Page 65 of Host for the Holidays
“Not America. English.”
She waves a dismissive hand. “Same thing.” She winks at me. “So what sparked your obsession with English? Your dad?”
“Yeah. He was a businessman, which meant he was gone a lot. He exclusively spoke English with me, and my pursuit of the language was my attempt to . . . I don’t know . . . connect with him, I guess? My mom only spoke French to meandto my dad, and it made me so mad at her. I thought if she’d make more of an effort to speak English and if I could speak it perfectly, he’d be home more.” I glance at Madi with a wry smile. “Silly kid dream.”
“Not silly at all.”
“Anyway, when my parents split up and my dad moved back to the States, I just kept trying harder and harder. I don’t know what I was thinking—that I could fix things, maybe? Make us a family again by dazzling him with my amazing accent? Either way, I read every English book I could get my hands on—a lot of times with a flashlight at night because my mom wasn’t a fan of my infatuation with it. It probably hurt her feelings to see me so into it, but I didn’t get that at the time. There was a channel on my neighbor’s TV where they had news and a couple of programs in English, so I went over every day to watch, imitating their tones and all that until YouTube came on the scene. My mom had no idea.” I grimace. “Like I said, unhealthy.”
“Well,” Madi says, stopping again to lean on the stone wall that lines the river, “all that work has clearly paid off. Do you still talk with your dad?”
I rest my elbows on the wall and clasp my hands in front of me. Across from us are the Tuileries. The gardens just look like a mass of trees from here, but over their tips, I can see the sliver of light that is the ferris wheel. “Kind of. It’s been a while—a couple of months. He’s as busy as ever, so I try not to bother him.”
“I’m sure that’s not how he feels about it.”
“Maybe not, but whenever Idoreach out to him, he’s not particularly communicative.”
She shrugs. “Maybe there’s a reason for that, and maybe it’s not the one you think. You could always ask.”
I don’t respond right away because even though she’s right and I’ve thought of mentioning it to my dad before, I’ve always been too scared to—scared of the answer. What if he just genuinely doesn’t care?
But Madi’s doing things that she’s been scared of doing. Maybe I can follow her lead.
“Besides”—she starts walking again—“after all the work you’ve done, you should definitely be dazzling him with your English as much as possible.”
“Dazzle him 99% of the time?” I tease.
She lets out an exasperated sound. “Ninety-nine percent is amazing, Rémy. And I probably underestimated. It’s more like 99.9% of the time that I forget English isn’t your native language.”
“But the 0.1% you refer to . . . what is it?”
“You’re joking, right?”
I shake my head. “I can’t help it. I’m hardwired to want to perfect my English, and I can only do that if I know what I’m doing wrong.”
“Yeah, but I said 99.9%! That’s the percentage they put on antibacterial hand soap—kills 99.9% of germs.We all know that .1% is just to protect the company from lawsuits.”
“You Americans and your lawsuits.”
“Hey! Easy, mister. Suing is a national pastime in the U.S. That’s not the point, though. I would kill to have anyone think my native language was something other than English even 20% of the time. Heck, I’m not even sure I could convince everyoneEnglishis my native language 99.9% of the time.”
“Now you’re just being ridiculous. But if you wanted to learn French, I could help you. I know a bit about teaching and a bit about learning languages.” Wow. Real smooth, Rémy. She’ll see through the excuse to spend more time with her from a hundred miles. And right now she’s only a foot away.
“Really? You’d teach me French?”
I nod, which is my way of trying to seem nonchalant about it. It occurs to me that I might regret my offer once Josh has officially proposed to Madi. But that’s a problem for future Rémy. Tonight, my motto isPretend life is what you wish it was. Seems totally wise.
“I think you’re overestimating my abilities as a student,” she says.
“I think you’reunderestimatingmine as a teacher.”
She smiles. “Fair enough.”
We pass Musée d’Orsay, the Louvre, and the Conciergerie when my stomach starts growling. In my super debonair way, I left the apartment in the middle of preparing myself an early dinner—a partially cut cucumber, undressed arugula leaves in a bowl, and chopped tomato waiting patiently to be added. I’m not even sure I closed the fridge properly.
Like I said, super debonair.
But being with Madi has successfully masked my hunger. Until now.
