2.13: hit pause

-

"What are you thinking?"

It was a question that Ryder often asked me lately. And a question I usually have an answer to. But not today. Or yesterday. Or in fact, this week.

I wished it was because I was thinking too hard about some complicated things that it had almost been impossible to put it into words. But I wasn't born with innate depth that sometimes occurred to other people. No, I was just too exhausted, too tired to be thinking of anything of importance.

"Nothing," I said as non-offensively as possible.

And it seemed as if my non-offensive 'nothing' proved to be way more offensive to him than if I told him that I was thinking about him with an additional 100 pounds of pure fat.

"Are you sure? Your eyes seem so far-off."

I closed my eyes just so that he couldn't find proof in places he shouldn't trust and shook my head again. "Nothing. I tried to hard to think about something right now, but I couldn't conjure anything."

The chocolate on Ryder's eyes darkened. I hated that look on him. I didn't like to see him tauten his face and made his nose all scrunchy. Especially, I didn't like that I was the source of this expression.

"Did I say something wrong?" I asked. "Did I watch too much movies or was it because I was talking to Jughead of Riverdale too much this time?"

I wished I could say that I was sorry about the second offense, but somehow the writers of Riverdale managed to make Jughead both original and compelling at the same time. Already I was on full-spirit to make Jughead fanfiction and that required me to have a mental conversation with Jughead in my spare time.

Apparently, my question and genuine concern made Ryder scrunch his face even more. "Are you kidding me?"

"No?"

He paced around my room, his eyes wild, his shoulders hunched. It was the kind of body language actors used whenever they tried to emulate anger on their characters.

Ryder was no actor, however, and what was shown was the whole truth.

"Are you angry?" I asked him.

"It's amazing that you seem to always catch on my negative feelings and never when I'm trying to be nice to you."

I laughed because I thought his joke was quite funny. "Or when you're trying to get all touchy with me."

The hunched shoulders became more pronounced, and the eyes now close to black. I found the hair on my neck stood. It never occurred to me before, how big of a body Ryder actually had. He was tall and imposing when we were in high school, but now he was actually bigger, much bigger. He had always been gentle to me, and he never left me any kind of bruise whatsoever, except from that little stint in one of our makeout sessions. He was a roaring lion in front of everybody, but when it was just the two of us, he was a toothless beast.

So why did my instincts told me to run?

"I wasn't trying to be funny, April."

"But I was," I explained my original intentions. But it seemed that whatever I was saying, he wasn't getting it. At least, he wasn't processing my words like the usual.

"We're in the middle of a conversation," his words took a sharp note. "Can you not tap on your phone?"

I pocketed my phone immediately, as if a teacher had just reprimanded me. I was in the middle of a textargument with Alex, since he was so adamant that female-Watson was the true main-character in the show Elementary. It bugged me so much that I had to text him with lots of wikipedia links and forum-posts just to make him reconsider his opinion.

"To be honest, I don't think we're in a good place, April," Ryder started.

I kept my head as perfectly still as I could, to avoid nodding or shaking my head and gave him a wrong impression. It was harder than I expected.

"We don't," I agreed. The air-conditioner had been broken since this morning, and of course all that heat and no window would make anyone feel fussy.

"What do you think?" he asked.

My phone pinged.

I tried my best not to look at it, but then my hands automatically reached for it. It was just one of the things that my body just did. I heard a sound, something on my body reacted. Reaching over the phone was just a force of a habit, not as proof that I valued whoever on the end of my phone more than Ryder.

But the look on his face clearly showed that he thought otherwise.

"Can I see?"

I froze.

He had never asked me to look at my phone, claiming that he trusted me. And I surely had never done anything that would threaten his trust otherwise. Two easy reasons: I had never been interested in anybody else aside from him. Nobody would have been interested in having a relationship with me.

But then I hesitated as I gave Ryder my phone.

"Where are you and your neurotic argument, you little SJW?" Ryder read the text that Alex sent me.

"We were talking about-"

"What would you have replied to him?" he asked.

"Probably, 'I can't talk to you right now because I'm about to have an argument with Ryder.'"

He took one step closer. "Are you going to talk about him about us fighting?"

I shook my head as wildly this time. "No. Just telling him to not text me because I know you don't like me texting anyone when you're with me."

"Ugh!" he groaned. "I hate how those words sound. I hate feeling like a psychotic, possessive boyfriend."

"I never... for even one second, to think that you're anything less than perfect for me," I said hastily. "I always think that you're amazing."

"Not now, I don't," he still had my phone, and judging at how white his hand was, I was afraid that he might break my gadget. "I've missed my best years. Now I'm just your crazy, next door mechanic with anger issues. Even my girlfriend can't dedicate her undivided attention to me."

I blinked my eyes, my chest heavy and my head full of unsaid words. The silence spoke volumes, but I was afraid that he was hearing the wrong sound.

"Ryder, I..."

He bit on his lower lip, and once again that rock within his surface crumbled. "I feel stupid. I asked for your phone and read your text. That's the kind of stuff I never would have done."

"You're not stupid!" I told him. "You're just feeling a little bit blue because you didn't win that stupid wood contest."

That Wood Contest wasn't stupid at all, but I had to add that adjective because it didn't bring good memories to both me and Ryder. Two weeks ago Ryder told me that he was participating in a wood-carving contest on the next town. He dedicated most of his time making a really good one. For a while, I thought that his old, passionate self was back.

Until the announcement came and he didn't even place as a finalist.

I didn't say anything, but that was because I didn't know what I could possibly say that could make him feel better. I didn't know anything about wood-art and carving and he seemed so dead-set to forget about everything anyway.

But I knew that he had always been a little quite since that. After all, he did say that he thought it would be his shot.

"The shop's not making any money for a couple of months now, and the one thing that I thought I could do, I apparently can't," he bowed his head so that I couldn't take a look at his face. "I just..."

"Hey," I pleaded, but even as I was saying words that I memorized from a site dedicated to comfort people, I knew that nothing reached him. "Hey..."

"I'm not good anymore."

There was a calm finality in his words. And just like that, there was something heavy in the air, as if something had just been dead.

"I need to go for some fresh air," Ryder said, and without waiting for me to reply or to even blink, he had already opened the door and slammed it shut.

Usually, in a typical 24 hour day, I spent about 10 hours alone in my room. Today I hadn't spent even one hour alone, but that first minute when Ryder wasn't with me felt almost as long as 10 hour to me.

If this were a typical movies I usually watch, Ryder would be back in a few hours, telling me that everything he said had been a mistake, and magically won that award. Then everything would be happy and magical and precious again.

-

-

-

Ryder's walk ended up to be about 3 days and 10 hours and 23 minutes. And for about 3 days, 9 hours, and 1 minute, I spent my days just sitting in my room and staring at the wall. Of course I'd be lying if I said I didn't even try to text him, but it seemed that he had his turned off and I felt vile just holding my phone. After all, it was the catalyst of his breakdown.

It felt not right. Not being able to talk to him.

Right as I was feeling stinky from the lack of bath, I heard the lock of my door being picked. Since the incident when Trisha voluntarily showed her boobs to me, I had learnt to always lock my door. But apparently, today I was about to get another female-anatomy exhibition.

Except this time, the female anatomy is ridiculously slim and almost inhumanly possible. The pink hair was gone and replaced by a shaggy shiny black bob. Bella managed to pick my lock and let herself in. She didn't even bother to remove her boots.

"You look more asian with black hair," I said.

"And you stink," she replied. "How long has it been since the last time you washed yourself?"

I decided that I wanted to answer to her questions in minutes, but just as I was counting the minutes in my head, she propped herself onto the bed and then poked me with her long nail.

"Ryder's been gone, you know."

I was quiet. 3 hours converted into minutes would have been 4000 something.

"I mean, it's not like we've been constantly in touch or anything; I like the allure of taken men, but Ryder's my childhood friend. Anyway, you should know that he had ignored me for three days," Bella still talked. Her lips were painted maroon this time, a look that only the super pretty girls could do without looking ridiculous.

10 hours converted into minutes would be 600 minutes.

"You're his girlfriend. You know what's going on with him?"

"4965 minutes," I said. "I haven't talked to him for 4965 minutes," I stared at my lap and saw grime locked up under my nails. It's unsanitary and I hated unsanitary thing. But then I had zero motivation to get hit by water because everytime I tried to get up from my place, my head hurt and all the reality settled in into a vicious black hole.

The reality that 'Ryder and I' were no longer an ongoing concern.

"It's too long. It really is only 4965 minutes, but add an additional 0 and it really feels like I haven't talked to him for 49.650 minutes. It feels really weird," I gripped at my pillow, and that was when I realized that the cover had teared a little bit from too much gripping these last few days. "He was gone for even longer than I thought he would. He didn't even try to talk to me. He didn't try to contact me. I even tried to look for him in my dreams and he just refused to show up."

Even Bella's ridiculously pretty face couldn't alleviate anything this time. She pursed her lips and then when her voice came, it was uncharacteristically quiet. "Damn."

"Yeah. Dang."

There was a slight smile on the corners of her lips. "Your boyfriend's missing, April. You're allowed to curse."

"Believe me, I'm trying," I said. "Daaammng."

"You're just just saying random words."

"I'm already so pressured with Ryder missing. I can't be pressured with having to curse just to voice out my frustration."

"Fair point," Bella nodded. "So you're telling me that he's not holed up here in this room, doing whatever nasty thing his grandmother told him not to do?"

"Like what?"

"Making babies. In various positions."

I blinked. "You have a very dirty mind, Bella."

That didn't seem to offend her. In fact, Bella laughed and even the sound of her laugh make me shake my head. It's everything a girl's laughter should be; honeyed, coquettish, with a hint of a wilderness.

"I'd like to invite you to this thing my side-dude's having," Bella said. "But you have to take a shower first. All the people in this world have weird fetishes, but as far as I know, none of them ever like an unhygienic girl."

"I don't want to go. My instincts all tell me that I should stay here and collect grimes under my nails."

"That's about the unsexiest thing I've ever had to heard in my entire life. You have horrible instincts."

Her comment cut me deep. I sighed, and then said the thing that had been squeezing my brain dry these last 4965 minutes. "Apparently, I've just driven away the only person who find my unsexy instinct sexy."

-

-

-

After a lot of prodding, two screaming matches, and probably a few blackmails, Bella managed to get me out of the room.

The experience hadn't been peachy, that's for sure. The fresh air was great compared to the uncirculated oxygen (or had it evolved into semi carbon-monoxide?) that had I had been living of to inside my room, but with every step that I took, my anxiety soared high.

"This is so bad," I said, feeling every kind of sounds that was happening all around me. "This is so bad so bad so bad so bad."

"What's bad is that your incessant rambling at how bad everything is," Bella said. Her eyes had been lined heavily with a pencil that she claimed was worth well more than 30 dollars. "So your boyfriend's missing after you two fought. It's like, the textbook rule to not wait around for him to return while pausing your life."

"I'm not pausing my life. I'm just feeling really sad."

"Same difference. And what were you two fighting anyway? You didn't seem like the kind of girl who'd bring trouble to Ryder. He, on the other hand..."

"We were talking serious stuff when a guy texted my phone."

Bella's eyebrow shot up towards her hairline. "Oh? And the text was...?"

It took me a while to notice that she wanted me to finish her sentence. "It was just a conversation about a series."

"So it's not your side-dude?"

"I've been meaning to ask. What's a side dude?"

She smirked. "Definitely not a side dude. So what made him angry? It's just a normal conversation, anyway."

He was just not in a good place. My mind screamed. Ryder had not been in a good place. Not for a while. Not ever since his father died. Not when he had to live three hours away from the house he had grown up to. Not when he decided to skip education. Not when he worked in his grandmother's shop. He had been miserable, and everything had been building up to this point.

I was so afraid that he might blow up. What made me even more afraid was my inability to subdue some of his insecurities, to soothe him and make him feel better.

"I think it's me. I'm handicapped."

I could feel Bella's gaze prying at me, but she said nothing.

We walked all through the road, the houses here were less nice than the town house I lived in. She always seemed to wear nice clothes, Bella, and she knew how to accentuate her face with make up. But she was the different kind of pretty than Trisha. Whereas Trisha never really looked as striking, she smelled like she had just showered with money and gold. Bella was a bit more elaborate on her decorations, but anyone could see that she wasn't well-to-do.

"Where's your side-dude's party?" I asked her.

"I changed my mind. We're going for ice-cream instead."

"In this part of town?"

"Well, you rich white kids can have the best frozen yoghurt place, but here, we still have the best ice-cream."

She stopped on her tracks and then she opened her mouth again. "He talked about you all the time, you know that?"

"Huh?"

"Ryder. He looks like a your stereotypical misogynistic tough guy but he doesn't... he doesn't date much and he definitely doesn't make it a habit to like people that much. But he likes you a lot. He talks about you a lot." The next sentence came after a sizeable pause. "He thinks that he doesn't make you happy."

"What?"

"I mean, from what he told me, you've got a very comfortable family. Parents who love you. An annoying brother..."

"Quentin's not annoying."

"-Who's protective of you. You don't need to get student's loan to get into Greenville University, even though it might have caused a fortune; I heard that the tuition could buy my house twice over," she looked at her black-painted nails, her eyes a bit glassy. "Anyway, my family and I, we've never been really rich so I don't know how it feels to lose a lot of money, but when Mr Black died, Ryder has been having problems financially. He wants you to be comfortable, but he doesn't think he can provide that to you."

"He makes me comfortable enough."

"Yeah," she let out a small smile. "He's just not comfortable with himself. In that case, you're not the handicapped one. He is."

-

-

-

Turns out, The Best Ice Cream in This Part of Town belonged in Ryder's workshop. Ryder's grandmother, aka the Dragon Lady let us in with a sour face. She took a quick glance at me, and then shook her head.

"I'm sorry about my grandson."

How did everybody came to know about Ryder and I's internal complication?

"It's okay. I hope you do have good ice cream," I said.

"I do sell mean home-made confectionary," she said, and then she pulled open the refrigerator and reached for a white container. I had never really saw Mrs. Black as the grandmother type. She seemed so hard, and in some angle, so masculine, but as she served us ice-cream in a small flowery bowl and gave us milk with it, I began to see the old lady within her.

"Ugh, don't give me that look. I know that look," Mrs. Black said.

"What look? What face am I making right now?" I was just asking genuine question.

"The 'ah, so you're an old-lady' face," she sighed. "It takes a long time to build an iron image. Can't believe that everything's crumbling just because I make good ice cream. You know, the kids next door used to be scared of me?" her eyes lit up. "Yeah, they shit themselves whenever they saw me. I was that good, a mean old gal who can break or make cars. Now that I'm selling sweets on the side, they all have the audacity to come up to me and then try to sit on my lap. It's horrifying!"

I did eat a spoonful of vanilla ice cream and it did taste like heaven. Nobody without latent paternal instincts could make something this good.

"I- I want to sit on your lap, too, granny," my mouth ran without checking first with my brain.

Mrs. Black glared towards Bella. "See? First time I met her, she almost pissed her pants, and now she looks at me as if I'm a frail old woman. It's ridiculous!"

"There, there, Nai Nai," Bella slipped a stray of black hair behind her ear. "Now where's Ryder? You texted me before that he had finally come home."

The mention of his name made me choke up. "He's here?"

"Get down here, you punk!" Mrs. Black called out in her raspy voice.

For some weird unidentified reasons, I straightened my back and checked out the grimes under my nail. After seeing that they were clean, I sent out a 'THANK YOU SO MUCH' telepathic look to Bella, who had forced me to take a bath prior getting out of my room. My hair didn't smell like oil anymore and when I touched my skin, there was no longer a sticky feeling to it.

It was bad enough that I had driven Ryder away a few days ago. I didn't want him to stand