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.
"Er, page two?" He answered, scratching the back of his head. That was something he shared with Alex: they both did that when they were nervous.
"Okay, no problem. It's even better that you haven't gone too far, in fact."
"What do you have in mind?"
"We're going to take it easy, scene by scene, okay?"
"Okay."
"And we're going to act out the paly."
"Are you sure?"
"Yep."
We spent about an hour acting out the first act. Between each scene, we stopped, he told me what he'd understood (in French, of course), ask if there were words he didn't understand, and then we'd move on.
About half-way through the second act, I heard a small knock on my door. I was in the middle of a tirade, so I opened the door reciting my text. Johannah stood on the other side, eyeing me weirdly. I finished my sentence.
"Pouvons-nous vous aider, mademoiselle?" I grinned.
"Er, I dropped by to see Alex, and I just wanted to check on you because we heard a lot of
laughing."
I let her come in.
"Oh hey Hugo!" She turned towards me, not understanding what was going on.
"We're acting out a play, wanna watch?" He asked excitedly.
"It's in French." I warned.
"Oh good! I'm sure it'll be fun, and I can see what's left of my French A-level classes."
She took a seat on my bed, making herself comfortable. We finished acting out acts two and and three, trying not to laugh too hard at her puzzled face when she didn't understand.
Finally, we decided to stop because Vanessa called us down for dinner.
"You should really consider joining a theater class, Hugo." I told him as we were going down.
"You think?"
"Yeah. Don't you agree, Jo?"
"Yeah! I mean, I didn't understand most of it, but it seemed pretty convincing to me." She nodded.
"I'll think about it, then." He smiled shyly.
--
"So, what are you and my brother up to, these days?" Alex asked, while positionning a ball on his tee.
"Nothing much. I'm trying to get him to join a theatre class."
"Trust me, dear, it's not his type." He got up. "Is that good?"
I took a look at the ball. "It's okay, but the ball should be more stable like this." I corrected the position.
Since the weather wasn't too bad for a December night, we'd decided to stay a little longer after practice. It was dark, but the field had been lit up, and the light rain that was falling only made the setting more magical.
"Are you sure you don't want to go home? You're going to catch a cold." He asked.
"I'm fine. Plus training on a rainy day is the best way to make some progress quickly."
"If you say so."
We shot a few more balls.
"You've made a lot of progress." I told him.
"Really?"
"Yeah."
"That's thanks to you." He winked.
"No."
"No?"
"I mean, it's not only me. I've only been training you for two weeks. If there hadn't been anything there before, you wouldn't have made so much progress in this little time."
"I don't know." We stood silent for a couple of minutes before he spoke again. "Who taught you how to be this efficient, though?"
"To be honest, I read a lot about it. And then I just practiced." I shrugged. "It's what I like to call the Jonny Wilkinson method; I kind of copied what he does."
He shook his head, smiling. "That guy is a maniac."
"I know. But a very good-looking and amazing maniac." I grinned.
It was getting late, so we packed our things to go back home.
"You know, Henry is lucky to have you." Alex said as we headed back to his motorbike.
"Why is that?"
"Because you're you. You don't try and act like somebody else."
"Thank you." I climbed on behind him, and hung on to him. "Any girl would be lucky to have you, you know." I told him.
"I know that." He winked playfully at me in the rearview mirror, but something in his voice and in his eyes was less cocky than usual, as if some kind of sadness had overcome him. "If only the said girl would look at me."
My heart ached for him. Alex and I had grown very close in the last few weeks, and no matter how much of a dick he might've been in the past, he deserved to be happy. I didn't know how to answer, so I just hugged him tighter, and we disapeared into the night.
Hi!
This part is a little random, you get a glimpse of Emma's relationship with another family member than Alex or Oliver :)
Next part, hopefully, there should be a little Henry-Emma (Hemma?) scene, and a party.
Hope you enjoyed this part! Don't hesitate to vote, and comment on why you did(n't) like it :)
Bye!
the_rugbywoman