The Art of Being a Gentleman

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

           

"YOU ARE A ROSE in a garden of weeds??"

              "A rare rose," David corrected, trying to ignore the heat that was creeping up the back of his neck.

              "Dude." Mack started laughing again, almost as hard as he had the first time David had told the story.

              They were both in Mack's room, laying across the floor with the homework they were supposed to be working on splayed out in front of them completely untouched. David had tried to breeze over the story of his conversation with Alyssa, but Mack had pressed for painstaking detail. And then made fun of everything.

              "Wait..." he sobered suddenly. "Isn't that from The Little Rascals?"

              There was no fighting the blush on his face now, but he tried to shrug it off, "Maybe. I don't know."

              Mack propped himself up on his elbow, "No, it definitely is. We just watched that with my brother like, last month, didn't we?"

              David couldn't take Mack's hard, narrowed eyes, zeroed in on him any longer. "Okay!" he gave in with a groan. "It's a line that snooty rich kid says to Darla, alright? I panicked."

              Mack burst into laughter again, and David couldn't help but join this time. He had already gone through the staying-up-to-the-early-hours-of-the-morning-cringing-over-his-own-words stage, and could now accept his idiocy and laugh about it.

              "Did you serve her some wine with that cheese?"

              "Shut up," David laughed.

              "Why was that the first thing that came to your head? Out of all the romantic lines from all the movies in the world..."

              "We were there because of flowers. The line was applicable. It made sense, okay!"

              "And why not something that Alfalfa said? He was way more romantic." Mack paused to think about it. "Dang. That kid was ahead of his time. I should try out some of his lines."

              "I'm sure they're foolproof," he agreed, rolling onto his side and fiddling with his pencil. "Can you explain this whole participle thing to me now?"

              "Ugh, I hate French class," Mack groaned, picking up his textbook and flipping through a few pages. "Okay, so blah, blah, blah, the present participle cannot be used to talk about what someone is doing, and it cannot be used after another verb. And you also have to remember that...ugh."

              "...that what?"

              "Does it matter? This is so boring!"

              David threw his pencil at his friends head, "You said you'd help me! Do I need to remind you that I'm failing?"

              Mack barely dodged it, before throwing his own back at David. "Do I need to remeind you that you have a date with Alyssa in a week?"

              "I'm well aware, thanks."

              "Mr. Stiles is going to be a pissy jerk to you no matter what, so why don't we focus our limited brain power on your dating skills, which are far more useful than French will ever be?"

              David blinked a few times, "...you've got a point there." Then he was shoving his papers away in the next second, putting his arms behind his head happily.