Page 35 of How My Fake Alien Boyfriend Learned to Cook and Saved the Family Business

Okay, maybe I was laying it on a little too thick, but the look on Walter’s face was so worth it. He was practically fuming, and I delighted in watching the purple-red color creep down from his cheeks to his neck. My job here is done.

Without thinking, I squeezed Kal again, lifted onto the balls of my feet, and kissed him. The moment our lips touched, I knew I’d made a mistake. Not because it was bad, but because I wanted more. The feeling of his lips against mine was like the zing of a key lime pie—perfectly sweet and full of zest.

I pulled away to find Kal standing there, stunned. His eyes were dilated, lips narrowly parted. It took near-herculean effort not to lean in and kiss him again.

“Well, it was nice catching up, Walter,” I lied, grabbing the giant spoon from the floor with one arm and looping the other into the crook of Kal’s elbow. “But we’ve got a ton on our to-do list today. Busy, busy, busy!”

With that, I dragged Kal toward the garden section without another glance at my ex. As soon as we hit the flowers, I let go of his arm. Suddenly, I felt terrible. Kal didn’t sign up for any of that. Not only was it immature, it was also extremely inappropriate. It was one thing to rope him into helping me with restaurant chores, but a totally different thing to ask him to pretend to be my boyfriend.

I looked to the floor, ashamed, and saw that my hand was still curled into a tight fist. Unfurling my fingers revealed the crumpled red color swatches from earlier. I needed to apologize to Kal for overstepping and putting him in an uncomfortable situation, and I needed to do it right away.

But just as I worked up the nerve to say sorry, I noticed Kal was watching me with a look of wonder. My face burned. Maybe I didn’t have to have that awkward conversation after all. Maybe Kal felt the same way I did after our unexpected kiss.

I was going to ask him, but Kal brushed right past me. What the heck? Now I was even more embarrassed. I had assumed he would be surprised, or maybe annoyed, even upset by my random display of affection. But from the way he was acting, it didn’t register at all.

My eyes followed Kal as he leaned over a tray of blooming pink zinnias. Then I realized he wasn’t smiling at me, he was just smiling, and my cheeks grew warm. Forget being embarrassed; I was mortified.

I ran down the list in my head. I had lied and said he was my boyfriend; groped him; kissed him; and done all those things without asking permission first.

Oh god. I really needed to explain myself. Do it now before it gets weird.

“So, listen—”

“Look at these, Lola!” Kal exclaimed, cutting me off. He grabbed my hand and pulled me to join him. Nose practically buried in a spray of pink flowers, Kal said, “Have you ever seen anything so beautiful?”

I blinked mutely. Well. It seemed I had nothing to worry about, at least where Kal’s sensibilities were concerned. But also…what was happening?

“They remind me of you,” Kal said.

And then I was a puddle on the floor. The flowers, the beautiful flowers, reminded him of me? I wanted to protest or tell him to look again, because he needed to get his eyes checked. But he looked so sincere as he inspected a magenta bloom, tracing a tentative fingertip over the delicate petals.

Beautiful.

But it wasn’t only the compliment that stopped me in my tracks. It was also the realization that Kal was present in a way I never was. When was the last time I’d actually stopped to smell the roses in my life? When was the last time I had enjoyed myself? Watching Kal look so happy almost filled me with envy.

Instead, I joined him to stop and smell the roses—literally.

I followed Kal around and ogled the flowers. I sniffed what he told me to sniff, avoided what he told me to avoid. One flower set Kal to sneezing for about three minutes straight, which sent me into a laughing fit right alongside him.

Eventually, a worker had to ask us to leave because Kal kept knocking over pots with his giant fork, and I kept blocking the aisles with my giant spoon.

I began to notice new things about him.

Like how he moved like someone not entirely sure of how his body worked, how his green eyes weren’t just green, but a dark emerald green rimmed with seafoam green. How being with him felt as comforting to me as a serving of Grandma Gladys’s banana pudding on the first day of summer break.

My cheeks hurt as I guided us back through the store to gather the rest of our supplies (including a couple buckets of poppy-red paint), and continued to hurt as we hauled the purchases inside the restaurant.

The mood stayed high as we pulled furniture from the walls, and I taught Kal how to paint a wall with maximum impact for minimal effort. He gushed breathlessly at the color, and I tried, for at least a few hours, to see the world through Kal’s eyes. Bright. Bursting with color and joy and reasons to smile.

It was kind and warm. A world worth paying attention to, and, bizarrely, one where my needs seemed to matter.

There were many, many reasons to try to move on from my embarrassing display earlier. I could just keep my mouth shut and not potentially ruin a good thing. But I was already on a roll, so why stop?

“Sorry for, um, the kiss,” I blurted out as we finished cleaning up the mess we’d made. I clamped my teeth together to prevent myself from saying too much.

I’m sorry, but also did you like it? Did it taste like citrus and cream to you, too? Would you want to do it again?

Kal looked at me, perplexed. “What is a kiss?”