But she also never said it back. I know she doesn’t love me. It’s too soon. Half of me realizes it’s too soon for me to be in love with her too, but I can’t help how I feel.
I can’t pinpoint the moment it happened, I only know that in the best moment of my life, when Bren finally extended an olive branch publicly and I was recognized for my musical contributions, the only person I wanted to share that moment with was Lola.
Bren’s acceptance, my peers’ acknowledgement of my contribution, none of it mattered as much as I’d imagined it would. The only person I cared about being proud of me that night was her. Iggy. What I said in my speech was nothing but the truth.
I’ve been waiting a long time—all my life—to find my true love, something real. And I know Lola and I have that potential if she can only let herself be vulnerable enough to try again after her heart has been shredded into thin and delicate ribbons.
And I’m okay knowing she doesn’t love me back because I know her feelings are growing, and one day she could. I just need to be patient.
Luckily for us, patience is my forte.
“Right,” Lola says.
I open my mouth to reassure her she doesn’t have to say ‘I love you’ back, but my phone goes off in my pocket, interrupting. “Uh, sorry,” I say as Matt parks and we get out of the car. I frown when I see Roger’s name on the screen. I talked to him before our flight, so I wasn’t expecting a call tonight.
“Is it true?” Roger demands as soon as I pick up.
“Is what true?”
“The story on Lola. Is it true?” Roger asks again. “It’s not a big deal, Karl, but I need to know this kind of shit ahead of time. Taking the offensive position is the best form of defense. You know that. What were you thinking, hiding this?”
“Slow down. I don’t have any idea what you’re talking about.”
“Where are you?”
“We just got home. About to get in the elevator and will lose the call.”
“Turn on the damned news when you get upstairs and then call me back.”
Roger ends the call, and I blink at the phone in my hands. What the hell was that? “Lo?”
“What?” she asks.
“Is there something you need to tell me?”
“About what you said at the—”
“No.” I shake my head. “Have you been keeping anything from me?”
She looks to the sidewall of the elevator and bites the inside of her lip. That’s all the answer I need.
“Roger said to turn on the news when we get inside and call him back.”
“The news?” she asks, her eyes wide with panic.
“Yeah. There’s apparently some sort of story on you.”
She shakes her head as all color drains from her face. “No, no, no, no,” she says over and over as she dashes out of the elevator and lunges toward the remote to turn on the television.
We stare at the television as a gallery of images rolls through the screen before our eyes. Pictures of a man and a woman in their mid-forties. The man, blond and green-eyed just like Lola, gives it away, but it’s the woman’s lips, with that perfectly symmetrical cupid’s bow, that are a direct replica of Lola’s. It’s her parents, I realize. Then their images roll away, and the image of a car, or what’s left of it, scrunched up like a soda can, fills the screen.
“Oh, fuck, Iggy, you don’t need to see this shit.” I move to take the remote from her to turn it off, but she raises a hand to stop me and turns the volume up.
“We’re back with more on Karl Sommer’s partner’s tragic story. We have confirmed reports that Dolores “Lola” Beltran, the nineteen-year-old girlfriend of Industrial November’s guitarist, is, and has been for the last eighteen years, in the United States without documentation. Her parents, Patricia and Gabriel Beltran, also undocumented immigrants, died over a year ago in a tragic vehicular accident—”
I shut off the TV. She doesn’t need to see this. Lola’s tears are dripping from her chin as she keeps staring at the black screen, her sniffles the only sound in the room.
“It’s true, then?” I ask her.