Love In The Wild West

Chapter 5

“Louise!” said Lila knocking on the door of the bathroom that was in their hotel room. “Are you going to be done soon? Do you want to go and grab some lunch with me?”

“More like brunch!” Lousie called out from inside. “This is my first meal of the day, remember?”

“Ah yes,” said Lila. “Because you are such a lazy piece of sh*t.”

“Ha ha,” said Louise sarcastically. “I will be out soon. You can have lunch and I will have some breakfast. We have to take advantage of the all day breakfast that the restaurant here offers!”

“Alright,” said Lila, sitting down on the edge of her bed. Room service had been in here to clean the place up and it looked really spick and span. Lila had to admire the efficiency of the staff here. They were really hard working people. She started to think of ways to incorporate the staff into everything that was going on here. She was sure that there were a lot of ways to do so, and it would help with the overall ambiance of the place if the staff wore some kind of uniform. She made a mental note to tell Kurt about her idea, she was sure that he would really appreciate it.

It felt so good that there was somebody in the world that thought of her so highly that they would actually be interested in what she had to say. She had never really felt this important before. At her job she was expected to just shut up and follow orders, and in pretty much every relationship in her life she had been expected to do the same. She had never really been allowed to do what she felt was right, she had never been put in a position of power probably because no one had ever thought that she had anything of value to offer.

It made her feel good that this was changing. Lila thought about the way her parents had been with her. They had really made her feel like nothing she did mattered. It had not really been their fault, or at least even if it was their fault they had the chance to explain themselves and provide a reason as well as a context for their behavior.

Her mother and father had both had very difficult childhoods. These childhoods had been part of the reason they had gotten together. They had found in each other kindred spirits, people that could understand how the other person was feeling and this was not something that just anybody was able to get.

Lila had suffered because she was the offspring of two very damaged people. She had always been a bright young girl but her parents had made her feel like she was really stupid. It was not until she had started junior high that she had started to realize that she might just have something of value to offer people. She had started getting good grades and outperforming all of her classmates, and this had made all of her teachers very happy. Her parents never really commented on any of it, however. They only wanted her to do what they told her to do. They had been extremely toxic people, unable to deal with any of the emotions that they felt, and so they projected a lot of their own insecurities onto Lila.

She had always been a very strong young girl, but in spite of all of that strength she had been damaged quite a bit by her upbringing. She had been forced to retreat into fantasy worlds in order to feel some iota of contentment in her life, and this had been when she had fallen in love with ranches and the like. She had started to dream of living on a ranch and this thought had given her no small amount of hope.

She had gotten herself out of that terrible situation with her parents, but she had not been able to escape the trauma that had become inevitable as a result of the abuse that she had suffered over the course of her life. She had started to feel like she would never feel good about herself. That was, until she met Kurt, and until he made her feel like her opinion was actually worth something. For the first time in her life, Lila had started to feel like there was somebody in the world that valued what she said, and that allowed her to get over a lot of the insecurities that had been bothering her since she had been a young child. Kurt did not know it, but by doing something as seemingly insignificant as believing in her he had managed to make her feel a great deal better about herself.

Lila looked up when Louise exited the bathroom in her bathrobe. “What’s up stranger?” asked Louise. “Have you been really busy? I remember you coming home really late last night. I woke up for a second when you came in. What happened?”

“Nothing,” said Lila. “I just went out for a walk to see what was going on. I guess I just wanted some alone time. But something really cool happened and I have to tell you all about it, so please get dressed and lets go eat so that I can tell you!”

“Alright,” said Louise, picking some clothes out of her little suitcase and putting them on. “Let’s go,” she said once she was ready.

Lila and Louise went downstairs and ordered themselves a big lunch.

“So,” said Louise, once the order had been placed. “What is it that you have been dying to tell me for so long?”

“Well,” said Lila, “Last night when I went for that walk, I bumped into somebody. The owner of the hotel in fact!”

“What?!” asked Louise. “That is amazing! What is he like?”

“Oh he is so handsome,” said Lila, “you wouldn’t believe it. And so young! This hotel is the part of a big chain of hotels, and he owns all of them along with some investors. You would expect somebody that owns a big chain of hotels to be some kind of big shot, someone old and fat but he is not like that at all. On the contrary, he is a very good looking person. He is not any older than I am or you are, not even thirty yet I would say.”

“That is really cool,” said Louise. “I can not believe he is like that. So what did you guys do after you bumped into each other?”