The six-month housemate

Twenty-one

TWENTY ONE

Finals were coming closer and closer, and even if they were two weeks away, I was already starting to stress out. I was doing my best in all my subjects, Alex and Jane were helping me with the maths, but I was struggling with the notions rather than on the language now.

I was sitting in my room, numbers dancing in front of my eyes without me being able to make any sense of them. I was bored out of my mind, I'd been doing this for too long, and without thinking, my fingers dialled Henry's number, in search for a distraction.

"Hi this is Henry, leave a message, I'll get back to you!"

I sighed, putting my phone back down. I had done everything that could possibly distract me on it: I'd checked facebook, messenger, snapchat, my emails, I'd failed a level five times on candy crush...

I was resigned to get back to work when I heard a shy knock on my door.

"You can come in!" I called.

The door opened slowly, and Hugo, the 3rd brother, came in. I was quite surprised, as we hardly ever interacted, except at dinner. Alex had warned me he was quite shy, and I assumed he jadn't quite warmed up to me yet.

"Hey Hugo, what's up?" I asked, smiling.

"Hey, er..." He seemed hesitant. "Mum told me to go and see you. I kind of need help."

"What kind of help?" I asked, intrigued, showing him my bed for him to sit down.

"Well, I started tking French literature classes at school, and it's kind of hard because I don't have a very good level anymore, language-wise, and I was wondering if you could help me?"

"Sure! no problem." I smiled.

"Thanks." He let out a sigh of relief. "I'm sorry to bother you, but I really don't want to ask Alex or Oliver to help me, they'd just poke fun at me."

"Because you're struggling with French?"

"Yeah." He sighed. "They don't get the fact that when we left France I'd just mastered the language, but since then I haven't really had the opportunity to speak it with anyone. They're cool about it with Tom, because he's the little brother, and so he was too young to actually learn anything, but with me..."

I felt bad for him. He looked so sad about it. I understood why he always seemed so distant : he didn't want his brothers to poke fun at him.

"Well, you can count on me to help you. If you want, our French lessons will be our little secret." I winked.

"Thank you."

"You're welcome. When and by what do you want to start?"

"Well, I'm mostly struggling with the language. I mean, I need to read this play for next week, Cyrano de Bergerac, and I can't make sense of it. My friends can't either, but I'd like to stand out in this class."

"Okay. It is a hard play, especially since it's versified, so I get it's even harder to read and understand. Do you want to go and get it?"

"I'll be back in a sec."

He rushed downstairs. I closed my maths book and put it to one side. I heard my phone buzz.

Henry : "You tried calling, what's up?"

Hugo came back up with a copy of the play and handed it to me, so I ignored the message.

"How far did you get then?" I asked, flicking through the pages.