Kal
Sel was wearing a human suit of her own, an extra precaution in case we were sighted, but I recognized her immediately.
“Hey, loser.”
Yep, definitely my coworker. She was standing several feet away, arms crossed, looking down her nose at me.
“I hope you had a good trip,” she sneered. “Because you know that’s the last time you’ll ever leave Xaerea, right?”
I couldn’t help but notice that Sel was exactly the same. Still the same grumpy, unkind coworker she’d always been. Quick to put me down and make me feel small. There was no joy for me in going home, especially after being here on Earth, with people who accepted me for exactly who I was.
I greeted Sel with a smile anyway.
She scoffed and rolled her eyes, picking nervously at her hu-suit. “What’s your problem, Kalexdyorn? You’re not going to say anything?”
I shrugged. No, I wasn’t. There was nothing I could say that would make her treat me nicely. But it didn’t matter, because I’d realized something as I sat there waiting for the ship’s arrival. Something that felt like a weight being lifted off my shoulders.
I was different, even if my peers weren’t.
Yes, I had always felt different on Xaerea. It was one of the many reasons why I’d struggled to fit in. But I’d learned that my differences didn’t make me inadequate or wrong—they were just the parts of me that deserved love and acceptance but never received it. From myself or others.
Now that I knew what it felt like to love and be loved, nothing could change that.
Sel looked at me with frustration that slowly melted into resignation. She must have noticed it, too, that she couldn’t hurt me.
“Ugh,” Sel said, scratching the neck of her suit. “I forgot how weird you are. Just…come on. I’m on a tight schedule, and I need to get out of this blasted suit.”
A flash of yellow lights from the road just beyond the forest clearing temporarily blinded me, followed by the distinct clunk of doors closing.
Leaves crackled and twigs snapped, and the silent night filled with the frantic cries of, “Wait! Stop! Don’t go!”
I knew those voices.
“What the—?”
I didn’t hear the next part of Sel’s exclamation because I was being tackled to the ground and rolled into a tangle of pink hair and soft warmth and love.
Lola. She’d come for me. I didn’t know how or why, but she’d come for me.
Clumsy hands fumbled at the back of my neck, and then she was pulling my suit over my head, down to my shoulders, my waist.
Sel’s gasp broke through the commotion, but I didn’t have time to think before Lola was pulling me into a kiss that tasted like sweet icing and bitter spice and longing.
“Gross, Lola! You promised you wouldn’t suck face in front of me,” I heard Jacob say from somewhere close by.
Lola pulled away, and I caught sight of her little brother standing awkwardly between my very angry colleague and us.
If Sel’s eyes could shoot laser beams, I knew she would have been using them on me right then.
I could already see the wheels turning in her head, documenting all the ways she would make me pay for this.
“Revealing your identity,” Sel said, crossing her arms. “Fraternizing with humans. Putting all missions, including future missions, at risk. I knew you weren’t the smartest Xaerean in the galaxy, Kalexdyorn, but this?
” She shook her head slowly, baffled by the hubris.
“You know I have to report you for this, right?”
And then the strangest thing happened. For a split second, I could have sworn that Sel looked…regretful. But it must have been a trick of the light.
“Do what you have to do,” I said with uncharacteristic confidence. “Just give me a chance to say goodbye. Properly.”
Sel lifted an eyebrow and pressed her lips together, then turned back toward the pod without saying another word.
She was surely filing a report with our supervisors right that moment.
But at least it meant I had a few minutes left with Lola.
I couldn’t express how much it meant that my last minutes on Earth would be with her.
Lola’s arms squeezed me hard enough to hurt. “No! Kal, please. I came here to—to stop you. To make you stay. To make you see that you have to stay.”
The moonlight highlighted the tears on her face and amplified the blue in her eyes. She really was more beautiful than anything in the universe. I felt lucky that I’d had the good luck to know her, even if it was temporary.
I kissed her softly on the lips. “I have to go, Lola. I was never supposed to be here. I told you that. My time is up.” I lowered my chin so that our foreheads touched. “I am so sorry.”
“But…” Lola choked on a sob. “But I think I love you,” she whispered.
Had I heard that right? I stared at Lola in stunned silence, long enough that she shifted uncomfortably in my embrace.
“You don’t have to say it back,” she added hastily. “I mean, you don’t have to say it at all if that’s not how you—”
“I do,” I blurted out. “Or…I think I do.” An uncertain smile tugged at my lips. “Based on my research.”
“Your research?”
“And how I feel here,” I said, pointing at my chest with a tentacle, “when I’m with you. I’ve never felt anything like it before. It’s warm and soft, sweet and—and comforting.”
Lola grinned. “Like a cinnamon roll,” she breathed.
“Like home,” I said.
“Then stay, Kal. This can be your home. I can be your home.”
Stay. Home. Love.
I wanted to stay. She had to know I wanted to stay. But I couldn’t picture a world in which that was possible. Sel was here to take me back.
Lola’s tears were bright and wet under the moonlight, her lips set in a determined line. No one had ever fought for me so fiercely, or cared for me so completely. I cradled her face in my hands, thumbing away the tears.
It dawned on me then how ridiculous I was being. What was I thinking, surrendering to my fate without a fight? I couldn’t give up on her so quickly.
If Lola didn’t want me, she wouldn’t have come after me. She loved me. This woman loved me, and I was ready to just…give it up? Throw it away? And for what? A lifetime of feeling out of place on a planet where I knew I didn’t belong, because I knew without hesitation that I belonged here with her.
But if I wanted to stay, I needed to fight the one fight I’d never been able to win—that voice in my head that told me I wasn’t worth something this good.
I closed my eyes and took a deep breath, letting the cool air prickle my skin, smelling the damp decay of the forest, feeling the solidness of Lola against my chest and hearing her breath hitch with her crying.
It couldn’t be the end. I knew then that I would do whatever I could to come back to Lola. She was my home.