I found the light switch, but the electricity was still out. “Kal?” I tried again, uselessly. My voice sounded raw and desperate, but I didn’t care.
I could tell he wasn’t there; I could feel his absence as much as I could sense his presence. Still. Still.
I had to know for certain.
Columns of moonlight filtered in through the windows and cast an ethereal glow. There was just enough light to see that something had been left on the kitchen counter. My senses, on high alert but somehow working on a delay, finally caught up.
My apartment smelled heavenly. Like yeast and brown sugar, and baked goods just pulled from the oven. Of cinnamon.
I stumbled into the kitchen and stopped in front of a platter stacked high with freshly baked cinnamon rolls. In the moonlight, I could just make out a small notebook propped against the plate. I reached for it just as the lights came back on.
It was my new recipe book, already stained with grease and rumpled from handling, turned to a page near the middle. Written in wobbly ink—clearly by someone who’d never had to do much writing—were the words: Kal’s Bestest Most Favorite Cinnamon Rolls.
I scanned the recipe until I found what I was looking for.
In the ingredient list, an orange—zested and juiced.
It was a recipe I had experimented with Kal early on, when I was coaching him in the kitchen.
He’d loved the outcome, but my other taste testers (mainly Nat and Jacob) hadn’t been so keen on the flavor.
Kal remembered. He’d remembered and recreated them for me from scratch, then wrote the recipe down so I wouldn’t forget it. Made a fresh batch so I wouldn’t forget him. Couldn’t forget him.
That absolute jerk.
I was sad. And mad. No, I was fucking furious. And I couldn’t stop crying.
How dare Kal leave me like this, without saying goodbye? Without saying anything at all?
Tears streamed down my face as I grabbed a plate from the cabinet and a fork from the utensil drawer. I plonked the plate by the pile of cinnamon rolls and transferred the biggest one onto it, then dug in.
I thought best when I ate, and I ate best when I was angry. My chewing was overly aggressive as I ruminated.
Should I have told Kal the truth? That I loved him?
Another forkful of cinnamon roll. It was still slightly warm and otherworldly delicious. A hot tear rolled down my cheek and plopped unceremoniously onto my plate.
Why were these cinnamon rolls so freaking delicious?
I reached for the recipe book again. Something was different. This wasn’t the recipe I’d put together. Through blurry eyes, I scanned the ingredients list again.
Ah, there’s the culprit—cardamom. Scribbled in the margins: “Always take a chance on something new.”
And then I remembered how, that day we practiced making cinnamon rolls when my wrist was swollen like a balloon, I instructed Kal to make batch after batch, with small tweaks to punch up the flavor.
For about five minutes, I’d waffled over adding cardamom to one of the batches.
I ultimately decided that it was too different, too risky, too new.
So I’d made the executive decision that no one would want them because they weren’t enough like our usual recipe.
Kal’s note wasn’t just a note. It was a reminder—a gentle reminder, because everything Kal did was gentle.
He was telling me to keep taking chances.
Wasn’t that the most important thing I had learned over the past few weeks together?
That when I bet on myself, it was always the right move?
Forget the expectations of everyone else.
Forget what my ex, my grandma, my regulars had to say—they could have opinions, but they didn’t have the same skin in the game.
My future, and the future of Southern Charm, came down to what I was willing to put into it, and how much I trusted my instincts.
I had learned how to trust my instincts again, and look where it had gotten me. Full tables, internet buzz, happy customers, both new and old. Look where it got me. The happiest I’d been in years, actually running a restaurant.
I was doing what I’d always dreamed of doing. It didn’t look like how I’d fantasized it would, but it was beautiful. It was perfect, and it was mine.
Why did he have to leave? Why now?
“What the hell are you doing?” Jacob’s voice cracked as he shouted at me from the front door.
What the hell was I doing? He was lucky he was my little brother, because I was not in the mood for anyone’s attitude.
I didn’t respond, just scooped a dollop of cream cheese frosting from the plate with my finger.
I’m doing what I need to be doing, which is feeling sorry for myself.
Jacob’s sneakers squeaked as he stomped up behind me and repeated his question. “I said, what the hell are you doing?”
“What does it look like I’m doing?” I snapped.
My brother swiped the plate in front of me and tossed it into the sink with a loud crash.
“What the hell, dude?”
With his fists planted on his hips, Jacob was the spitting image of our mother, and for a second I considered laughing. Scolded by my own little brother on the worst night of my life.
“Right, Lola! What the hell? Why are you sitting here moping? The aliens are here!”
I waved my arms around, pointing out the empty apartment. Then I did the same with my hands, pointing out my tear-stained face.
“Kal’s gone, Jacob. I’m sad and eating my feelings. It’s a normal reaction when someone you love leaves you.”
“So, what, you’re just going to let him?” He stamped a foot and glared at me, those fists still glued to his hips.
Okay, what the hell is this? Since when does my little brother care about my love life?
“You didn’t even like Kal,” I said, reaching for a second cinnamon roll and placing it directly on the counter.
Jacob slapped the cinnamon roll onto the floor. It landed frosting side down. I gaped at him, speechless.
“I did, too!” my brother said with a raised voice. “I mean, was he totally weird? Yeah. Super freaking weird. But he wasn’t so bad, I guess. He was nice and he…he…” Jacob’s shoulders slumped as he paused and took a deep breath. “He made you happy.”
I tensed.
“And when you’re happy, Lola, you don’t even know…”
I tilted my head to look my little brother in the eye. He was trying hard not to cry, which made me want to cry.
“What don’t I know?” The question came out as a whisper.
“How much that means to Mom and Dad.” Jacob twisted his foot, kicking his toe against the linoleum floor. “And to me.” He looked up, and it was enough to break my heart all over again.
“The past few years seriously sucked,” Jacob said. “And then you came home and everything still kind of sucked because you were angry all the time. But then he came around, and you were…you again.”
Forget crying—I was openly sobbing now.
I didn’t know. I never realized how bad it was, or how much they wanted me here. And it hurt to know that my family was silently struggling without me. For a split second, I almost let the weight of that guilt drag me down.
But that wasn’t what I was supposed to take from his confession.
It was the other part—the part where I was happy, and where my happiness had spread to my loved ones. The part where I understood that I was exactly where I was meant to be.
My stupid, brilliant, annoying little brother was right.
What was I still doing in my apartment? I was just crying about Kal leaving without saying goodbye, but I could have a choice in the matter, too.
If there was still a chance I could catch Kal, talk to him before he left forever, then that was a chance I needed to take.
For the first time in a long time, I knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that I would be making the right choice. Kal belonged in Roswell Falls, with me.
“You’re right!” I pushed back from the counter and stared Jacob down. “What the hell are we still doing hanging around here?”
For several seconds, Jacob stared at me, and I stared at him. Like we were simultaneously malfunctioning from the unexpected emotional exchange and didn’t know how to proceed.
“So, um, now what?” I asked stupidly.
Or, in other words, how the hell were we supposed to track down an alien spaceship and find Kal before he left forever?
Again, my brother looked shy, almost embarrassed. “You have to promise you won’t make fun of me.”
My feet felt like they were winding up and raring to go—whirling and sending up a cloud of dust like in a cartoon. I couldn’t think of anything that would cause me to make fun of Jacob. I had never loved him more.
“Pinky promise.” I thrust my pinky toward him, and Jacob hooked his own around my finger.
Then, in one long run-on sentence of a confession: “So I joined the engineering club at school earlier this year and I didn’t tell anyone because I was embarrassed, but when Kal came and he started acting weird, I really did think he was an alien, so I kind of, you know…
did a bunch of research and made a device that could detect near-range extraterrestrial activity. ”
Jacob sucked in a breath and looked at me, pulling a strange device from his back pocket and holding it between us.
My mouth hung open and empty of words. I didn’t even know how to process that information. I could have asked how it worked, but…did I really care? Was it important? Truth was, I didn’t care how it worked as long as it did work.
“You’re such a nerd!” I pulled my brother into a tight hug.
“Shut up.” Jacob shoved me away. “Now let’s go!” He took two steps and pointed an accusatory finger at me. “And don’t you dare tell Mom or Dad.”
Nope, there was no way I was promising him that. I was going to bake Jacob a cake and brag about his accomplishments at the next family dinner. Instead, I pushed him toward the door and yelled at him to “Go, go, go!”