Page 13 of Cash

Jules waved as he headed off the porch and down to the sidewalk.

Brick sighed, staring at Jules’s departing butt with the same desire as Jules had gazed at the yukgaejang. He shut the door, locked it, and trudged back to the kitchen to clean up.

Despite Jules’s firm orders to eat, Brick didn’t have much of an appetite.

He finished the wine at least, put away the leftover food, and dragged himself upstairs to get ready for bed. He wasn’t sure why he was so disappointed. It was just having his new neighbor over for dinner to thank him for helping him clean his wrecked yard—a yard that was technically wrecked because of said neighbor’s moving truck.

Sure, Jules was attractive, easy to talk to, made him laugh, got him hot in the most unexpected of ways, but it wasn’t as if Brick had actually been expecting anything to happen.

That would have been ridiculous.

But damn if that wouldn’t have been awesome.

Chapter Three

“No way!” Brick gasped. “So, wait, she didn’t die?”

“No!” Chae-Won, Brick’s mother, confirmed heatedly. “He poured out the poison before she actually drank any, refilled both glasses, and so she just got drunk!”

“What?”

Brick had gotten up and went about his usual morning routine, though today was off to a much more mundane start than yesterday.

For one, he didn’t see any sign of Jules.

There weren’t any lights on at his townhouse, and the garage was closed, so Brick couldn’t tell if there was a car inside or not.

Brick’s ruined yard was somehow more depressing than before, and he was horrified to have discovered that someone had run off with the broken pieces of his rainbow flamingo that he’d left on the porch.

So much for fixing it.

After sipping some more coffee, he’d gone back inside to get ready for work. He’d had several text messages from his mother demanding that he call her immediately, and he was not surprised that the urgency was to discuss the current show they were watching.

Chae-Won had passed along her love of Korean dramas to Brick, and they used to watch them together every day when Brick was a kid. After his first episode of Boys Over Flowers, Brick was hooked. They went on to watch all three Korean remakes and the Chinese and Thai versions as well, and it was but the start of a lifelong obsession with drama.

Now that Brick was an adult, they used streaming services to watch all kinds of Asian shows. They would watch a few episodes of the same show each week and chat about it on the phone.

Usually Brick was waiting for his mother to catch up to him since he had a terrible habit of binging entire seasons at a time, but he hadn’t even started their latest pick, The Romance of Tiger and Rose.

It was a romantic comedy about a young scriptwriter who finds herself in the very world she was writing about. It had come highly recommended, and Brick had been looking forward to starting it, but a dinner date with a certain someone next door had made him completely forget all about it.

His mother was happy to spoil the first two episodes for him.

“So, she faked being pregnant, claimed to be in love with the guy, and then she takes him to a brothel to battle musicians?” Brick recounted, trying to keep up with the crazy plot.

“Yes, because she’s trying to get the story back on track so this guy will fall in love with her sister! But you see, the man she was engaged to since childhood shows up, who happens to be her favorite character, and I think she’s gonna end up with him!”

“Wow, it sounds crazy awesome. And funny. Don’t you worry. I’ll catch up as soon as I can.”

“I thought you would have already been halfway through the first season by now.”

“Ah, just been busy at work.” Brick sat down at his desk, shaking the mouse around to wake up his computer. “And I had my new neighbor over for dinner last night.”

“What’s his name?”

“How do you know it’s a guy?”

“You’re never behind in a show unless there’s a man.” Chae-Won sounded like she was smirking.

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