I felt AJs hands slide up my back and onto my shoulders. Made me shiver and glance back toward Mama Sadie's house to see if anyone was watching.

And he murmured, "Relax, okay? If they see, they see."

I let my head fall back against his chest out of sheer exhaustion. The anger had faded into a kind of...bewilderment. "It's like that...QAnon...Deep State...conspiracy kinda stuff."

He began to knead my muscles with those magic hands of his. "Well, this is real."

"Should I have just...God, I don't know. Everyone else wants to go back tomorrow, but..."

"Why don't you want to go back? Talk to me."

First time any man had said that like he really meant it. Made me feel all kind of warm inside.

So, I told him, "I'm worried about your grandparents, actually. Now that Wally has explained what's really going on."

"God bless him..."

"Amen to that," I said. Like I really meant it.

Cause in the midst of the turmoil I'd had the presence of mind, somehow, to call Wally. Who called some other people, who called some other people—the mayor, some city council and county officials...

And he gradually cobbled the hemming and hawing together into a scary little story.

Told me, "Y'all shook a big old hornet's nest, kiddo. That wun a cute little, small-town get-together. It was put together by a little cabal of developers wantin' to show potential buyers the future they have in mind. And Seoul Food sounded like...well, foreign, you know? Kinda things they're tryin'a promote."

He'd gotten the impression that the developers had done some "pretty big favors" for the local politicians over the past two or three years, to get them on board with those future plans.

"So they couldn't have corn dogs and fried chicken gettin' more play than that fancy stuff they wanted the media to cover," he concluded. "I mean, that noodle thing was more like it, but it wasn't run by any of those famous people they were tryin'a promote. Ya'll Quarters folks are the kinda history they're tryin'a play down. It brings to mind allat slavery time stuff. Like them shacks you show to tourists, you know? They'd like to shut that down. Pretend it never happened."

Oh, I definitely knew. And it cut me to the quick that our survival was an embarrassment now. Something to be hidden, not celebrated.

And then seeing Grandma Ahn's eyes go from joy to fear when those guys started sniffing around that somen slide...God, that hurt me so bad.

They'd sent away the people who'd booked it for that hour and ordered Ronnie to show them how it worked as if it were a moonshine still or something. I had to explain the whole concept, too. "Cold noodles?" one said. Like that was a crime of some sort.

Ronnie knew it was all for show like when the Feds came to the rez to act like they actually gave a shit a couple of times a year. So he told them what "this" did and how "that" worked in this monotone that told them he knew the rules of this game.

So, finally the icy-eyed one said, "You wanna use it like a fountain...that's cool, but we don't know enough about this kinda stuff to make a final decision right this minute." Kinda of smug, like he was loving having the last word on the subject.

Cause he'd completed his mission, pretty much. Gave the truck a thumbs up, but the mortal blow had been struck. Everyone had seen them go rummaging around in there looking all stern and serious.

So rumors spread and got distorted—like the telephone game, right? People started walking past the truck real fast like we'd tested positive for COVID or something.

And all I could think about was how the Ahns had let us have that space and the truck and their relatives to help us run it...

I looked up at the stars and just listened to the rustling of the trees and plants in Mama Sadie's little garden. And felt my Ahn's heart beating against my back, too...

"Won't be doing that cooking thing, I bet," I said. "You think they'll do a story about us being shut down?"

He nuzzled my neck and said, "Naekko, (NAY-ko) let's not, okay?"

I craned...and he chuckled and said, "Means 'sweetheart.'" And then he turned me around to face him fully. "You won. You did so well they had to sic the suits on you."

"With your recipes."

"Whoa, that's a detour I wasn't expecting."

I hugged him and said, "I know. I'm all over the place right now, but...it reminded me of when I was cooking other people's food in Cali. I mean...there has to be a way to take it from Seoul with an 'e' to soul like Sadie used to sell."

"Seoul...to Soul."

I looked up at him. "There you go again."

"But you like it. I can see it in those eyes."

"I just have to make the food to go with it."

"One more suggestion?"

I stared, but he poked my nose and said, "Let me record your family singing. We'll do a killer remix that'll bring everybody running."

I laughed and said, "Just...let's go in and send these people home—Jennie divvied up, right?"

"Everybody gave the money back."

I stared. "Your cousins, too? I'm not havin' that."

"I'll deal with them."

"You sure?"

"You sure your family's gonna just walk away without a fight?"

"They won't love it, but they know how complicated my life is right now. And they've seen how much more complicated this was than they thought, too. Even before the wheels flew off. Few days from now, the aunts'll start saying what they really think. Right now, their pride's in the way."

I was prepared to defend my decision when we walked through the screen door.

But my cousin Cyrus hit us with, "We gon' have us some little Asian babies now?"

And Bennie went, "Hope they take after him." The kind of teasing my family did when they liked the guy you finally brought to church or Sunday dinner or whatever.

The only distraction I could think of fast enough was, "He's not even allowed to date, let alone be makin' babies."

And when Cyrus gave me, "What the hell?" I said, "They put that shit in their contracts, those K-pop people. So their fans don't get all upset or something."

Jennie had told them something about that after I tried to explain it to her with help from Google, finally. It hadn't impressed her much—I'd been counting on that, actually. And she'd given me the little smirk I'd hoped for and said, "They look like skinny little girls..."

She didn't need me to tell her not to tell anybody. She didn't care enough to bother.

This time, she frowned all up and said, "How they gon' keep a grown ass man from doin' what a grown ass man need to do?"

I gave AJ a little shoulder pat and said, "Anyway, that ship sailed 'way back when we were kids. He went his way and...well, I guess I'm still trying to find my way..."

Velma busted out laughing and said, "Girl, that man didn't lend you that truck and work his ass off in a hot kitchen all day just cause y'all went to the same school back in the day."

"Actually, that's exactly why I wanted to be there," AJ said. But then he looked down at me and said, "Cause I didn't have the guts to chase her around that playground like we used to do when we liked someone back then."

I could feel this huge mood shift happening in the room when he said that. All the synapses in all those brains linking his memories with our memories...his family, with our family...

"You real famous now, huh?" my cousin Jaymes, the DJ, asked. Like he was proud of this particular member of the new extended family our minds and hearts were knitting together.

And I knew then that Jennie had said something. I just didn't know how hard I'd have to beg to stop them from blowing his cover.

"You seen 'im wit that hat and glasses on," Velma said. "Tryin'a keep it on the down low."

"I just thought he was bein' extra fly wit it," Jaymes quipped.

"But don't be out there runnin' your mouth at those clubs and whatnot," I warned him. "He came home to get away from all that."

"He come home lookin' for you," Bennie said. "Like in those dramas on Netflix and stuff."

"Girl need somebody to hold onto now both her mamas gone," Aunt Bessie said. "And this boy need somewhere he can get away from all that mess, don't you baby?"

"We been keepin' our own secrets here in The Quarters since we first got here," Velma said. "Hid some people back up in here, too. People runnin' from back where we come from."

"People runnin' for they lives," Bessie said. "When they was wantin' to string 'em up for somethin' they didn't even do."

"Which makes my so-called problems seem pretty silly, right?" AJ said. "In fact, compared to what happened today..."

"Well, them people don't never want us to have nothin' they can't take a piece of some kinda way," Cyrus chimed in. "Sent in the goddamned cavalry cause they couldn't beat us fair and square."

"You think they'll start pickin' at his people?" Bennie asked—with real fear in those eyes. "For helpin' her so much?"

"They goin' after his kinda people now'days," Auntie Bessie reminded everyone. "Anybody they say ain't white..."

And "just like that," as they say on that Sex and the City show I can't even stand, the family folded up around us like a fortress of safety and solace—and silence.

I glanced over at Yoli and Ronnie sitting on the love seat by one of the windows, and Ronnie gave me a big fatherly smile and nod. Yoli just hugged me with her eyes.

And a couple of weeks later, I framed an 8 X 12 of AJ's eyes doing the same thing--Bennie sent that shot to me the day after all that mess happened at the Food Fest.

Not sure who actually took that picture, but when I called to thank her, she said, "Swear to God, I hope some man looks at me like that someday."

So I set the framed version of that picture on the table next to my bed at Sadie's house to remind me how that man had looked at me. On a day when everything else had gone so wrong.

I put it right next to this picture of my real mother holding me in her arms a few days after I was born.

And her eyes were hugging me almost exactly the same way.