Page 16 of Cash

“Good! Thank you!” Brick beamed. He took a bite, and he was pretty proud of how it had turned out. “I’d love to make you anything you want. Bibimbap, kimchi jjigae, tteokbokki, whatever. If I don’t know how to make it, I know my mom does.”

“Yeah?” Jules grinned, and it made the years drop right off his face. “Thanks. Maybe we could go check out that place you told me about too.”

“Madame Kimchi’s Kitchen? For sure.” Brick drank his wine. “How’d you get into Korean food? Just tried it one day and said yes, this is in fact the most delicious stuff on the planet?”

“Kinda.” Jules smiled fondly. “When me and my brother were kids, there was this one place we used to run errands for, and this old man ran a lil’ Korean joint next door. His name was Jeong Jong-wan. He knew me and my brother didn’t have shit, so he’d always have somethin’ for us to eat whenever we came by. My brother ate it ’cause, you know, we were hungry, but he didn’t like the spice. I fuckin’ loved it. I was hooked.”

“Aw, that’s actually really sweet.” Brick frowned. “Wait, you said the old man’s name was…?”

“He died a long time ago.” Jules smiled sadly. “Me and my brother were up on our feet by then, and I made sure we took care of everything. Did right by his family too. There were days we wouldn’t have eaten if it wasn’t for him.”

Brick was honestly touched, and he couldn’t stop himself from putting his hand on Jules’s arm. “That’s beautiful. Seriously. That you did that for him and his family.”

“Nah. Just payin’ back what was owed.” Jules shrugged.

“Not everybody would have cared enough to do something like that.” Brick squeezed Jules’s arm—God, all that sweet gorgeous muscle—and pulled away.

Brick couldn’t be certain, but it almost looked like Jules was blushing.

“Yeah, well, you know. I’m a very caring guy.” Jules went for his wine. “Family comes first, but it ain’t about blood. Blood don’t make somebody care about you. Somebody’s family because of what they do. How they treat you. And Jeong? Hell, he was fuckin’ family.”

“Yeah?”

“No doubt. Did more for me than my old man ever did, that’s for sure.”

Brick hesitated to ask, but the wine had given him enough of a buzz to go for it. “Not a happy father-son relationship?”

“Fuck no. He was always drunk, gamblin’, gettin’ in debt with loan sharks and shit. Broke my mom’s heart.” Jules finished his glass. “They’re all gone now too. All I got left is my brother and my sister.”

“Nobody else special?” Brick asked as absolutely casually as humanly possible, but that was difficult to do when he was dying for the answer.

Jules smiled. “Nah, I got somebody. We’re… a bit on the outs right now.”

Fuck.

Brick went for the bottle of wine to refill his glass. “All right. Tell me everything.”

“You sound just like my fuckin’ sister.” Jules held out his glass for more wine.

Brick filled Jules’s cup, silently screaming at himself for thinking there was ever the slightest chance for his budding friendship with this man to be something more. “Well, come on. Dish.”

“I call her Maddy. She hates it. Everybody else calls her Queen. She’s a doctor. Tough as fuckin’ nails. Fought to get one damn date with her for years.”

“Years?” Brick chugged his wine. “Mm, wow. You really liked her, huh?”

“I want somethin’, I go for it. And I ain’t never wanted anything like I wanted her.”

“So, you finally got the date? Lived happily ever after?”

“Workin’ on the ever after part.” Jules pursed his lips. “What about you? You got a boyfriend?”

“Not for a while,” Brick replied glumly. “Can’t quite find what I’m looking for.”

“What’s that?”

“Someone who isn’t all talk or just wants to mess around,” Brick replied with surprising honesty. “A guy who wants to grow old and get warts and put on smelly joint creams with me. But they’re still fun and exciting and totally sweep me off my feet.” He paused to think. “You know, a prince charming who will fuck on the first date but call me the next day.”

“You’ll find him. Good lookin’ guy like you?” Jules elbowed Brick. “Come on.”

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