R Y D E R

.interlude.

IMMEDIATELY AT THE 'BREAKUP'. (Or more appropriately, a case of harakiri)

Ryder felt like he had just disemboweled himself. Everything was aching and worst of all, when he tried to cry, all that he could manage was painful, painful, tearless howls. What was worse was that he had been holding her when he was destroying Them.

She was crying so much, her small body shuddered and twitched as she tried her best to hold his grandmother's ice-cream. With every sob that came out from her lips, Ryder felt like it wasn't in his place to also cry, to relieve some of his pain. He was the proprietor of this. He didn't deserve any alleviation.

He still drove her home afterwards, and the whole ride was awkward and painful. They didn't share a single look towards each other, much less a word. When they arrived at her townhouse, Ryder contemplated to grab her hand, kiss her, and say everything was okay, that he had been out of his mind, that he never wanted any of that to happen, that he really really didn't want to lose her and that he would rather die than seeing her go.

But when he opened his mouth, none of those words came out. The only thing he could manage was a huffed grunt.

"Thank you for the ride," her voice beat him from saying anything, and then she shuffled out of his car. She didn't even look back at him when she walked towards the little porch of her townhouse.

Up until an hour ago, They had been RyderandApril or AprilandRyder.

But now they were just Ryder and April.

-

-

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ONE MONTH AFTER THE BREAKUP

AGE 18 AND A HALF

Alyssa Phillipe Valencia Black (Aka the Grandma): my grandson is an idiot. Maybe a bigger idiot than my son, Gregory. Idiocy runs in this family, I guess.

-

It had been the sixth sleepless day for Ryder. His head was spinning and his whole body desperately screamed for some rest. But when he closed his eyes, all he could see was April crying and that was a nightmare he wasn't ready to face.

But he also couldn't eat. Food didn't taste good anymore. He tried to watch tv, drink liquor, anything, anything to distract him from this constant pain. But nothing ever light up the switch. Nothing provided him a little bit of relief. He felt like a dead man trying to live past his expiration date.

"I'd really prefer see you dead when you fight on some shady-ass street," his grandmother's voice was harsh. "-rather than slowly killing yourself like this."

On day 36 post the Harakiri, Ryder decided to go out from his grandmother's house and tried to win April back.

As soon as he stepped into the sun (and it was his first sun after a very dark two weeks), that motherfucker pulled over in front of his house.

The sleek coat hanging on Alex's shoulder looked more expensive than Ryder's whole closet combined. As always, his light brown hair was parted to the side, a rich kid's default hairstyle. What ticked Ryder more, though, was Alex's brand new Maserati.

"You're not going there," was the first thing that Alex said to him.

Oh, fuck.

Ryder balled his fists. "You don't tell me what to do."

Ryder walked to the front gate, and simultaneously, Alex also walked past the front-gate, to the lawn. As they bypassed in the middle, he grabbed Ryder's elbow forcefully. "Stop right there."

It took every ounce of Ryder's self-control to not just explode and kill him. "I'll give you three seconds to remove your hand. Or I swear you'll never be able to use it again."

"Scary," Alex seemed unfazed, but he dropped his hand anyway. "Ryder. Don't go there. She will take you back."

"And why is that a bad thing? Because you'll lose your chance to be with her?"

Alex's mouth pursed. Then he shook his head lightly. "Don't be stupid. You know your situation."

"My situation? You mean the kind of situation that practically gave you your new Maserati?" he jerked his head towards the shiny new car, glinting against the sunlight. He scrunched his nose, disgusted by how much of his college fund was invested into that car.

"Hey. You signed the contract when you accepted the loan. You have full, first-hand knowledge about how my family operates."

Ryder knew. But still it felt fucking shitty when the interest of his loan accumulated into more than what he could manage. It destroyed his confidence, his assurance towards himself, and his future. His future that he had planned so carefully with April.

"I told you to not borrow money from my family," Alex's tone softened. "I told you three times. I know that your intention was noble, but-"

"Don't. Bring. That. Up," Ryder enunciated every word.

When his father fell sick, Ryder gave up his college fund to try to get medication. However, it still wasn't enough. His father was self-employed, so his insurance plan wasn't exactly the most stellar. While Ryder did make quite a sum of money selling pot and fighting for Alex, it didn't cover even half of the bills. He needed a huge kind of money, the kind of money that odd jobs wouldn't give him.

So he borrowed.

It was the stupidest fucking decision he ever made.

"'My Friends' are brutes," Alex said. "You know about this. You were one of 'my friends', too."

Ryder closed his eyes, feeling his breathing quickening. He wanted to destroy something. Anything. There was this dark energy that pooled inside his stomach, and he needed to let it out before he combusted from inside out.

"They will do anything to terrorize you, to bring fear into your safest places. They don't hold back," Alex's voice fell into a cautious whisper. "If you have a loved one, both of you will get fucked. Sometimes, literally."

Every word from Alex's mouth felt like a stab to the stomach. "So please. If you really love her, you need to stay away. For now."

Ryder stalked away from Alex, because he couldn't trust himself not to plant any punch towards his feminine jaw. He stomped onto the ride-on lawnmower, which was so huge and old and barely even worked. With a raspy cry, Ryder concentrated all of his energy to both of his hands, picked up the lawnmower, and then threw it at Alex's direction.

It missed Alex by a hair breadth. Alex didn't move an inch. In fact, the whole time he didn't even blink as he stared at Ryder.

"Fuck you," Ryder spat.

"Thank you for listening," Alex nodded at Ryder for the last time, before then he walked towards his Maserati and drove away.

━━━━━━━━━━♡

2.28 an alternate universe with the other one

The 'La Vien Rose' room was exquisite. But it lacked basic details that would have make this room liveable.

For starters, there was no kitchen in this room. The bed was huge and seemed like the center of the whole suite, what with the obscene amount of pillows and the satin cover. While all of the decorations were classy and ostanteous, there was no clear sign for the more domestic aspect of housekeeping; laundry, clothes-hanger, even a TV.

Alex seemed to sense my growing dissappointment of the room. After all, I heard that a night in this room costed nearly a thousand dollar.

"Not good enough for you?" he was holding his phone. "I can ask my cousin to give us the president suite. I know some of his secrets so he'll just do whatever I say."

"I'm just wondering why the decorators bothered to put fancy candles and forgot to put a washing machine. It just doesn't make sense. Are you sure that your cousin doesn't get daily complaints about the rooms?"

Alex chuckled a bit. One thing about him was that he almost never laughed out lout. In fact, even if he were profoundly amused, he'd just allow himself a little chuckle like this. It was a pity because he had a nice laughing voice. I wouldn't mind listening to an audiobook voiced by him.

Ba-dump.

Again, my heart was rapping the entirety of my ribs.

"You can laugh out loud, you know," I told him. "You can laugh for as loud as you can and nobody will judge you."

"Huh?"

"It's also okay to fart, or burp or screech. They're not just funny noises. They're proof that your body function normally."

Alex's green eyes glinted from under the dimly lit room. I swear, I had to also complain with the lighting of this room. Somehow, for a room as big and as expensive as this, they had very bad lamps.

"April. You don't need to say those things to me."

"It's just... I just never saw you indulge on the small things. Whenever we talk, you never tell me anything about your problems. I just realized that even though we've been friends for years, I've never known anything about you whereas you've been there for me in my hardest times," I took in breath because the speech turned out to be longer than what I had expected. "I hope you know that I can be trusted, even though I have a faulty mind."

"It's not..." Alex's eyes became darker, and when he bit his bottom lips, I found myself doing the same, too. "It's not that I don't trust you. It's complicated, it might take too long to explain."

"We're here. And we can be here all night if you want. I can chip in with the hourly rates," I said cheerfully.

Alex paused as we stared at each other. He coughed, and when he raised his head, I could see that he was blushing. "That's not the kind of thing that you want to say to a man, April. If I were any other person, I would have thought differently."

"But you're not anyone else. You're Alex."

Alex sat on the edge of the bed, and then he opened a button from his polo shirt. He had a really lean body-type, a result of combined strict-fish-diet, daily 5k run, and very expensive personal trainer. When he ruffled his hair, long-ish light brown hair fell in front of his eyes, framing his face beautifully.

"So what do you want to talk about, April? Aside from telling me to fart."

I sat beside him on the bed, and I noticed him inched away from me. I blinked, surprised because I was usually the person who would have done the 'inching away' thing. "May Hall."

Alex's face fell. "Oh."

Both of us went silent. I didn't know what he was thinking, but I was surely in the middle of gathering information and words so that I could properly say the things that I needed to say in the most succinct way possible.

"Before you say anything," Alex was the first to begin talking, though. "I'm sorry for freaking you out. Yes, May really does look like you. You even have similar names. I'm aware of that."

"Yeah..."

"It's just a coincidence. I never thought..." he didn't finish the sentence and sighed instead. "Well if it's any consolation, she does have a bad attitude and very possessive. So I don't know if it's a long-term thing."

"I know. You and Bella almost have an identical dating history. You're a terrible boyfriend but you're a great friend."

Alex only gave out a one-shouldered shrug.

I inhaled as much oxygen than I could, and then placed my hand on top of his. There was no electricity unlike when I held hands with Housemate (thank God because electricity freaked me out), and I liked how warm his hand was. Alex visibly flinched, though, but to my surprise, he didn't pull his hand away from me.

"Is it because of me?" I asked, looking at him squarely in the eyes. "Are you a terrible boyfriend to all of your partners because of me?"

The way Alex's face changed almost frightened me. His mouth hung open, and as soon as he realized this, he brought his other hand to cover his mouth-

I gently grabbed his other hand and put it away. I wanted to see him without pretense. I wanted to see his honest face.

Alex looked at me and blinked repeatedly. Then he looked at both of our intertwined hands. When he spoke, his voice had a bit of a tremble. "You said that whatever we're going to talk about won't change the course of our relationship."

I nodded. "I still hope so."

"Then you're doing the very opposite thing of what we're hoping for."

"I don't know what kind of course that we're going. But whatever it is, I hope that it's not backwards."

I squeezed his hands, but then he didn't squeeze back. In fact, he had been unmoving the whole time, refusing to see my face.

"You're one sadistic girl, you know that?" Alex finally voiced out. He stood up and then moved away from me. He went to mini-refrigerator and then drank from a miniature alcohol.

He adjusted the collar of his shirt, his lean neck showed a lot of tension. "Yes, April. It's because of you."

His confirmation put a lodge inside my throat. All this time I never would have considered Alex as something more of a friend, but now that he was openly admitting it...

"Is that a bad thing?" I asked.

He grabbed another miniature Blue Label and then drank it all in one gulp.

"Yes," he said. "Because I never planned to like you."

I put a hand on my chest, hearing it thump and grumble. "I like you, too."

Alex laughed. A little louder than the usual, this time. "Of course you like me. I've known for a while, April. You don't mind being touched by me, and you always text me when there's something remotely interesting happen. I also assume that you think of me on some random times?"

I nodded. "I do."

He paced around the room. Alex was wearing leather shoes so the clicking voice reverberated through the room. And then I heard him click his lighter.

"Can you not smoke now?" I pleaded.

He closed his eyes, as if practicing patience, and then put back his lighter inside his pocket.

I also stood up. "I always thought that if a guy likes a girl, then he'd want to touch her," I walked towards him and then tried to take his hand again. While he didn't budge away, he also didn't meet my hand halfway. "So why don't you?"

"You don't want to know what's going on inside my head."

I nodded. "But I do." I massaged the paw of his hand. Of course it felt different than the other man's hand that I used to touch. Alex's hand was smaller, drier, softer. He also trimmed his nails up to the point when there was almost no whites showing up.

Again, the way his heart rate was going on, based on the reverberating on his wrist, was still alarmingly unhealthy.

"If you want to check my heart-rate, there's a more accurate way," For the first time, finally, Alex squeezed my hands hard. His expression bore a determined look as he pulled me towards him abruptly. He put my hand on his chest, I could feel it beating fast. So fast, in fact, that it might be going on an impossible velocity. "How do you feel right now?" he asked huskily.

I found myself hyperventilating, but then I still could stand straight with both of my feet. I looked up to his green eyes and realized that there was only about 30cm gap in between us. It was the closest that we'd ever been.

"I... I think my vocab is reduced to only a thousand words."

Alex panted a bit, too, although he had tried his best to hide it. He released one of his hand and then slowly put his hand on the side of my neck. I could see him gulp as his hand touched my skin. "This is harder than when I climbed mount Kilimanjaro."

I smiled. "Really?"

He settled his hand on my neck, his other hand squeezing mine. "I can't barely breathe when I touch you. I feel like the insides of my body are exploding without my permission." He leant closer to me, and his eyes dimmed even more under his lashes. "I feel like I'm dying and at the same time so alive."

He was being so close, too close. And even though I didn't really mind seeing him up close and smelling so much of him, I still found myself backing away. I liked Alex, now I was 100% sure of that. I liked Alex, but I had a gnawing suspicion that-

"You like me, April. But what I feel towards you is much stronger than that." Alex confirmed my suspicion. He didn't need to say the word out loud, but even I could feel it.

"So you lo-"

Alex put a finger against my lips and then shushed me gently. "I've been told that if you don't say it, it's not real."

I understood now. His refusal to touch me. His refusal to flirt with me. His need to find girls that look like me. As long as he didn't admit it, it wasn't real. It was his preferred reality. It was what he wanted.

But I still really liked holding his hand.

"Okay."

We stayed like that for a while, holding both of our hands and invading each other's private space. The candles burned a sweet rose smell and the dimly lit lights made Alex's face even more beautiful than the usual. Now I could see why the decorators designed the room this way: it was not a room to live, but a room to entice people to fall in love.

"Is it because of my mental condition?" I had to ask. "Is that why you refuse to like me more than what you planned?"

Ever so slightly, Alex nodded. "Sometimes I look at you and I remember my sister. I feel like she's punishing me from up there by setting me up with you," he smiled as he gestured at me. I liked the way Alex's smile, it gave him a soft spot that he rarely showed. "Second reason is, I don't think my family would like to have a... how do I say it-"

"A mentally handicapped girl as their daughter-in-law?" I helped.

The silence on his part said all the 'yes' I didn't hear.

I could feel my heart sank, but then Alex pulled me even closer so that our chests met. I gasped at how warm and comfortable and right this felt. I never would have thought, in a million years, that I would enjoy being in this kind of position with anyone other than Him.

"Okay?" he asked.

I nodded.

Alex put a hand around my waist then, and then he leant down so that both of our foreheads touched. This much eye-contact bothered me, but I powered through because the forest-green on his eyes were such an amazing color.

"You have really great eyes," I said. "You have wonderful genetics."

"My father claimed that my mother was the most beautiful woman in the world," he said. "Do you know how close we are from kissing each other?"

"Probably around five centimeters away," I said. "I don't know. Don't ask me math questions when you're so close to me."

"The third reason, April," Alex said, and now both of our eyelashes were entwined with each other. We were sharing the same air, and even though our lips didn't touch, I could almost feel it.

"Is because I'm so fucking afraid. If I indulge my desires to you," he parted his lips slightly. "I'm afraid that I won't be able to stop. My feelings will only grow stronger, and I'm at a place where I can't let my feelings concede with my decisions."

His grip on my waist tightened.

"And we both know that you won't ever like me the way you liked That Guy."

I nodded slightly, put my arms around his neck, and we almost-kissed for a very long time that night. 

-

author's note

haha i love this chapter <3 <3 ryder and april's defining moments are their 'too's. Too much, too intense, too fast.

but Alex and April's defining moments are their 'almosts'. almost boyfriend. almost kiss. almost love.

by the way, i'll be very busy on august because i'm having TWO wedding ceremonies (me and the boyfriend come from different part of the country so our families want to have their respective parties) schedule will return to normal at September :) 

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for radish readers:

thanks a lot for making my life so much easier :D i swear i can facilitate my wedding better because of you guys <3 anyway, I decide to make 'THAT' scene longer. so long, in fact, that it might span one special chapter of its own (with an appropiate chapter-lenght, of course). please wait for this chapter next week. DEMONICBLACKCAT LOGGING OUT ! <3

p.s:

check out my wattpad block party post to read the entire chapter one of Quirky Tale of April Hale COMIC for free. link on external:

https://www.wattpad.com/449404777-wattpad-block-party-summer-edition-iii-august-2017