(G1) Chapter 6

Lola laid awake in bed for hours staring at the ceiling. The ghost of Kaidan’s kiss lingered on her lips haunting her. Part of her was envious that Kaidan was in the bunk beneath hers quietly snoring, fast asleep as if it had been any other day. Kaidan couldn’t be serious…could he? It could have easily been an emotionally confused reaction on his part to the events of the day. When sleep finally came it was restless and she dreamed of Kaidan.

Lola awoke to the smell of burnt waffles. She got up and got dressed before finding Kaidan in the kitchen. He smiled at her. “I tried, but hey, at least it’s not autumn salad.”

She smiled back. “I am not sure burnt waffles are an improvement even if the smell isn’t.”

Kaidan tossed the waffles in the garbage and pulled out two never ending servings of leftover salad for breakfast. “We really need a cookbook.” He sat down to eat. “Before I forget, if you want the paper, it’s already in the trash.”

She sat down next to him and started pushing the salad around on her plate. He was right, they really needed a cookbook. “How bad is it?”

“We’re the talk of the town. For the next week we should have people giving us weird glances and whispering behind our backs. However, it might make you happy to know that a few cages were rattled in the process.”  Kaidan turned on the TV.

The news story told of how a large number of citizens were demanding some sort of record keeping on the part of City Hall. There was no official documentation of births, marriages or deaths. Currently there was nothing in place and sooner or later that was going to present a problem. No society, be it animal, insect or human could expect to survive and thrive with a homogenous gene pool. That was basic science. Not only that, but what if in a year, or ten years or a hundred or a thousand years that the colony had completely died out? There would be no records left behind for anyone to find. There was always the possibility that someone on Earth would come looking for them looking to find out what happened to that original space exploration vessel. Records needed to be kept.

Lola watched the news story with interest partly because she was interested and partly because it meant that she didn’t have to face Kaidan. Sooner or later they would have to talk about what happened and she hadn’t yet sorted out all of her feelings. On one hand she was scared, nervous and anxious about having a relationship with him and on the other she felt the same way about the possibility of things going back to the way they were or worse yet, him walking out of her life. It was situations like these that one could never be prepared for and it was especially worse having grown up isolated from the opposite sex and having no idea how relationship dynamics worked.

She dumped her salad into the trashcan unable to eat. Kaidan took that as his cue to do the same, not because he couldn’t eat, he was always able to eat, even under the worst of circumstances, but because he was just so sick of salad. “You know, I was thinking, this house is really too small for two people to live in comfortably.”

She was caught off guard. “What?!” Did this mean he wanted to move out? Did he want her to move out? She had to remind herself to breathe.

“I know that there isn’t  much room to expand this place but we could always have a second floor added, move the bedroom up there and expand the living room out. Granted, it’s going to take some time to come up with money to do make the renovations…” He paused and looked at her closely. “What did you think I was going to say?”

“I didn’t know.” She wasn’t going to admit to anything. “I need to get going. Singing telegrams to perform.” She ran out the door before anything else could be said between them.

Kaidan smiled to himself.   She was awfully cute when flustered. He wasn’t going to push things with her but he was certainly going to do whatever he needed to prove his sincerity. The problem was, where they could take care of themselves, neither of them made all that much money. He looked around the small house. It would take forever to save the money to renovate the place without another source of income. The solution was simple enough to him. Scientists at both The Perigee and military base were willing to pay top dollar for any rock and/or meteor samples that people brought them. It was time consuming but what would take them years to save up for could be done in just a matter of months. The decision made, Kaidan stepped out the door to fully explore Lunar Lakes.

Meanwhile Lola was once again handing out singing telegrams for every little accomplishment and insignificant failure. People sure were needy, requiring every thing they did, no matter how big or small, acknowledged. She thought it was ridiculous. She certainly didn’t want to be doing this forever. Between congratulating kids on finishing their homework, singing songs for people who finished work outs and cheering up those with incontinence problems she took a few moments to sign up for the upcoming talent show in the park.

For the first time Lola paid attention to how people, especially those in relationships, interacted with each other.  Human relationships were not easy to understand. She didn’t understand what Bethany Su seen in her husband Damien.  He could always be found wearing his slippers and bath towel and could occasionally publicly flirting with Eleanor Alto who was also married. He was also always misplacing their infant daughter, Irene. Then there was Martin January who was married to a work-a-holic who never seemed to have time for him. What kept them together? Gretel and Len Sekemoto were the only two people who seemed suited to each other. One thing was for certain, relationships were complicated. There didn’t seem to be any rhyme or reason to who ended up with who, why two people would fall in love. Granted, she had no idea how any of them met and got together and if that made any difference.

She just needed to figure out what it was she felt for Kaidan. Was it love? If love made you feel anxious and caused your hands to sweat when around someone then made you feel like you wanted to puke when you were separated then the universe had a sick sense of humor.