My Seoul Man

Chapter 6

"Was for you."

He gave a weary little sigh and said, "Yeah, I've been in harness a long time. In fact, I almost jumped up and did a Tiktok in the middle of the night last night, thinking I'd missed my weekly quota."

"They make you do that stuff?"

"Not so much now. But back when I was just getting started, me and my angels even ate dinner together online late nights after rehearsals. First time we flew first class to Paris for a fashion show appearance, I streamed part of the flight for them, too. Cause how many of those kids'll ever have a sleeper cubicle like that? Or eat the kind of food they served me?"

"That's sweet, though. That you thought to do that."

"Yeah, we played video games and watched dramas—had listening parties, too, when I dropped a new album. And they'd ask me for all kinds of advice. Hugs. Kisses. But you never know which ones are getting into it a little too much..."

I said, "Okay, it's my turn not to want to talk about stuff like that." And I leapt up on one of the concrete retaining walls next to the front steps to literally distance myself from that topic.

So, he leapt up behind me. And lifted my arms up like Jack and Rose in Titanic.

I leaned and looked back almost just to see what he would do.

Surprised me a little when he pressed his cheek to mine. I got all dizzy from the heat and the amazing scent—I'd noticed it before, actually. The Tom Ford you had to get kind of close to him to get a whiff of. Hundreds of dollars, that cologne cost.

That's the kind of thing I'd learned working in houses where they handed out swag bags at kid's birthday parties full of stuff way more expensive than that. But I'd gone home with leftovers I was grateful to have when gas, rent—and Blaine, later—had gobbled up all the grocery money again.

And then this man who hadn't had to worry about things like that for years gave me a little nuzzle and said, "I used to want to walk right up to those eyes from across the playground. Be all bold and freak everybody out..."

"Your mother would've come up there and slapped me, probably. If she heard about that."

"She would've slapped me. Even after what you did that day."

"Well, it woulda started a whole lotta mess. Even at the store, probably."

He wrapped our arms around us and said, "My Dad started a whole lot more mess than that."

"I'm so sorry he mistreated her that way."

"My grandparents believed he was possessed by demons. Slightest thing could set him off."

I frowned back at him. "Did he hit you?"

"I love how mad you sound."

"Did he?"

He waited a bit, before telling me, "I grabbed a knife off the kitchen counter after he swung and missed. And something in his eyes told me he might've seen just enough of himself in my eyes to know he'd better not swing again."

I craned my neck a little more to look into those eyes. And he said, "Your eyes, though..."

So, I reached to cup the back of his head to draw him a wee bit closer. Since he didn't seem to be ready to make that next move.

And the sweet little kiss I got was a whole mood. That lasted way longer than the kiss itself.

Yeah, it flooded my basement, too, but I almost feel like that cheapens the moment, when I talk about the hormonal stuff. Because it was more like this lovely little gift he'd given me.

And when he murmured "Finally made it across, huh?" I smiled.

Seeing, in my mind, that cute little boy he'd been back in the day when I used to hop up on that wall and "double dog dare" anybody to try to climb up on or chase me off it...

He definitely wasn't that little boy anymore, though. He was a scary beautiful man who'd done us proud and was loved by millions of people.

And one had died for love, too.

In another country where K-pop groups did Black music better than we did even though there were almost no Black people there—don't know where that thought came from, but I had a bona fide "Megan Markle moment" all of a sudden.

Would his people be all mean to me like the Brits had been to her?

Or would we hit an iceberg way before it ever got that far?

An ancestral voice from somewhere deep—probably Sadie's spirit—chastised me to "Cut out the 'we' stuff" and get my mind right.

But that kiss, though...