It had taken a lot more persuasion to get Luc to come over today than I'd accounted for. It wasn't like I could tutor him in something—he was smarter than me at practically everything, except maybe how to waste time in the most efficient ways. So in the end, after a lengthy consultation with his sister, I managed to bribe him with my legendary oatmeal raisin cookies that no one except he and I liked. (It was such a shame.)

But now, it was starting to look more and more like he would be a no-show. And that was not good.

I still was lounging in my room, legs propped on my desk, as I scrolled through countless funny cat pictures on Tumblr, which was pretty much enough to keep me from throwing my phone against the wall. And, to be truthful, the huge bag of chips sitting right next to me also had a lot to contribute to my current state of contentment. I grabbed a chip and munched on it thoughtfully.

After a little bit of staring at the clock, I sighed. I'd wasted a bunch of time since I started to do my calculus homework out of boredom as I waited for Luc. That was awful. One does not do math out of boredom. One does math when one is forced to do so. My brain hurt now.

My phone, sitting so close yet so far on the side of my desk, was practically mocking me. It hadn't lit up with any texts from Luc (or anyone in particular, which really said a lot about my popularity). That was very aggravating and depressing too, now that I thought about it. I picked my phone up, and, unlocking it, I checked my texts with a raised eyebrow.

Why was my life so mind-numbingly tedious?

Just then, with prime timing, actually, a new text popped up. However, I realized, as my little smile collapsed into a pout, that it was not Luc, but rather Olivia. I sighed. Where was that bastard?

You doing something with Luc today?

How in the world did she find out? Maybe she could read my mind. I'd had my suspicions about her for a while now. Perhaps I'd have to report her to the government so that she didn't take over the world and rename our area as Blair City. I shook my head. Calculus really was messing with my head.

For purely academic reasons, O. Reading Madame Bovary. Very important.

A second later, her reply popped up. (She could text faster than I could, which was possible, actually, despite the fact that she texted in complete sentences.)

Oh yeah, that sounds really important. Why are you reading that again?

It would be too complicated for me to explain to her. First, I was too tired to write a persuasive essay on my phone detailing the various reasons (and my capricious decision, I realized, in retrospect) to embark on such a project. Second, Olivia could easily send back an essay of her own refuting my reasons. And really, I was in no mood to have a debate with her, mostly because I sucked at debating. Third, this matter concerned Luc Mercier. There was no need for me to go any further.

So my fingers flew across my phone screen, with me feeling a little like a piano virtuoso—except for the fact that I was a teenage girl whose only true best friend was her phone. I sighed, slouching in my desk chair. That sounded a lot sadder than I thought it would.

Ttyl—he's at the door rn.

That was a lie, obviously, because Luc Mercier clearly did not understand the concept of timeliness. I glanced at the clock again.

My phone pinged with Olivia's response.

All right. I'll catch you later.

I let out an exhale, setting my phone down on my desk. I was lucky she didn't want to pry. But again, she could get her brother to hack into my home's security cameras and see what Luc and I were doing for herself...

I sat there in my dark room for a couple more minutes, feeling very tempted to start the damn book to get a head start just to show Luc that I wasn't a complete idiot. But I stopped myself right at the moment my fingers brushed over that goddamn hideous cover. Pushing up my glasses, I reminded myself that I couldn't even understand the preface, which wasn't even written by the author in his obscure French, which was much worse than obscure English. No way was I going to finish this reading project without Luc's help. So I sat back and closed my eyes.

Since it was six in the evening after all, now it would be a good time to take a little nap...But five minutes into my relaxation period—as it usually took me almost exactly twenty minutes to fall asleep—the doorbell rang. Groggily, I got up, grabbed my book, and stumbled down the stairs to the front door.

Blinking at the afternoon light streaming through the windows, I yanked the front door open with more difficulty than I should have had. A foggy-looking visage of Luc Mercier, complete with wet hair (probably because he'd gotten straight out of lacrosse practice), a disheveled uniform, and a backpack, appeared.

"Where are your glasses?" was the first thing Luc asked when he saw me.

Right. My vision was unusually blurry. That must explain why.

"I was trying to take a nap, asshole. You're late." Rubbing my eyes, I closed the door behind him after he stepped in.

"Ouch." His voice almost sounded hurt, but I knew him better than that. He was probably laughing behind my back. "Don't scare me off, Hepburn. You really need my help, remember?"

"Yeah, whatever." I led him into the living room and dropped Madame Bovary on the coffee table. When he raised an eyebrow at me, I answered his question quickly with a scowl, "Just to ensure that there would be no funny business. My parents wouldn't be amused."

He shrugged, rolling his eyes, and set his backpack on the ground. "Thanks for the warm welcome," he said sarcastically as his eyes surveyed the surroundings coolly. "Nice décor."

"Fancy vocab," I responded, fully aware that he was, to my not-so-great surprise, making use of his French skills that I didn't have but desperately wanted. "Stay put. I'm gonna grab my glasses." I didn't even wait for his answer before heading off upstairs.

My room was still dark when I stepped in, and immediately, I yawned, stretching my arms. I really should be getting more sleep these days, but I had started to stay awake more for the sake of studying (enforced by my guilt from my little disagreement with my parents from the other day). After grabbing my glasses on my desk, I headed back out into the hallway. Soon enough, I came back into the living with my glasses on and waited for Luc's acknowledgement with my hands on my hips.

It took him a few moments to notice me since he had already set out all his notes for all his homework, which was obnoxious. Didn't he know that he was here to help me, not his homework grade? When he finally looked up, his expression resembled that of a kicked puppy. "What?"

"You're hopeless," I groaned as I plopped myself down on the couch next to him. "Can I get you anything?" Luckily for me, he didn't make ridiculous demands as he usually would when Lila was around. "Here." I handed him Madame Bovary. "Start helping or else."

To be honest, I didn't even know what I was threatening him with.  A half-hearted glare? My best attempt at a bitch slap?

"And you're threatening me. All right then." Luc settled himself into his seat on the couch, stretching his legs under the coffee table so far that I was afraid he was going to turn it over. I slapped his thigh.

"Stop that! My parents would kill me—and you—if you broke that thing."

Letting out a long sigh and rolling his eyes, Luc sat up. "Why is that you seem to do everything for your parents?"

I was going to respond with something as equally snarky, but I stopped short. He had hit the nail on the head, even when he wasn't trying. Maybe I was being a bitch (or maybe I'd always been a bitch). But that didn't change the fact that he wasn't any better than me. I rolled my eyes at him and clamped my mouth shut.

After Luc watched me and finally got the hint that I wouldn't talk, he cleared his throat. "That cover has got to be one of the ugliest things I've ever seen," Luc said conversationally, crossing his arms over his chest.

I let out a short laugh. "Exactly what I was thinking, actually." I flipped past the copyright page and right to the first page.

We sat awkwardly for a couple seconds, staring at the faded text. Luc cleared his throat again. Was that the method he used to diffuse awkward silence? If so, he had a long way to go on that front.

"Should we, like, read out loud or something?" he asked.

"I'll start," I said. I coughed dramatically a few times, and then I began to read. "Nous étions à l'Étude—"

I cut myself off. "Oh my gosh! That's the imperfect tense! We were reviewing that in class. And oh my gosh, I just used the imperfect tense, but in English." I paused before adding, "I'm such an awesome person, aren't I?"

When I looked sideways at Luc, I saw the most unamused expression that I'd ever seen on anyone—including the actors who played FBI agents on the TV shows that I watched too much.

"What?" I said.

After a moment of staring at me intently, he only shook his head. "Your enthusiasm sickens me."

"You're an ass." I tilted my chin up and continued reading on.

I could have sworn that I heard Luc's stifled snickers beside me.

As for my reading, it was uneventful for the following few words until I hit the next verb. "Wait. What the hell is entra doing? I mean, I know it's probably in the past tense since everything else before it was in the past and it's the verb being done by the Proviseur, but—"

Luc interrupted me. "It's in the passé simple. It's like the other past tense that you use, but this tense is only used in formal writing and speech. You, as a beginner, won't see it very often and you probably won't have to use it." Then, as a side thought, he muttered to himself, "Thank God you'll never reach that level of proficiency."

Immediately, I straightened my back indignantly and whipped my head to the side to send him my iciest glare. "Hey!"

Luc's eyes were focusing on the ceiling, as if he had only been a very bored spectator at an eighteenth century play. "What?" he said casually. "I didn't hear anything. Did you?"

I let out something that was a mix of a huff, a grunt, and a snort. "Yeah, that was a mouse. In my house. In the suburbs of Maryland. Not you and your shady-ass comments on my beautiful French—"

"On the topic of French, should we get back to reading?" Luc was watching me now with the most angelic smile that I'd ever seen on anybody, arms crossed over his chest. In fact, if I weren't a friend of his and his sister's, I would have stopped to admire him—he looked exactly like a model for Abercrombie and Fitch sweaters.

"Right." I looked back to the words, trying to find my place again. "Was I here?" I flipped a couple pages full of words that had no meaning to me. I squinted at the page. "No, that's not it. Wait. I'm pretty sure I was just there—"

Luc snatched the book from my hand and skimmed through it himself. When he finally stopped at a certain page, he handed it back to me with the most disgruntled expression I'd ever seen on anyone's face—ever. "And you say you want to learn French," he mumbled.

My mouth dropped open, but I closed it and turned away from him haughtily. I was going to take the high road. So I read, stumbling over the dumbest words like avertir.

I couldn't begin to imagine what Luc's face looked like.

When I took a break to take a breath after reading an entire paragraph without even developing a headache (which often plagued me when I tried to read sentences more advanced than "I like cats"),  Luc gave me a despairing look and reached for his water bottle in his half-open backpack. "Your accent is atrocious."

I huffed and pushed up my glasses. "You read then." I tossed the book to him. He caught it (despite of my skewed throwing ability, probably due to his superior hand-eye coordination) and held it up for further inspection.

Luc cleared his throat. "She's...lovely."

It took me a moment to realize exactly what he was saying. I cleared my throat. "Yeah. Don't you love her eyes?" I joined him in squinting at the cover at the lady's eyes. In fact, I wasn't even sure what color they were. Murky green? An odd combination of mustard yellow and dirt brown?

Luc cleared his throat. "Just how old is this book?" he wondered.

Her eyes were certainly not anything like Luc's or his sister's—a dancing amber-like brown—for sure.

I grabbed my own water bottle from the table. "I actually have no idea. I grabbed it off my dad's bookshelf."

"Won't he mind, then?" Luc wondered. He capped his water bottle and tossed it to the side. "I mean, it is his book."

I shrugged. "He'll survive. He doesn't know how to speak or read French, so it's no big loss for him."

"Well, at least he appreciates culture more than his daughter does." Luc let out a sudden huff after my elbow somehow made its way to his stomach. "Fuck, why are your elbows so sharp?"

"Stop badmouthing me!"

Luc rolled his eyes at me. "You're the one who bribed me into supervising her as she read French in the worst French accent I've heard in my life. Did you know that you're not supposed to pronounce the h?"

My mouth dropped open. "It's not my fault you can't resist my oatmeal raisin cookies! And I am trying my best." I huffed. "I'm not the one who speaks French at home. My parents don't even know how to pronounce bonjour properly."

The corners of Luc's lips turned up in the most obnoxious smirk I'd ever seen in my life. "Well, listen and learn."

Then, all my thoughts basically dissipated once he began to read where I'd left off.

I grudgingly had to admit it: Luc's French accent was flawless. It wasn't like I'd expected less from him—after all, he was a native speaker—but it had to be statistically impossible for someone to be as good as Luc was in everything. It was like one of those "wait—there's more!" commercials. Yes, it was nice that Luc had been on varsity lacrosse since freshman year. But did people also happen to know that he caught every single nuance in Madame Bovary without a hitch?

It was either that or that I was easily impressed.

It was probably the latter, which I thought to myself with a smile as Luc's reading of Madame Bovary totally went over my head.

However, after a couple seconds, I furrowed my brows, trying to catch whatever few words of French that I actually understand. Luc surged on, completely unaware of my plight.

Seriously, what sort of a tutor was he? He didn't even know if I understood anything or not. (Or maybe he just automatically assumed that I didn't know anything—which was, of course, insulting.)

My efforts, nonetheless, paid off when I caught him stumbling on a word that any amateur French student would get right.

"Une autre," I said, laughing as he took several tries to get the words right. "Une autre. If I can read that, then there must be something wrong with you."

He rolled his eyes at me even though he was smiling broadly. "Aren't you proud of yourself?" he remarked dryly.

"Yeah, I really am." I settled myself on the couch to get more comfortable. "You know, I'm really not as dumb as I make myself out to be."

"I'd actually be impressed if you were as dumb as you act." Luc avoided my eyes, grin still on his face, as he reached for his water bottle. "Of course, I didn't mean that." He looked up at me when there was radio silence on my end. "Take a joke, you know?"

I could barely hold in my own laughter. "All right, hotshot. Show me what you've got."

Luc picked up the book again. His finger was still marking the page where we'd left off, completely confirming that he was ten times smarter than I was. When I wanted to put my book down and didn't want to lose my page, why didn't I think of that? I almost caught myself rolling my eyes at my own stupidity. "Oh, and before I waste another fifteen minutes of my life reading high-level French to you..."

"Yes?" I raised my eyebrows.

"You're very welcome."

I scowled and opened my mouth to shoot an insult at him—but before I could do so, Luc dove right back into the French.

He was clever; I had to give that to him. The best way to shut me up about anything was to thoroughly scramble my brains.

→

And the first of the "reading sessions" begin!

This was a really fun chapter to write and edit/rewrite since Luc and Audrey's casual relationship (and yes, you can take that in whatever way you'd like) is so easy-going. What do you think? Are they off to a good start?

Hope you guys enjoyed this, and see you soon!