Recap: Ryder has old friends, one of them is dying. He also has a dying father, overall, he's just surrounded by old, sick people. Ryder and April were in her first normal party and things were going good for them

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21: Awkward, Different, and Broken

We were still inside the Unidentified Room, although our business shifted from touching each other's private parts to me drawing a My Little Pony horse on Ryder's neck, when Quentin barged inside with a bang.

"I SEE YOU DOING MY SISTER!" he screamed, and then, upon seeing us, closed the door and smiled lopsidedly. He didn't looked half as embarrassed as he was relieved. "Just in case. But now that I see you're being pussy-whipped, it actually became a good joke."

"I wish it wasn't a joke," Ryder held his fist up in the air and Quentin greeted it with his. "I can't believe I let her draw a horse on my neck."

"Hypothetically, if April weren't my sister, I'd say 'Fuck it' and hook you up with one of the girls that I know- believe me, they're slutty," Quentin sat on the corner of the bed and examined the MLP horse. "Sis, I think the mane should be bigger... Yeah, that's right. That's Pinkie Pie." And then, back to Ryder. "But then she's my sister and you're her first boyfriend so I'd take the role to be the protective brother who'd punch you at the sight of you two doing couple stuff."

"Noted," Ryder said. "I'd do the same if I had a sister."

"You two talk as if I weren't even in the room," I said, more to inform them that I still had two perfectly healthy ears, even though my concentration was 75% on the finishing of the drawing.

"Easy to do, when half of the time you weren't even interested in what we have to say," Ryder said, and then it was Quentin's turn to offer him his fist on the air.

"So now it's eleven thirty and Mom had started sending me legions of texts asking me to tell you to go home," Quentin said.

"Do you need to go home, too?"

"Sis, I have no curfew as long as I don't give them grandchildren. So I'll go home later, but your guy needs to take you home now."

"You two have awesome parents," Ryder finally said.

"Yeah, that's the perks of having parents that adopt a semi-hippie lifestyle, unlike your-" Quentin stopped midway as he realized that he had just ventured to dangerous territory. "Anyway, you're not drunk, are you? Can you drive?"

Ryder shook his head. "I'm not drunk, and it's ok. My parents do suck. The only thing they're good at is arguing and coming up with insults that are not stereotypical. Yours can be a little touchy-feely, especially your mom, but they're still pretty awesome."

Quentin smiled, and I smiled too, because I really wanted Ryder to like my parents, and he did. I returned the black pen back to the drawer on the side of the bed and we held hands again. "I think Mom likes you a lot."

"She likes him a little too much, if I may say," Quentin scoffed disapprovingly. "She never has that kind of reaction whenever I bring my girlfriends home."

"That's because a lot of your girlfriends won't eat what she has cooked," I pointed out. "That, or your girlfriends often look at me with squinty eyes."

"They do that?" Ryder looked at me incredulously. "Later at school, you can point me out the girls who did that and I'll deal with them."

"Y-You don't need to. I mean, Quentin dumped the ones who are mean to me in the meanest way possible, too, like through skype calls. Or text. Or a post-it note."

"Post-it note," Ryder snorted at the last one.

"What?" Quentin shot Ryder dagger glares. "She's my sister, okay? I have unconditional familial love for her, it's instilled in my DNA."

"I just find it hard to believe that beneath that skinny chest of yours is a beating heart," Ryder said.

The corner of Quentin's lip twitched dangerously. "Don't push it, chump. You know I still don't like you enough to refrain myself from making your high school experience hell."

They weren't fighting, but the way they looked at each nearly made me think that they were a second away from doing so. I sat in between them and kissed Quentin on the cheek. This, of course, surprised my brother and he backed away from me as fast as possible. "W-What the hell?"

I kissed Ryder's cheek, too.

This surprised Quentin even more. "You kissed him! In front of me! April, how could you!?"

"The movies told me that you have to kiss people that you like to remind them how much you like them," I said, my gaze on my shoes. "I like both of you so much, but my fondness always fade ever so slightly after you two fight each other."

"Fine," Quentin was the first to say it. He took a deep breath and then walked towards Ryder and then snuck his hand out. "Truce? As long as you're my sister's boyfriend, me and the other guys won't ever bother your life."

Ryder took it. "Fine. As long as you're not bothering me, I won't make any insulting remarks about your lack of humanity, too."

"That's really nice," I said. "I like seeing you two making up. Corrine especially will be excited, because she has been having fantasies about you two falling in love with each other and have coitus in a yaoi manner."

"Remind me to never say 'hi' to Corrine again, which one is she?" Quentin asked.

"The one who always wear oversized sweaters."

"It's always the quiet ones... now off you two," Quentin pushed me away from the room. The party had become even more of a zoo, with more people piling up and a lot of them had now started doing things I thought was inhumanly impossible, like becoming a human table, or latching onto the ceiling fan.

"By the way, Ryder," Quentin snatched Ryder's back before he could follow me. "You know about the... about the thing she has?"

Ryder said 'yeah' in an undertone.

"And you're like, okay with it?"

"She's still the girl that I like, with or without the condition."

There was a pause.

"Good," my brother said. "People get tired of her. Now you don't , but eventually you will. They all do. But when it's time, please don't... please don't make her-"

"You don't need to worry about her," Ryder cut him off. "I don't make it a habit to dump people in the meanest way possible."

"She's pretty, okay? My sister's pretty and there's something wrong with her head. And the moment people know that she's different, they just... they just want to be her hero, you know? But then the hero flair wears off fast and they realize they're stuck with a person who's-"

"I know what I'm doing," Ryder interjected him again. "So drop the Protective Brother Shit and learn to have a little faith on me."

The room was loud, but I could hear Quentin's breathing really fast, like he was trying to talk himself out from knocking Ryder's nose. "Fine."

"Fine," Ryder repeated.

"One more thing," Quentin wasn't quite finished. "I was caught in a heated moment a few hours ago and kinda egged your house, but it was just one egg and I think I missed the egg by a width margin onto your room anyway, so... Hope you don't mind, ok, bye!"

And then he was out. My adorable brother.

-

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My parents didn't give me any key, so we needed to ring the bell when I was home. Ryder was a bit iffed by it, I could tell, but he still parked the car in front of my house and walked me to the little porch.

"Listen, April, so..." Ryder put his hand on my shoulder to stop me. I looked at him, his jaw clenching and unclenching, his clear brown eyes was so perturbed with whatever fight he was having inwardly.

"Yeah? Is this your 'I want to make out' face? It looks kind of different from the usual."

"It's not that," Ryder exhaled. "Maybe, maybe I shouldn't sleep in your bedroom tonight."

This took a few seconds for me to fully digest what he was saying. "Why?"

"It feels wrong. Your whole family trust me and I intend to keep them trusting me, and I don't think sleeping in your room without their knowing is the right way to do it."

This was even harder to digest. I guess I was a creature of habit, and I had accoustumed myself into having Ryder sleep on the floor every night. It somehow calmed me, to know that when sometimes I wake up in the middle of the night, I had someone who would tell me 'Monsters aren't going to eat you'. And then when the cold chilly morning came, he would crawl onto the bed just to cuddle me from behind so that I would get warm enough to get out from the blanket and go shower. Having Ryder in my room was a nice addition to the mountain pile of teddy bears, particularly because Ryder could talk, and because he was warmer than any other plush toys that I had.

"So you won't... climb up my window and sleep with me tonight?"

"No, I won't."

"Have you made up with your cancerous father?"

The word 'cancer' made him shut his eyes, and when he spoke, his voice faltered a little. "No, I haven't. But Keegan's trailer is near the neighborhood, I can crash with him."

"But..."

"You're important to me, April," his brown eyes suddenly intensified. "And I don't want to ruin this whole thing. Your family love you and treasure you very much, and I have to respect them."

"But-But I like having you around..." I licked my lips, hordes of words were caught up in my throat but I couldn't string them into coherent sentences, let alone voice any of them out. "You help me out so much."

"You only like me because I'm useful to you," Ryder said. I couldn't tell if he was joking or not, but he was smiling at me and poking at my arm. "I bet if I started to ignore you when you want me to hug you at the morning, you'll kick me out faster than you can memorize TV quotes."

"No, I'd just scoot over and we'll hug on the floor," I said, half serious, half not meaning it.

That deterred Ryder's determination a bit. "You will?"

"No. I'll be too cold to move. I'll just have one of Mr. Teddy to do the job."

Ryder scrutinized me, his chest heaving up and down and his mouth opened and closed without sound. And then, I started to giggle because I could see how upset he was.

Hearing the sound of my laugh seemed to relax him a bit, but his tone was still wary. "Is that a joke?"

I grinned even wider.

"Is that really your idea of a joke?"

"Um, yes?"

"That," Ryder huffed. "is so cruel. That's so freaking cruel. And you didn't have any mischievous expression to go with that joke. I almost thought you're serious."

"About what? About you being as good as one of my Mr. Teddy?" I asked. "Of course not. You're warmer and you're alive. You're better than all of my Teddies combined."

Ryder's mouth was in an O form for quite a long time. When he regained his composure, he had hid his trembling fists on his pockets. "April. You are one cruel maneater. You nearly broke my heart."

"I did try to smile in a 'mischievous' manner as you put it, but my face is kind of limited on how I make my expressions," I shrugged. "It's the Asperger's."

"Oh, so now we're getting to this? You use your Asperger to make me forgive you?"

"Um..." I thought about this. "Well, yes?"

"And it's working so well, too," Ryder leant closer to me and pulled me into a hug.

This felt nice. The night wind was chilly and Ryder's body radiated a comfortable heat that enveloped me. He had broad shoulders and big arms, and as I felt him towered over me and smelled his very masculine cologne, I started to realize the appeal of guys who take care of themselves.

"Ryder?" I called out for him.

"Yeah?"

"Now that we can joke about my Asperger's, does that mean that we've become closer?"

He smiled as he looked me right in the eye. The gesture was so surprising that I had to look away. I wasn't good with eyes, and his spoke so much, which made it even harder for me to look at them. But he was persistent, and he gently tilted my chin so that my face was directly across his. Again I got lost in his sea of chocolate.

"You tell me," he said.

"Yeah," I mused. "I think you're the person I'm closest with, aside from my family."

"I still have your family to go through, then," he laughed.

"I think my brother is your final boss."

"He is. Especially because I still don't like him much."

"Don't worry, he feels the same way towards you," I put both of my index and middle finger on either sides of my temples. "Sibling telepathy."

"I hope your sibling telepathy doesn't let him feel this, then," he said as he kissed me on the mouth. I kissed him back, my hands were all over his back as his pressed my back so that the thin gap between our chests closed.

We only stopped, quite an eternity later, when both of my parents stopped pretending that they had been right on the other side of the door and announced that they could see us kissing.

"Sorry Mr and Mrs. Hale," Ryder shouted back at them, his face lit up as a wide grin was formed on his lips. I liked seeing him smiling. He was always a good-looking guy, but he could charm anyone that he wanted to when he smiled. It was his gift.

"I'm going now!" Ryder shouted again, but then he was lying because he stole another kiss on my lip, and then on my cheek, and another on my temple.

My father coughed loudly.

"Really going now!" Ryder was unaware at how very breathless and very possibly close to death I was. He waved at me as he went back to his car, and then mouthed something that sounded suspiciously like an 'I'll miss you.'

My gift probably wasn't having a charming smile like Ryder or being good at socializing like Quentin or even having a smart, high-functioning brain like Marcy and Corrine. But whatever my gift was, it was enough to make Ryder miss me just five seconds away after we were apart.

And in that very second, I actually liked my awkward, different, broken self.

-

About two, three hours later, I was woken up by the sound of shuffling near my window. My first instinct was to immediately hide under the bed in case a serial killer came to bury an axe inside my head, but when the window opened, I saw only Ryder.

And he was in the verge of crying.

"I'm sorry," was the first thing that he whispered. "I'm sorry, I told you that I won't sleep here tonight, but I can't. I can't."

I sat frozen on my bed, unable to think of anything that could make him stop looking so miserable. Tears were welling around his glassy eyes, although he had held himself so that none fell. His whole face was contorted, to the point where I couldn't see the usually confident Ryder in his face. His body language was also different, his shoulders hunched, his movement languid, it almost as if he had just lost half of his life.

"They had been trying to call me since the party," Ryder said as he made his way to my bed. He never really looked at me and the hand that was holding his phone was trembling hard. "I couldn't hear anything because I put my phone on silent."

I was still unable to say or do anything. I only looked at him, but only for a second, because this loads of vulnerability made me uncomfortable and unsure about anything. I gave him one of my Teddy Bear, and he shook his head no.

"I don't want your stupid bear," he said. "I want you to hug me."

Slowly, and slightly offended, I crept closer to him and put my arms around his neck. The moment our bodies interconnected, he buried his face on my shoulder and started to cry.

"She died, April," he whispered in between the sobs. "Linda died. We were having that stupid game of Confession when she fell unconscious. You were drawing that stupid Pinkie Pie on my neck when she breathed her last breath. She died, and I was doing some stupid things in a stupid party with stupid people."

I stared at his open neck, at my drawing of the cartoon horse. It was half-blurry now, but it was staring at me, its smiling mouth mocking me.

"And you know the worst thing about it?" Ryder continued. I kept quiet and held him closer. I stroked his hair in a manner he had stroked my hair before, in hopes that it would calm him a little bit. But none of that mattered to him, because his whole body kept shaking and when he spoke, there was an unmistakable contempt dripping on his voice. Contempt for himself.

"The worst thing is I actually don't really care. When I saw Billy's text about Linda's death, the first thing that I thought is my father, about how I don't want him to die, about how relieved I was that it wasn't my father who died. I'm a horrible, stupid person, April. I'm just... " he couldn't finish his sentence.

And then I realized that I was an even more horrible person than he was, because all this time, I couldn't even care less about Linda or even Ryder's father. All I wanted to see is Ryder smiling again, not this sobbing mess.

And as the thought manifested clearly and thoroughly inside my head, I started to cry, too. I started to cry because I was so selfish, I started to cry because of my inability to console him or even provide him false comfort. I couldn't do anything aside from holding him and staying quiet. It was Beyond what I knew, and I didn't even know if I could reach that Beyond ever. I could never be what he needed me to be.

At that moment, I didn't like my awkward, different, broken self.

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Thank you for reading :)