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“Boys, if you can, try your English,” Simon tells them, but they laugh, smacking him like he’s said something hilarious. I look to Simon, who explains. “They know I feel uncomfortable in English myself sometimes. It is the accent.”
“Ah. Well, my French is terrible still, but...enchanté de faire votre connaissance.”
The boys stop, one of them flashing me a thumbs-up. “Fucking nice!”
I blink in shock. “Excuse me?” At his confused look, I ask, “Let me guess, you learn from music and TV?”
Simon rushes over the language misstep. “Autumn, these young men are Claude, Raphael, Tristan, Theodore, and Samuel. Boys, this is Miss Autumn Fisher, from New York.”
“It’s nice to meet you, Autumn,” the shortest of the boys says. “I’m Samuel.”
“Samuel is very good in English,” Simon says, “although all the boys are hard-working students. It’s one of my rules for ourparkoursessions. I’m proud of them.”
I see the boys preen at Simon’s praise, which tells me more about their relationship. They value Simon’s opinion and want to make him proud.
“Si j'avais une femme aussi jolie qu'elle, je ne lui montrerais jamais cette merde,”a stocky, dark-haired boy says, and the others roar with laughter.
Samuel translates for me. “Raphael says that if he had a girlfriend as pretty as you, he’d never show her... us.” They backhand each other enthusiastically, laughing more.
“No, I’m glad that I get this chance,” I tell them. “Really. I want to learn about all of Paris... and Simon.”
They hoot at that, teasing Simon in French that no one translates, but it must be good because Simon blushes slightly. The tallest of the boys looks at me with keen interest. “You are... most beautiful woman I see.”
The compliment is delivered haltingly as he translates in his mind. But he also seems intense, his dark eyes almost diving into my soul.
“Aww, thanks. What’s your name?”
“Tristan,” he says, taking my hand and kissing my knuckles much the same as Simon did. I wonder if Simon is teaching them some of his charm too. “You have made my day good.”
“You romancer,” Samuel teases his friend, grinning.
Wanting to get onto a safer topic, I ask, “What do you typically do when Simon visits?”
“He normally tries to show us athletics,” Raphael says, winking as he adds, “and we let him feel nice about it. He’s good... for an old man.”
“Oh, is that how you want to be?” Simon asks, throwing a few fake gut punches which Raphael blocks with taps to Simon’s fists. “Fine. What shall we do?”
Tristan suggests, “Basketball.”
The group of them, Simon included, agree loudly. They hop and run toward a court that’s slightly cracked and has faded lines.
“Come on, old man,” one of them shouts. My guess is that they use that ‘insult’ with him frequently.
“I’ll show you old,” Simon answers easily.
They divide up three on three, Simon teaming with Raphael and Claude against Samuel, Tristan, and Theodore.
It’s a spirited game, filled with lots of hard play... and lots of trash talk. Most of its in French as the boys focus on giving each other a hard time and not practicing their English with me. But Tristan seems to be showing off for me specifically a few times.
“Get that shit out of here, maddafakka!” he roars after rejecting Claude’s attempt at a layup. He rips off his shirt, tossing it toward Claude, who bats it away without a comment. Tristan roars again, flexing around, but especially in my direction, and to be nice, I give him polite applause for the maneuver.
I can tell Simon doesn’t like the way Tristan is behaving. Whether it’s that Tristan seems to be showing off to impress me or that he’s embarrassing one of his friends, Simon has had enough. He takes off his own shirt, handing it to me... and I have to admit I feel a rush of heated desire as I take it.
He truly is a man among boys. All of them are athletic and lean, but Simon’s muscles are fuller, more mature, more capable. And Simon uses them, taking it to Tristan in a low post battle that has both of them exchanging hard body checks and tough physical battles for rebounds.
I’ll hand it to Tristan, he doesn’t back down. If anything, each time Simon ups his game, Tristan’s there to try and re-up against him, doing his best to prove who the king of the court is. Each time Tristan makes a move, he locks eyes with me, smirking as if to saylook who the real man here is.
I get worried as Simon and Tristan keep going at it, but Simon keeps his cool. In fact, he baits Tristan in the end, drawing Tristan into a hard block near the rim before tossing the ball out to polite, cheerful Claude, who takes the ball and drops a neat jump shot over Samuel to win the game for his team.
