All throughout Louis' childhood his mom had a book in her hand. If she didn't have her hands full while cooking a meal, washing dishes, changing a diaper, dressing a child or throwing dirty t-shirts into the wash, then she likely had a book in her hands. It wasn't until he was around eight or nine that he realized what kind of books she was reading. He'd always assumed she was reading the same kinds of books that he was, which was a silly conclusion to come to. Of course she wasn't reading about talking animals, superheros, and adventures starring little boys just like him. She was reading romance novels, and it took him even longer after making this discovery to realize how cheesy and kind of awful they were.
Now, he has nothing against romance—he grew up watching romance movies with her too. Even though she'd make comments throughout about how much better the book was. It's just most of the books she read were too dramatized and cheesy to be realistic. He would argue that they could be read for comedic purposes but his mom didn't like that much.
He remembers when he was fourteen he read about two chapters of one of her books while doing dramatic readings over the phone to his friend Bebe. The book caught his attention because of the shirtless man on the front, he won't lie about that, but when he started reading it he just couldn't help but crack up. So, of course, he wanted to share it with his friend.
It became a thing they would do when they spent their afternoons at the public library. When they'd get tired of reading a book for English, or too frustrated with math problems, they would compete to see who could find the cheesiest romance novel. How did they know who the winner was? Well, whichever made them laugh the loudest was the winner of the day. A couple of times the old librarian would slowly hobble over to their corner and tell them to be quiet or she'd kick them out. That's when they knew they had found a real winner. Louis was better at it because sometimes Bebe would find one she actually liked and start reading it. Which Louis found lame. Until one day when they were taking a break from studying for the last finals of junior year and Louis stumbled upon a romance book he hadn't thought even existed.
It must have been in the wrong section, either that or it was the only one of it's kind there. Because as he read about the main character's crush he quickly found out it was... another guy. He had quickly shut the book and looked around, hoping nobody was there to see him reading it. Not even Bebe.
It wasn't that he had been ashamed to be reading it; well, maybe a little due to his age at the time, but it didn't have anything to do with the two characters being guys. Of course, he wasn't out... he had only really been sure of his sexuality for about a year at that point, but he didn't come out until he had moved out for college.
That moment stuck with him because his love for reading really bloomed in high school. He finally started picking out books to spend his part-time income from the local coffee shop on, rather than spending it on a movie ticket. His mom was thrilled, even offered to share some of her extensive collection with him if he found something he liked. He turned red, remembering all the snooping he did in her collection before, but took her up on the offer because he would occasionally see her reading a crime novel or a murder mystery.
Louis' love for reading continued into college, and because he had decided to move from his small town in North Carolina to NYC, he basically had to make a totally new group of friends. A lot of the guys he hung out with while playing soccer in high school had stuck around and settled down, but he had always wanted more for himself. From the first time he and Bebe drove into the city for a karaoke night, he had known he wanted to sing and make music for a living. He was going to make sure of it.
And he did, eventually. After dropping out of college after three semesters and playing in dingy bars and trying to make connections the best he could. He made friends with a business student named Liam while in school, and apparently, his dad owned a recording studio in the city. He somehow got lucky and was allowed to record for about half the price when nobody else was using the studio. After he was happy with the eight songs, he played it for this guy he met from the studio named Zayn. He was a producer and did a lot of writing for other artists, and he said Louis had put together a really good album. He asked for a copy of it and the next day, while Louis was debating on going small and just getting his album out there himself, he got a text from Zayn asking him to meet him at the Capitol Records office. Nothing more, nothing less. He sent him a thread of question marks but all he got back was a time and an order to dress nicely.
