message: this chapter primarily focuses on April and Alex. If you forget who Alex is, he's the guy that roped Ryder into street fighting on Book One, and April's senior at Greenlake University. Ryder hates Alex because he seems cunning and like a fox. He's also the kind of guy who can make a lot of money by being smart and hide his emotions better than a five ton of makeup can. In short, he's a total opposite of Ryder. 

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2.12: shelter

Ryder's grandmother still gave me the chills whenever my mind wandered to that unfortunate memory. I had never been one to really care or notice about people's little quirks, but Phillipe-Something-Something (seriously I might need to tattoo her name on my wrist or something because I kept forgetting it) made it impossible for me to not notice hers.

Her eyes always moved all around me, as if trying to find any faults in the way I sit, talk, walk, or even stand. I couldn't discreetly pick my nose in peace.

And then there was her fingers, which was a true indicator of her patience. When she was content, her fingers would sit still, but the moment I fumble with my word or even digress a bit from any topic she predisposed.

I'll tell you this: I'm never one who has particular fear of fingers. Long, bony fingers didn't scare me. Stumpy short fingers wouldn't faze me at all. But there was something about the tapping of Phillipe-Something-Something's fingers that made my heart race, and not in a good way.

Safe to say, my whole body was in a very effective cardiovascular workout the whole time I met him, and the 1056 times I thought about her a week after that.

If this was Ryder's subtle way to get me to lose weight, then he'd been super successful.

For some reason, Alex was the one who noticed this.

Since he was dating Trisha, he'd been around on the townhouse a lot. Right now, he was waiting for Trisha putting on make up in the living room. Apparently, they were supposed to go out for a date but Trisha made him wait for more than 20 minutes while she attempted a youtube-inspired make up.

"Can you please wait another 20 minutes? I promise you get to pick the place tonight!" she screamed from behind the room, right after a wail filled with fury.

Ah. Her experiment apparently just failed. Time to move on to youtube-tutorial #2.

"You're very patient, you know," I commented at Alex, who only accepted Trisha's plea with a smile.

"Nah, I like to see the women I date look good," he said. "You, however, hasn't look presentable for the last week."

"Is it the teeth?" I said, pointing at my constantly grinding teeth. "Or the nails?" which was chipped because I chewed on it too much.

"Have you look at the mirror in the last week?" he asked. "Like, at all?"

"Not really. I don't like to look at myself when I'm anxious. It confirms my anxiety."

"Yeah," he nodded. "You better not."

There was a lingering silence as we went about our respective routine. Him checking on instagram and liking every picture with a pretty girl in it, and me trying to come up with a new script to show to my lecturer.

Then he suddenly talked to me.

"You can tell me, you know."

I looked up to him.

"If you have something in your mind," he added.

"Really?"

He shrugged nonchalantly. "Why not?"

"You seem like the type to eat up my story and then make fun of me."

There was a smile crossing his lips. "I do, don't I?"

"Very."

"I'm very sad that it's the kind of image I'm portraying."

I pointed at this smirking face. "Maybe if you can stop smirking and looking at people with half-lidded eyes as if you're making a joke about them, you'll portray a different image."

"I don't, you know." Suddenly, there was something heavy on his tone. "Judge on people. Yes, I make observation. But I don't judge. For example. I notice that you're wearing a very old, possibly 10 year old sweater from when Spongebob Squarepants was cool. I notice that you're not the kind of person who'd buy clothes according to season," there was a pause as he took another once over at my clothes. "But I'm not judging you."

"Wow. My mind is set back and forth whether to think you're mocking me or complimenting me." I said, my brain whirling like crazy to see if it was better to act flattered or triggered.

"Is it about Ryder?" he asked.

I nodded with enthusiasm. "I'm nodding with enthusiasm."

"How did you and him started dating, anyway?"

"I fainted when I first talked to him and apparently he found that amusing enough to actually fall for me."

That managed to get a chortle out of Alex. I had always seen him smile, but it was the kind of deliberate, 'I'm-amused-not-because-you're-funny-but-because-I'm-so-smart' kind of way. This time, however, it was a real, raw chortle.

"You're really laughing this time," I said. "A real laugh."

"Do you know that you're really funny?"

"Most people would say 'annoying', not funny." I tipped my chin. "But sometimes I do laugh when I was having conversations with my favorite tv-characters inside my head. So I guess I can be funny at times."

"I wished you could meet my sister," he said. "She used to really love Sponge Bob."

"The sister who was now currently six feet under?"

"Yeah," he bowed his head. "You should also know that it's not really polite to say it like that."

"I'm sorry," I said. "And thank you for pointing that out."

"Does Ryder do that to you, too? Pointing out the clues that you're not neurotypical?"

"He used to. But I guess he's so stressed out nowadays that he's just-"

"Shut off? Grumpy? And a little bit of an ass?"

I tried to remember the nice things he said to me during this week and nothing came up to my mind. The last time we met was when he brought me to meet his grandmother, without giving me enough time to prepare. And the last text message that he gave me was 'K'.

Yeah, he had been kind of a stinky butt lately.

"It's wrinkling my brain," I pouted and then ate a spoonful of peanut butter. I always loved the natural one because I got to stir the oil on top first. It felt satisfying.

"Yeah, that's kind of his MO (Modus Operandi). He gets pissed at something. He shuts off and then push people away."

"He did push his father away when he was dealing with all the cancer and money stuff last year," I remembered how loud it was at his house every morning when we were neighbors. "I just didn't think that he'd push me away."

"Yeah, because you're such a joy to be around with when people are dealing with hard shit."

For some reason, I instantly knew what he was talking about and appreciated his honesty. "I know that I'm not... I'm able to give him... erm. What's that word? The warm thing."

"Comfort."

I gave him another appreciative nod. "I say the wrong things all the time, and I think I keep making him feel worse."

"He knew what he was dealing with when he decided to be with you, right?"

I shrugged, not knowing how to answer that.

"I couldn't deal with my sister, you know?" he said, his green eyes bore a twinkle that never appeared before. "She was in a far worse shape because her autism was severe. You know when it starts to get into your movements and you can only walk really slowly."

I nodded, remembering the wikipedia article about those less fortunate than me. Sometimes the condition could also affect motor skills, which resulted in unbalanced steps and really bad hand-to-eye coordination. It was ugly. Whenever I felt handicapped because I couldn't sense people's emotions just like Quentin, I googled those and read the wikipedia page from top to bottom to make myself felt grateful. It often worked.

"My sister was cute and she was small, even for her age. But she had this... this tendency to scream and cry and it made my 10 year old self felt left out. Because my parents always gave her the extra attention. Seeing that she's-"

"Different." The word came to my mouth at the same time it came to Alex's.

He gave me another one of his real smile. "She felt things were too noisy, she screamed. She felt annoyed by the ticking clock, she cried. She was just simply overwhelmed by God knows what, she broke down. And here I was, 10 year old and the best at my class, and my parents didn't have anymore energy to give me a pat on my head anymore."

I just listened.

"One day, she was following me around the house, the only thing she was capable to do aside from crying and screaming attentions to my parents, and I was taking the stairs. She was only six or seven at that time, and she kept fumbling with the stairs.

"I was pissed at her because of something petty, so I kept swatting at her. Then she stepped on my foot, and I reacted by throwing my arms on the air, getting super angry." At this point, his voice broke a little bit. "I didn't even know what had made me so angry. But everything just bubbled up and there I was, throwing my arms around because a little girl stepped on my foot. My elbow accidentally pushed her shoulder, and then she fell."

I cringed, and then I automatically put my hands over my ears.

No.

No no no no.

"I was terrified because it was the first time I ever saw blood, and it was pooling under her head on the floor. I called my parents, and they came rushing down and took her to the hospital. She had permanent brain damage. She didn't walk and didn't talk and our family pulled out her life support just three months after."

There was another snort of laugh, but I recognized that this one wasn't filled with any mirth.

"To this day, my parents told me that I was a hero for saving her. They told me that I gave her another 3 months to live, that I gave them a chance to say goodbye."

He cursed under his breath and then ran his fingers over his hair, messing up his coiffed bangs.

"I never told anyone about this," he said, and all of a sudden I understood the implication. He never wanted me to tell Ryder about this story.

"I know," I nodded.

"It's just... well, let's just hope that Ryder would never throw his arm around in anger when you were trying to get close to him."

I shook my head. "He would not."

He would not.

He would not.

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Woot. I'm here!

For the longest time I've been 'hiding' this backstory about Alex. To be honest, the backstory was the very thing that made me think about this character, even back on Quirky Book One.

And to be totally honest, I've been quite confused on how to progress with the plot with Book Two, but now everything's set in stone, and y'all get to find out VERY SOON. I love it very much, because it's the kind of story plot that I never experimented before, but yeah. I hope it works. <3 <3

I'm actually getting an offer to write on another app. It's going to be FREE. I'm planning to write either Ryder's perspective of Book One, or the Little Moments about Ryder and April from Book Two, because you know, the story's not really focused about them lately. Which do you prefer? Would you download it to read it? Save a bit of space in your phone for me?

And thank you so much for supporting me and reading my stories. I'm so happy that I have all of you to share my creative juices and I'm glad that some of us have become friends <3

So as friends, I just want to let you know one good news that came into my life:

IM GETTING MARRIED THIS YEAR.

#Singlenomorebitches