Page 392 of His Hungry Wolf
“Nope,” he said stopping only briefly.
“Fine,” I said before getting up and standing in front of him.
“Sway those hips,” he said ensuring my humiliation was complete.
Getting it over with, I swayed my hips to the beat and pretended to be a stripper in a club.
“Woohoo!” he cheered.
Feeling a little more into it, I seductively took off my flannel. Grabbing the bottom of my tee-shirt, I slowly eased it up my body. It wasn’t so bad. With my eyes closed, I could pretend to be alone in my bedroom.
It wasn’t like I had never danced when there was no one looking. This was just like that. And getting into the music playing in my head, I let go and had fun.
I don’t know how long it was before I realized Lou had quieted. It might have been a while. But when I opened my eyes again, he was still. It was like the sassy guy I had known for two years was gone. In his place was a stranger staring up at me wide-eyed. His mouth was hanging open.
“What?” I asked not sure what was happening.
When I took a step towards him, he shot up.
“I’ll be back,” he spit before disappearing through the door.
“What just happened?” I replied when I found myself in the room alone.
I put back on my clothes and sat on the bed for a while. When I realized he wasn’t coming right back, I looked around. There wasn’t anything that reminded me of Lou in the place.
Twenty minutes after that, I left the room spotting a door on the third floor that hadn’t been open. I circled the railed balcony to it. Peaking in, I spotted Lou sitting in an old, large desk chair.
I knocked. He swiveled around, offered me a guilty smile, and closed the book he had been reading.
“What happened to you? Where did you go?”
“Sorry. I…” he said trailing off.
I wasn’t sure what was up with Lou. But I was sure that being here without his grandmother, was doing something to him.
“What’s that?” I asked referring to the book.
He held it up for me to read.
“The Velveteen Rabbit. So that’s it, huh?”
“Yeah,” he said looking down at it sadly.
I looked around. “Is this your grandmother’s library?”
Every wall was filled with old hard-cover books. The only place that wasn’t was the window that overlooked the driveway and the woods beyond it.
“Yep. This was where she worked.”
“What did your grandmother do for work?”
“She was an author. She was pretty famous.”
“Did she write any of these books?”
“A few of them,” Lou said looking around but not making a move to show me which ones.
“Are you okay?” I asked approaching the chair and pushing my fingers through his hair. He rested his head on the headrest and closed his eyes enjoying it.