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Lou twisted his mouth, tortured.
“Lou, for me. Do what you need to do,” I said taking his hand and finding his eyes.
“Maybe I’ll change my pants,” he said giving in.
“You do that,” I said with an encouraging smile.
Lou opened a wardrobe that separated the bedroom space from the storage area. In it was formal wear. I didn’t own a single suit but Lou had everything from dinner jackets to tuxedos.
“So, how formal do they dress?” I asked feeling self-conscious.
“Formal enough to make them feel superior to everyone else.”
Lou retrieved a pair of dress pants from the nicest hanger I had ever seen and placed it on the bed. Reaching for the button of his pants, he paused. His eyes blinked up to mine. I was waiting for him to ask me to turn around but he didn’t. And since he didn’t ask, I kept watching.
When he pulled off his pants, I saw that he was wearing the cutest bikini briefs. He was a smaller guy so I wasn’t expecting much. But he had a bulge. It was impressive. No wonder he hadn’t asked me to turn around. I would show that off too if I was him.
With his slacks on, he was dressed as fancy as I had ever seen him. God, he was handsome. It took everything in me not to take his cheeks in my hands and pull his lips to mine.
“You ready for this?” he asked nervously.
“You can do this. And no matter what they say, don’t forget how incredible you are,” I told him meaning it.
“Thanks.”
With a hint of fear in his eyes, he looked for my hand and took it. I wasn’t sure if this was to convince his family that we were engaged or because he wanted to hold my hand. I chose to believe it was both.
Descending the two flights of spiral stairs, I felt like I was in a different time. I could imagine people dressed in eighteenth-century ball gowns drinking mint juleps. I couldn’t believe that Lou grew up in a place like this. Was this who he truly was?
When we entered the dining room, Lou’s parents and brother were already seated. The guys were wearing suits while his mother wore a fancy dress. I was severely underdressed.
“I see you invited the help,” his brother said referring to me.
“Shut up, Chris,” Lou snapped.
“I’m sorry I’m not dressed as formally. I didn’t know we would be dressing up for dinner.”
“Oh,” his mother said fitting more judgment into one word than most people could fit in a speech.
“Yeah, I figured it wouldn’t be necessary because we aren’t all pretentious assholes who need to dress up to imagine themselves better than everyone else,” he said leading me to one of the open place settings. Lou took the one next to his mother leaving me closest to his father and looking across the table at his brother.
“What you refer to as pretentious, others refer to as tradition. And the moment we let go of our traditions, they are lost forever,” the uptight blond woman said never looking at her son.
“Have you ever heard of evolution, mother? It’s what allows a species to survive as the world changes.”
“Your grandmother would disagree,” she snipped.
“What would you possibly know about what Grandma Aggie thought? Did you ever talk to her? Seriously, did any of you ever actually talk to her? No. You just showed up here and acted like the royal assholes who owned the place. Did any of you care about her at all?”
His mother turned her cold gaze onto Lou. “For God’s sake, Louis, for once can you not be…”
“You,” his brother said cutting her off.
I looked at Lou. He was about to explode. I quickly found his hand under the table and squeezed it. It calmed him. I could see all of the thoughts bouncing around in his head, but none of them came out.
“Perhaps we should eat,” a voice said from the other end of the table.
It was Lou’s father. He was a lean, grey-haired man with a forgettable face. It wasn’t that he was unattractive, because it was clear where Lou and his brother got their looks from. It was more that he tried not to be noticed.
