Hi hi! Please tell me more about lee the ballet star and the hockey player mcdavid.
walking into the kitchen the first morning all of the siblings are in the villa is like walking into a film of what a north american director thinks a european family looks like.
everyone is almost too beautiful to be real. and it's not even 9am yet.
the NHLers were talking about heading into town, cycling in, so they stop in for tom to see if he'd like to join them and- there's andrew, lanky and sleep ruffled as he makes coffee for himself and his fiance dev; there's nick with sunburn on his shoulders staring at a pot on the stove top, his boyfriend luca doing the sudoku in the newspaper; there's gemma, rolling her eyes and telling isabelle, "maman, arrete," while she wipes at gemma's boyfriend's jonny's ear and the paint smudge on it; and there's lee asking if anyone is gonna join him for a swim. amy's voice can be heard on the phone down the hallway, and tom's entrance to the room is announced with her asking her son, "have you eaten yet?"
isabelle's wife jessica, in her soft, warm midwestern accent, greets the boys standing in the doorway, gawking, with a gentle, "are you joining us this morning, boys?" and by the time connor has blinked himself mentally back into the room, jack is already nodding 'yes', being guided to a free seat next to luca.
the only thing that could make this feel more unreal, between the mismatched patterned plates, the three different languages being spoken in various conversations, and the muted pastel paint of the walls, would be a sufjan stevens penned soundtrack.
connor isn't entirely sure he isn't being pranked.
when tom said his dad had "a lot of wives" and that their family was "kinda famous" he was downplaying it a lot. not the lotta wives thing, two and a girlfriend doesn't seem that much, but- andrew and nick have been in movies. tom's mom amy has been in movies. god, gemma and lee have been in things the boys have all seen, even if they aren't acting now.
"people usually get weird when i say who my family are, so i tend to avoid telling anyone for a while. til i know they're cool."
connor's too busy trying to place which high school english class shakespeare video he knows lee's face from to wonder if tom would have considered them cool enough to tell yet, if they hadn't walked in and seen his entire family sitting there. gemma and nick were juliet and tybalt on the romeo and juliet he saw, but lee he- he definitely saw in something but what the fuck was it? and was this, like, a thing their family did, make a couple of shakespeare films and corner the high school english curriculum market?
(ftr, the family have no clue who the 20-somethings tom has befriended are so good good manitoba boy jonny has to clue them in. gemma, who lives with jonny 6 months outta the year, usually during hockey season, has never seen these men before in her life.)
but his thoughts are cut short when he hears someone yelling tom's name from across the square and looks to see lee, dev and nick waving from their car, just pulled up outside the grocery.
that's how connor -- and jack, and noah, and stromer, and barzy -- all get invited to a barbeque they family are having tonight. which is how connor gets kinda tipsy at 11:39pm on a summer's night by the lake in italy and tells lee he knows who he is but he can't remember the shakespeare he saw him in. and lee tells him it's the ballet he probably knows him from -- hockey players like things, lee's sure, he isn't gonna assume just cos connor likes sports that he can't like ballet too -- and connor laugh-snorts at him cos, "it's definitely not ballet. never been."
"you should. come and see it sometime. when you're next free in new york."
and that is how connor ends up looking all starry eyed at lee cos, "ok. but then you've gotta come to a hockey game too," cos he was there beside jack when jonny did a beautiful reenactment of every single person of this family except himself not knowing who tom's friends were after they all left breakfast.
(i'm sorry but isabelle's two best actress awards from cannes and 16 cesar nominations don't have time for hockey. jonny -- who isn't a hockey player in this but a sculpture and potter -- actually enjoys winter sports, has only managed to get gemma into skates on the ice with him once in their very long relationship. but the boys shouldn't feel too bad about it; they were the same when nick dated tennis player jake gyllenhaal when he was younger. "he does what? plays sports? is he alright?")
and because lee is incredibly beautiful and tall and connor is drunk enough not to deny himself enjoying how lovely the smile lines around lee's eyes are when he agrees, "alright. i can come to a game."
