Je t'aime (bien)

    “Comment ça va aujourd’hui?”
    Avi’s brow furrowed. “Comment…that’s how? How…are you…today?” She looked up at the tutor across from her, who was still watching her expectantly. “Oh, uh, bon.”
    “It would actually be bien. You wouldn’t say things are going good, you’d say things are going well.”
    “Ugh,” said Avi, throwing her head back as she slumped in her seat. “I’m never going to get this shit. French is stupid.”
    She caught Taya’s crooked smile. “Not as stupid as English.”
    “Oiseau.”
    “That’s fair.” She frowned at Avi. “If you still don’t remember ‘how’s it going?’ I’m kind of worried about the things you’re learning in class.”
    Avi fixed her with a glare. “I remembered it! Way to instill confidence in your students.”
    “It’s what I do best,” Taya giggled. “C’est de rien. T’as un beau visage, alors tu ne dois pas savoir français."
    “Why do you talk to me in french if you know that I can’t understand it?” Avi pouted as she crossed her arms.
    Taya grinned. “It’s fun.”
    “It’s really not.”
    “Ouais, peut-être à toi,” said the girl, still grinning as Avi tried to translate. “We should probably get started on the actual teaching part of things. What were you working on today?”
    “Fuck if I know.”
    “Let me see les devoirs.” Avi fished into her bag and pulled out the crumpled sheet of paper. She tried to ignore the slight frown on Taya’s face as she tried to flatten the worksheet against the table. “Oh okay, you’re just working on saying what you like. That’s simple enough.” She grimaced at Avi’s flat glare. “Well, uh, it should be.”
    “Mhm.”
    “So you’re using adorer and aimer. Adorer would be the equivalent of saying adore—easy enough to remember—and aimer would be like saying like or love. You’re just writing your opinion on the activities.”
    “Seems easy enough.”
    “Exactly,” Taya said. “So the first one is jouer au foot.”
    Avi frowned. “Football?”
    “Soccer,” Taya corrected. With a grin, she said, “We’re the only ones with football like we know it. En francais, we’d call that football americain.”
    “Hm. I played soccer as a kid.”
    “Did you like it?”
    Avi grinned. “I hated it. There was way too much running. Cheer is much better, even if the people kind of suck.”
    “So you’d say ‘je n’aime pas jouer au foot’ because you don’t like it.” Avi quickly scribbled down the words. “Alright, next is chocolat.”
    “Who doesn’t like chocolate?!”
    “I don’t.”
    Avi gasped. “No.”
    The tutor grimaced. “It’s too sweet.”
    “That’s the whole point!”
    “Whatever. Go ahead and write your answer if you’re so crazy about it.”
    “Je adore le chocolat."
    “Close. You’d say ‘j’adore’ because je and tu can kind of merge with verbs that start with a vowel. There’s some exceptions, of course, but it’s good to know as a general rule.”
    “J’adore,” Avi murmured as she wrote it down. She grinned up at Taya. “Alright, what’s next?”
    Taya read the next line and snorted. “Oh my god.”
    “What is it?”
    “Harry Styles.”
    Avi squealed. “Arry Styles.”
    “Is it bad that I don’t really get the appeal?”
    Avi’s jaw dropped. “First chocolate and now Harry Styles? You’re breaking my heart Taya.”
    Taya giggled. “Les hommes ne remplissent pas mes besoins.”
    Her head tilted. “What does that mean?”
    “Men don’t fulfill my needs,” said the tutor with a smirk. “Je suis une lesbian.”
    “Oh,” Avi said, a slight blush rising to her cheeks. “Um, how did you know? If you don’t mind me asking?”
    Taya shrugged. “I just kind of always knew. There was no grand moment of discovery for me. Why? Are you questioning things?”
    Avi shifted uncomfortably. How was she supposed to respond to that? How was she supposed to tell the girl that she’d spent more than a few nights laying awake and thinking about that she was questioning things? Questioning things that had no place in her life. She was popular, religious, and head of the cheerleading squad. Feeling like that…it would ruin her. But the feelings wouldn’t go away, no matter how much she tried to shove them down. She frowned. “Something like that.”
    Taya must’ve sensed the other girl’s discomfort. “Well, I’m not sure if you’re a lesbian with how you reacted to Harry Styles,” she joked.
    She was giving her an easy out, one that Avi took graciously. “Oui. J’aime il.”
    “It’s easier to use your indirect objects. Me, te, etc. For this it’d be him so you’d say ‘Je lui aime.’”
    “Oui. Je lui aime beaucoup.”
    “You used it correctly that time!”
    “Let’s go!” Avi pumped her fist in the air, almost screaming the words.
    “Shhh, you’re going to get us kicked out!” Taya giggled.
    “I’ve finally learned French and you expect me to be quiet?”
    “Tu ne sais pas francais. Pourquoi tu penses que je suis ici?” At the tilt of Avi’s head, she smirked and said, “Exactly.”
    “Hmph. Whatever.” She bent over her homework, almost jumping out of her skin when her alarm blared. “Fuck that startled me.”
    “Me too. What time is it?”
    Avi checked her phone. “4:30.”
    “Already?! How?”
    “I don’t know. I completely lost track of time.” She picked up her bag, shoving her homework in without much care. “I’ve got to get to cheer practice.”
    “Will you be alright to finish it on your own?”
    “I’ll figure it out. I’ve got Google Translate and all that.”
    “I will not be replaced by Google Translate,” huffed Taya. “Seriously. If you have any questions just text me. I’m sorry that I couldn’t help you more.”
    “It’s all good.” Avi paused as her bag was thrown over her shoulder, her brow furrowed as she tried to translate. “Je te aime? No, je t’aime. Right?”
    Taya glanced at the ground. “Oh, well, not exactly. Grammatically yeah it’d be je t’aime but not to me. Je t’aime…it’d be more like saying ‘I love you’.” Avi’s eyes widened. “Which is weird because we use aimer to say ‘like’ all the rest of the time. French is weird that way. Maybe it is stupid. Sorry, I’m rambling. You could say, like, ‘je t’aime bien.’ That’d be like saying ‘I love you lots’ or something. More friendly. And that’s us. Friends. You know?”
    Avi, who had been watching the rambling girl with mounting horror, nodded. She wanted to crawl into a hole, bury herself, and die. She wasn’t sure whether all of the color had drained from her face or whether it was bright red. “Right, right, sorry. Uh, I didn't mean to make that weird. Je t’aime. Bien.”
    “It’s alright. You too, heh, Je t’aime. Bien.”

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