Page 31 of Cash

Jules left Brick to get dressed, and Brick blew through his closet at tornado speeds trying to find something to wear. As much as he told himself it didn’t matter because he totally did not care about impressing Jules, he still spent much more time than necessary to finally settle on black slacks and a gray dress shirt.

Okay, and a houndstooth vest.

Then a black belt.

And some houndstooth socks because he couldn’t wear the vest without them.

There.

Chic, simple, cute.

Not that it mattered. One bit. Nope. Not at all.

So what if Jules whistled when Brick came downstairs and made Brick grin like an absolute fool when Jules took his hand to kiss it and told him how great he looked. It wasn’t important because Brick had made up his mind that they weren’t going to see each other in any kind of personal or sexual way.

But maybe he could just tell Jules later.

He didn’t want to ruin breakfast, after all.

Jules was indeed saddened by the teeny tiny size of the to-go containers that the apple butter came in and amended to listen to Brick and order extra in the future. While he was helping Brick clean up the trash, there was a knock at the door. The very sound made Brick’s eye twitch, and Jules was quick to answer it for him to ease his anxiety.

It was the first of the repairmen Jules had called to fix the damage to the house, and Brick was touched when Jules made the man take off his boots to put on the guest slippers before coming inside.

Brick waved and pointed toward his office to indicate he was headed off to work.

Jules waved back and smiled.

God, that smile.

With a sigh, Brick plopped in front of his computer and got logged on. Even though he was off to a late start, he was able to catch up and finish translating a few chapters of the book in only a few hours.

Jules popped in around lunchtime to check in and let him know how the repairs were going. He also told him that he was ordering in again, and he wanted Chinese this time. Brick gave him a few suggestions for local spots to try, asked for General Tso’s chicken with white rice, and tried once more to stamp out the rampage of butterflies that always seemed to take up residence in his stomach whenever Jules was near.

Since it was practically lunchtime anyway, Brick decided to take his last few sips of coffee out to the front porch to get some air. The repairmen had finished here, and there wasn’t any sign that the door had ever been disturbed.

Even so, Brick’s insides took a turn and he no longer wanted his coffee.

Noah and Trixie were outside for their usual smoke break, and Trixie waved as soon as she saw Brick.

He waved back, dumping his coffee out into the yard. He noticed that Trixie was waving for him to come over. He set down his coffee cup and headed across the street to meet her and Noah at the edge of the funeral home driveway. “Hey! What’s up?”

“Here!” Trixie had a big paper bag, and she thrust it into Brick’s hands.

“What’s this?” Brick peeked inside the bag and saw a splash of rainbow.

“For your yard,” Trixie replied. “To help restore it to its former gay glory.”

Brick reached into the bag, and he laughed when he saw what it was.

It was a small rainbow flamingo.

“Aw, thank you,” Brick said. “You didn’t have to do this.”

“Well, duh, but I wanted to! Just so you know, it’s mostly from me because I picked it out for you.” Trixie beamed. “But Noah and Ziggy pitched in, so it’s kinda from all of us.”

“We tried to find a bigger one,” Noah said, “but the garden place we went to only had this little guy.”

“I love it.” Brick grinned. “Thank you guys, seriously.” He noticed the trio was a duo today. “Where’s Ziggy? I want to thank him too.”

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