Hemingway had been about to interject in agreement about flowery prose, but then she was telling him she loved his books, and she was telling him why, and he found himself smiling slightly, eyes dropping to his dinner in a sudden coyness. He knew they were good books. But for some reason, coming from her, so many years later, it felt incredibly flattering. "Well. Thank you," he told her, a little evasively. And then she was talking about something else, and he was genuinely intrigued to hear how the world had developed, properly laughing at what she had been told. "Well, that's a load of fucking shit," he told her, with deliberate word choice.
"I know, it's kind of overwhelming," he admitted. He'd expected that there would be references he wouldn't understand in the books, and things that he would need to just get through daily life, and things just as a curiosity. He wanted to know. He craved knowledge. And he liked the way she said 'we', like she was going to help him with it. It made him smile like an idiot.
"Oh, no, no offence taken, I totally agree with you," he insisted. "It's not the way I intended it, and I found I would actually get mad at positive reviews, which is a total irony," he laughed with a shake of his head.
He smiled happily, eager to hear a story from her wild youth. He listened intently, savouring every detail of what she had to say to him. He didn't really know what to expect, and he wondered where the story was going to go- and when she got to her punchline, he did burst out laughing. "Oh my God, Knightly!"