“Don’t take it personally,” I say, though I’ve never seen her be dismissive of anyone before. “She’s probably just having a bad day.”
“If you say so,” she says, spinning on her stool to face me. “Today was fun. I haven’t checked my phone at all.”
“I’m happy you were able to get a break from it.” I cage her knees between mine, rubbing my palms along her thighs.
January sets our glasses of water down harder than necessary.
“Do you think she spit in them?” Lou looks at me with wide eyes and a smirk, making me laugh. “I saw you took a call. Was it Tom?”
“It was. There’s the promise of primary custody, if I can meet Brenda’s demands.” That impossible number flashes through my brain every second since Tom told me the amount.
Tomorrow, first thing, I’ll inquire about my pension. See how fucked I’ll be if I cash in on it this early.
“Grady, that’s great news. Right?”
“It might be.” I shrug. “If I can figure it all out.”
“Do you want to talk about it? Spitball ideas?”
“No,” I say, leaning forward to press a quick kiss on her lips. I love that she asked. That she’s giving me the option to work it out in my own brain, first. “Not yet.”
“Okay, I’m here when you need it.”
“Same to you,” I tell her, before we share a quiet moment of just staring at one another. A thousand unspoken words pass between us.
I imagine her entire life story passing by in quick flashes. Louisa as a toddler in a grass-stained yellow checkered dress. Her first day of school, hair in pigtails. Graduating in a blue robe with a white tassel. I picture her fingers shaking nervously on her eighteenth birthday when she signed her first contract. Then, the same thing happening at the first photo shoot.
The images dry up when she meets Pierre. I googled the bastard; I know what he looks like. But he’s not part of my daydreams about Lou. I don’t know how close to the truth any of them are. I hope to find out, though.
“It’s weird, right?”
“What is?” I ask.
“How comfortable we are. Like we knew each other before or maybe have always known.” She blushes, her eyes darting away in embarrassment, as if she’s the only one who feels it.
“It’s weird as fuck.”
Her blush vanishes, replaced by that million-dollar smile of hers. When the food arrives, we eat messily. Neither of us care that our cheeks or fingers are covered in butter, herbs, and pieces of corn. Lou moans every time she bites into a cob, unable to remember the last time she ate that way.
A band starts playing as we finish up and clean our faces and hands with the cheap wet wipes the bar provides on boil nights. It’s a cover band, playing hits from the eighties and nineties. Some, even earlier. The lead singer has a gray beard that’s so long it nearly tangles in his guitar strings. The bass player is a woman with bright purple hair and a stance that screams she’s a badass and not to mess with her. Lou mostly watches her.
When a ballad starts up, I ask if she’ll dance with me.
“Really?” She seems shocked, and I wonder why, but I don’t ask.
She’ll tell me what she wants me to know.
“Why not? There’s a song, a dance floor, and the most intriguing woman I’ve ever met. What else am I supposed to do with that?”
“Intriguing,” she repeats, taking my hand and leading me to the dance floor at the same time two other couples find space there. “Not beautiful?”
“You know you’re that,” I tease. “The whole world knows that. I’m interested in the parts everyone else doesn’t get.”
Twenty-One
Lou
“The most common way people give up their power is by thinking they don’t have any.”
