Page 50 of How My Fake Alien Boyfriend Learned to Cook and Saved the Family Business

The words made tears spring to my eyes. I wasn’t used to receiving help. In my experience, I had always been much better at offering help than accepting it.

My gaze caught on Grandma’s recipe book. The one she wrote because she believed anyone, from any background, could learn to cook a decent meal.

My stomach clenched as guilt settled there. I’d said I wanted to create a menu that honored my grandma’s legacy, but I hadn’t been honoring her legacy with my actions. I had been snippy and rude. I’d withheld information and tried to push Kal away.

What would Grandma Gladys have done in my place? She would have accepted help as readily as she offered it, and without being a stubborn pain in the ass. She also would have loved the idea of teaching someone new to the kitchen how to cook “the right way”—which meant her way, of course.

I gave in.

“What are we cooking first?” I asked, nodding my chin toward the recipe book. I leaned against the counter with my swollen wrist resting on ice. Kal had insisted that I take care of my wrist, and his stern expression was so sincere that I couldn’t deny him.

“Cinnamon rolls,” he said with a hint of a smile. “Because they’re your favorite.”

“Yeah,” I murmured, watching him fumble with a bag of sugar. “I love them.”

Kal was so lovely in his true form. Even like this—frazzled and nervous—I couldn’t help but look at him. Truly look at him. The vivid wash of his skin, his hair, the luminescent blue-green of his tentacles. I wondered what it would feel like to be wrapped up in him. Physically, I mean. Emotionally, I was already there, caught in a tangle of Kal.

It was the eyes, though—always the eyes— that sent me off balance. Like I was sinking into the depths of the ocean. I could drown in his eyes.

Three hours later, Kal was covered in flour and powdered sugar and pulling a seriously deformed tray of cinnamon rolls from the oven.

“I did it!” He balanced the baking sheet as his tentacles shut the oven door behind him. “I made Lola’s favorite cinnamon rolls!”

Out of all the options in my grandma’s recipe book, he’d picked my favorite.

“Here,” I said, pushing a fresh bowl in front of Kal. “For the icing.”

“I can’t believe you do all of this,” Kal said, arms spreading wide to encompass the absolute mess he made of the kitchen, “every single day.”

“Well, I don’t quite do…this,” I said, looking between him and the mess. “But it is a lot of work, running a kitchen. Even for a small place like ours. It gets easier as you learn, though.”

Kal reached for the bowl and knocked it over, sending sugar everywhere. His face dropped.

I grabbed a cloth and started cleaning the spill. “It’s okay, really. We have a saying on Earth: Don’t cry over spilled milk. Or in this case, sugar, I guess. Do you know what that means?”

Kal shook his head.

“It means…” I thought about it for a second. “It means that you shouldn’t worry about situations you can’t change, because they’ve already happened. You can only control what happens next.”

“I try to do that,” he said. “But sometimes it seems like I can’t do anything right.”

The way he said it made my chest hurt. I knew exactly how he felt and what made it so hard. When you’re trying your best, and even that didn’t feel like enough.

I placed a hand on Kal’s arm. He stilled. “You just started learning, though. No one gets good at something overnight.”

“That’s not what I mean. It’s not just here on Earth, with new things. It’s everything. Even things I’ve been doing my entire life… I’m always messing things up.”

His hands shook as he added ingredients to the bowl. “I was never supposed to come here,” Kal said. Then he stopped abruptly and looked at me wide-eyed. I knew an unintended confession when I heard one.

“What does that mean?”

“Nothing,” Kal said.

He was lying. But I couldn’t confront him about it, because I had never actually asked Kal why he ended up in Roswell Falls. Which kind of made me a jerk—a clueless jerk without a leg to stand on.

Jacob was right. I would definitely die first in a horror movie.

But I think it’s because somewhere deep down I wanted to believe Kal ending up in Roswell Falls wasn’t just a coincidence. I wanted it to be—I don’t know—cosmically significant? That Kal was meant to be here, with me. Hadn’t I begged for a miracle? Wished upon a star?