My Seoul Man

Chapter 6

If you were hoping for a little bow-chicka-bow-wow after that merry-go-round moment, I'm going to have to disappoint you.

Cause when he leapt up and I lunged forward we butted heads like two rams vying for the same ewe.

Talk about a vibe killer...

Except that grabbing hold of each other and laughing our asses off was kinda sexy. And so was the lingering gaze afterwards. Which lasted until it got weird and made us laugh again.

That's when he held out a hand and I took it and let him stroll me out of the playground and around the grounds nice and slow.

Felt a little bit eerie in the dark. With the huge cottonwoods looming over us. They'd been there for centuries, those trees. Held generations of kids in their bushy branches.

Everything but those trees did seem smaller, though. Even walking the perimeter of the building that had felt like a whole universe when we were kids didn't take us all that long.

We didn't break in like couples always do in romantic movies, though. First, because if we'd really wanted to walk the halls for old times' sake, I had keys.

But also, because in real life, alarm systems go off the minute you touch a door after hours. Even if you shut the thing down, security comes wanting to know who the hell is in the building after hours and why. Especially now with all the school shootings and whatnot.

AJ did peek into the windows of classrooms he remembered. He could also remember teachers' names and some of the assemblies and cringy little after school dances we'd had. And a talent show he hadn't tried out for because he'd thought Belva and her bullies would've done the "ching chong" thing at him, too, if he'd stepped onstage.

(FYI: Belva got married right after high school and birthed three babies in rapid succession just before her trucker husband decided to leave her for some truck stop waitress he'd also had a kid by while the Korean kid she'd scared away from that talent show was on his way to K-pop stardom. You may now pause to savor the irony...)

But anyway, as we made it back around to the front of our little alma mater he paused to look up at the chiseled letters over the doors and said, "I feel like even though we hardly knew each other, just starting out as kids together—I don't know. I just... can be my old self with you. The me I miss so much."

"I think that's more about what we both did after we left than what we did as kids," I said. "Although, well...you're really in show business. I was just...around it..."

He said, "Chef to the stars, right?" To stop me from minimizing my "accomplishments."

And I said, "Oh, please. It was mostly restaurants until I met this head chef who cooked for some ballers and a couple of hip hop guys. Gave her a hand from time to time. Got a few gigs that way."

"That must've been kinda cool."

"Wasn't all that. I mean, you're the help, you know? And you see things you wish you hadn't. But how'd you get from here to there? Did you audition and all that, or..."

"Scouts. At a park where people do all kinds of stuff on weekends. You can sell artwork, jewelry, food and stuff like that. There were singers and dancers, too, because the companies are always sending scouts out looking for talent."

"Were you singing?"

"Nope. I was sitting on a big boulder eating this shaved ice thing they have over there. And this woman walked up, flipped me a card and asked me if she could buy me another one."

"You're like that actress that got discovered at a soda fountain in LA 'way back in the day."

"Was that actually true, though?"