Page 38 of How My Fake Alien Boyfriend Learned to Cook and Saved the Family Business

“Whatever. Help me take these back to the restaurant. And where’s Kal?”

“Sniffing all the flowers. Like a lizard person.”

“Oh, hush,” I hissed.

“I don’t know, Lo… I’m kind of with Jacob,” Nat said, scrunching her nose in the direction of the flower stand. Kal was thrusting his nose into every bouquet on display and sniffing deeply.

Well. Personally, I found it charming and not entirely peculiar. But he was getting quite a few stares, and while the people in Roswell Falls were kind, they were also busybodies. I didn’t want them to judge Kal unfairly before they even got to know him. I had quickly become protective of this sweet man and his many eccentricities.

I hooked my arm into Kal’s by a bouquet of daisies and pulled him away. “Let’s go back to the restaurant. You can help me prep some pickled okra.”

“Oh, yay!” Kal said, tripping after me.

Nat and Jacob said their goodbyes. Her, to head to her evening shift at the fire station, and Jacob to dinner with our parents. With just Kal and me alone, any misgivings I’d had about him, stoked by my brother and best friend, melted away.

Something about us just worked when we were in the kitchen together. I think it was Kal’s enthusiasm that I was drawn to most. His genuine interest in everything we were doing. He always wanted to learn, and I found that I enjoyed teaching him—even if I was often shocked by the things he didn’t know that I assumed were common knowledge.

I was relearning my passion for cooking as I went through Grandma Gladys’s recipe book and uncovered dishes I hadn’t had in ages. I even added a rotating lunch special to the menu, using those recipes.

Usually, I asked Kal what he wanted to try next, and he would spend at least twenty minutes studiously poring over the book before pointing to something that interested him. Then he would spend the evening helping me clean and prep for the next day. And every time, I felt guilty leaving him alone in that small, windowless office to sleep on that crappy couch.

We had just changed all the light bulbs to warmer, homier lighting, and I was working up the nerve to do something potentially stupid before leaving for the night. I was going to invite Kal to sleep in my apartment. Not for anything inappropriate, obviously. But he deserved to sleep somewhere with a soft couch and a nice bathroom, and a shower.

Oh god, a shower. I was a terrible host, letting him sleep in a place without a shower. Grandma Gladys would have clucked her tongue at me and shook her head slowly in that way of hers.

Breathe, Lola. You can ask a man you’re not dating—who, in fact, you still know next to nothing about—to move in with you. What’s the big deal?

I exhaled a shaky breath, whispering “I can do this” as I bounced on the balls of my feet. I was trying to pump myself up. It didn’t help that both Kal and I had split a bottle of Buzz O’Reilly’s homemade blackberry wine I’d picked up at the farmers’ market.

Kal was always so excited to try new foods, I figured he might enjoy trying a new drink. I was right. Kal did love it—so much that he’d downed two glasses in just a few minutes. A few hours later, the wine seemed to have no effect on Kal, and a little too much effect on me.

This resulted in me standing outside the walk-in freezer, hazily forming and reforming the sentences in my head, trying to come up with the best combination of words to present to Kal.

“What are you doing, Lola?” I’d thought he was in the dish pit, and the sound of Kal’s voice so close startled me. I twisted to face him, but my feet weren’t keeping up with my body, and my brain was all out of whack. Instead of keeping a safe distance, I allowed myself to step forward so that our toes nearly touched.

Oh no. I was doing a very bad, very wine-influenced thing. And I wasn’t going to stop either.

“Do you remember when you asked what a kiss was?” I said, arms stick-straight and glued to my sides.

Kal tilted his head, studying me. He didn’t move away.

“Yes,” he said. “I remember that very clearly.”

“Do you still want to know?”

I was treading in dangerous territory, and the rational side of my brain knew it was the blackberry wine. I was tipsy and erratic and not sticking to my plan. Instead, I was coming on to my new employee in the back of the kitchen. Tomorrow, I figured I would look back on this and slap a palm to my face, regretting it all. But right then and there, I didn’t care.

I let myself make the bad choice.

“Yes. Very much so,” Kal said, and his voice had grown thin and quiet like mine.

And was I imagining it, or had his lips moved infinitesimally closer?

Maybe, just maybe, he feels the same way as me, said my wine-soaked brain. Maybe it will all turn out okay.

I leaned in until our lips were almost close enough to touch. It took only a second to make the choice. My mouth parted. “It’s this,” I said before closing the gap.

This time, Kal was ready for me. Where our first kiss was awkward and no more than a peck, this one was a proper kiss. His lips slightly parted, yielding as I pressed my own against him. Timidly, Kal returned the kiss, deepening it. My hands instinctively moved to skate across his chest, then shoulders. Eventually, they snaked over his collarbone and came to rest at the back of Kal’s neck.