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♖:♛ ━━━━━━━━━━ ♕:♜
LAS VEGAS WAS warm, especially in comparison to New York.
The warm weather was a nice change from the bone-chilling cold, and Lou reveled in wearing a dress without the need for woolen tights.
The day was her twenty-third birthday, exactly two days before Beth's matches in the US Open began. Most of the competitors were arriving that day or the next, while they'd arrived the previous evening.
Lou woke up without an alarm, having no need to be up early, and a glance at the clock showed it was almost nine am. She closed her eyes once more and burrowed herself deeper in the covers, a supposedly brief rest that turned into a half-hour.
The second time her eyes opened, she felt none of the heaviness from before, and Lou sat up in her bed to stretch her arms above her head, letting out a hum of satisfaction when she heard her back pop.
Lou leaned over the bedside table to reach the hotel telephone, grabbing it to place it in the bed and dialed the room number of her aunt and cousin. She'd gotten a separate one for a lack of available three-person suites in the hotel, but Lou wasn't bothered by it, she knew of Beth's habit of late-night revision of games, and she couldn't sleep with any lights one.
"Hello?"
"Hey Beth, I'm up, do you want to get some breakfast?"
"Lou! Happy birthday," Beth told her, and Lou smiled.
"Thank you. I'd rather receive a hug though, so, meet me in the restaurant in twenty minutes?"
"Sure, I'll just wake up my mom and get ready," Beth replied, and a quick see you soon later they'd hung up.
Lou had brought some of her favorite dresses, if only because they'd spent months hidden away in her closet and she was looking forward to wearing them again. She picked a lovely pale yellow one, it was tight in the bodice, a thin white belt marking the waist, where the skirt flared until it reached just past her knees. It also had embroidered flowers in green and white in the hem and short sleeves. Pairing it up with white flats, she did her hair in a simple half-up style and added a touch of makeup, something on her lashes, and something on her lips, to give her a less of 'just woke up' look.
Lou was ahead of schedule, in part because she had built her outfit in her head the day before, so she leisurely made her way to the elevator, a book in hand.
She'd been told multiple times that walking and reading was a recipe for disaster, but Lou couldn't give up the habit. She did her best to be aware of stairs and never read when outside just in case she got hit by a car, but that did little to spare other people walking along with her, or in her direction. Lou was of the mind it wasn't only her fault since anyone could see she had eyes glued in a book, but the fault did reside mostly with her.
