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“Oh, you think that’s funny, huh?” I said shooting a spray of water back.
Wiping his face, he shot another one at me. I replied with a perfectly aimed shot that caught him between the eyes.
“Are you forgetting that I grew up skinny-dipping at the crick? This is how we fought wars where I’m from,” I declared before he sent more water my way.
“Oh, you did it now,” I said launching into a full-on offensive.
As much as Lou held his own, in the end, he was no match for the tidal wave I unleashed on him. When he realized it, he tried to swim away. I swam after him. I couldn’t tell if his fancy country club swim lessons had let him down or if he had let me, but I caught him. And as he struggled to escape, I turned him until his lips were inches from mine.
He stopped struggling and stared at me. He wasn’t going to stop me. He was going to let me collect my prize. But as I leaned in about to do what I had dreamed about for so long, a voice shattered the mood.
“My, my. It’s like watching seals on heat. Do seals go on heat? Or is that just something dogs do?” Chris said staring down at us from the edge of the pool.
Seeing him, I let Lou go. Lou swam away as if caught doing something wrong.
“What do you want, Chris?” he asked bitterly.
“Do I need a reason to talk to my brother?”
“When it comes to you, yes. Always. What do you want?”
“You think so little of me. Maybe I just wanted an opportunity to get to know my soon-to-be brother-in-law. You never even introduced us.”
I was waiting for Lou to tell him he hadn’t introduced us because Chris had been too busy being a prick, but he didn’t.
“Chris, this is Titus. Titus, this is my asshole brother, Chris.”
“Titus, huh? Is that a biblical name?”
“Roman.”
“Oh, like the emperor?”
“I suppose.”
“Interesting. And how did the two of you meet?”
Chris sat on a chair near the bottle and poured himself a drink.
“Do you seriously care, Chris?” Lou asked suspiciously.
“If he’s going to be a part of the family, shouldn’t we at least know a little more about him?”
Lou became weirdly quiet. I couldn’t tell if he was worried I would blow our cover or if it was something else. But I had this. People like his brother never got to me.
“We have a friend in common,” I told him.
“Quin,” Lou added.
“Ah, Quin.”
I was waiting for him to say something snide about Quin but he didn’t.
“Yeah. Quin was the one who convinced me to go to East Tennessee. So, when I got there, he showed me around. When we arrived back at his place, I met his roommate. It was love at first sight. At least on my part.”
“How provincial?” Chris said leaving me confused by what he meant.
“Yeah. Anyway, we started hanging out. And when I realized that there was no one else I wanted to spend the rest of my life with, I asked him to marry me.”
