M E R E D I T H

(In case you forget, she's April's mother)

There were, of course, times when Meredith thought that her daughter April had hit the jackpot.

She brought home a guy once, when she was in high school. Not your usual pimply, hunched teenage boy that Meredith so often see strolling around the neighborhood, hoping for easy points with April. No. April's boyfriend was handsome, and tall, and well-mannered.

And he happened to be the son of the grumpy couple next door.

Pro and con list?

Pro and con list.

Con:

- Gregory Black, aka Ryder's father, has a bad temper, ergo, Ryder is very likely to have similar temperament.

- Meredith had known most of Ryder Black's exploits and endeavors, most of them egging on the bad sides.

- Meredith once saw Ryder Black smuggled a WOMAN into his house, late at night.

- Would it be awkward if she eavesdrop her daughter's boyfriend's family fights? It was better than most things on TV.

Okay, no.

- Here's the ultra con: Meredith would need to stop listening to the Black Family's Fights if her daughter got together with Ryder. A huge loss.

...

Pro:

+ Ryder Black's face and manners have hidden superpowers. They can change people's mind in an instant.

Yep. The moment Meredith saw Ryder Black standing in the open door, his face vulnerable, his lips couldn't stop opening and closing, and most importantly, his eyes lit up when he saw April, Meredith knew she would love this kid.

Until That Thing happened, and April was ruined.

Meredith knew when she discovered April's condition, that she would have to watch her daughter go through the motions of life with extra efforts. What people thought was normal would be abnormally hard for her, and what should have been a breeze would be something like a hurricane for April.

And break up was hard for everyone, no matter how high they scored in emotional eloquence.

That was four years ago, and right now Meredith almost couldn't believe her ears when she heard her son giving news about April: 'Mom, they got back together.'

Meredith reacted by gasping quietly at first. And then, because a quiet gasp didn't capture even half of her discontentment, she gasped one more time, and another, until her husband caught on and tapped her repeatedly on the shoulder.

(She liked it when her husband did that. It made her feel appreciated and a little big fragile. Something she hadn't been ever since she bore twins.)

Once she was overfilled with affection, Meredith started scheming. It was what she did best. She was, after all, still a 16 year old queen bee at heart.

She would invite April and the Satan, yes, yes she would.

She would present the Satan bad food and bad drinks. She would ask precocious questions. She would make him uncomfortable. She would make his life a living hell! SHE WOULD MAKE HIM WISH HE HADN'T BEEN BORN!!! SHE WOULD-

Meredith took a deep breath.

Phew. Anger is soo bad for her skin.

But the plans had been set in motions. At least, in her head. Meredith took up the phone and then called her daughter. Once, it went to the voicemall. Twice. Thrice. Meredith sighed, and called one more time.

"Hello?" April's voice was breathless, as if she had been doing some cardio beforehand.

Oh, hell no. Not 'CARDIO'! Not my baby daughter!

"Don't forget dinner at your parents's house, April," Meredith used her sweetest voice. "I'm inviting Ryder, too."

There was only one thing that could potentially crumble Meredith's best laid plans:

Ryder Black's looks and manners, which she had been so fond of.

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2.32: dinner with the hales

There were a lot of times when I saw Ryder power through hard stuff as if they were easy stuff.

'Borrow $100.000 for the sake of my family? Here I go!'

'Lost most of it in some deals gone bad? Welp, but I can take this shit!'

'Work hard and isolate myself from the society and human contact so that I can repay everything before the mafia kill everyone I hold dear? Easy peasy!'

(Wait. The last thing seemed like an easy thing for me, April Hale, too. The minimal human contact and isolation from society didn't sound so bad...)

Anyway, I digressed,

Ryder Black was the kind of person who would face any challenges head on. In fact, I had serious suspicions that he got a high when he challenged various groups of people, preferably those with obvious signs of authorities. It had been a habit he developed since he was in high school, and I had thought that Ryder was already long one when it came to making peace with authoritative figures.

But strong, hard-faced, mostly calm Ryder Black was reduced into a sweating mess when Quentin, him, and I reached the familiar white door towards the Hale family's humble residence.

He went red. Deep, purplish red that suffused every inch of his skin, reaching the tips of his ears. It looked like someone had dumped a bucket of paint to him. "I can't do this."

"Now you say this?" Quentin snapped. He had been the one who drove the three of us on his jeep. "May I remind you, who in the freaking hell started this fuckery called 'breaking our dear baby girl's heart and then restarting a relationship with her as if nothing happened'?!?!"

Ryder was hyperventilating. And I knew how hard it was to have shortness of breath when your brain was desperately needing oxygen. So I pulled him and Quentin back to the Jeep.

This was the third time this happened. We actually had arrived thirty minutes ago, but whenever we were one step away from going into my house, Ryder backed out in the last moment, looking like he had just eaten an adult horse for lunch.

(He didn't. Ate a horse, I meant. He only drank a little bit of water and refused anything solid go down his throat. 'Might throw up if I eat anything,' he had told Quentin and me.)

We went back to the Jeep. Quentin grumbling, Ryder inhaling and exhaling loudly, me strangely focused. It was probably the first time since forever when I was the one who had it together the most in a group of people. Yay for maturity?

I opened my thermos for a sip of granola milk in celebration, but when I chugged the liquid, something didn't feel right.

All of a sudden, the wires inside my brain broke loose and it took every single nerve in my body to not scream and trash around. THERE WAS NO GRANOLA IN MY MILK!!!!

Safe to say, my place at the top of 'Most Composed' only lasted an exact 43 seconds, because at second 44, I was bawling my eyes out, all ethical lessons thrown out of the window alongside with my thermos. A minute into the pandemonium, Mom and Dad finally revealed that they had spotted Quentin's Jeep for a while. They knocked on the window and yelled right into Ryder's ears: 'WHAT THE HELL DID YOU DO TO HER?!'

I really, really hated my deep attachment into cereal products.

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Mom and Dad were still peering at me even after we got into the house and I had poured myself two bowls of granola. There were the familiar concerns inside their eyes. You know, the usual things: 'is our daughter gonna be alright?' 'poor April she must be so disconcerted...' 'please don't let April have another break down and spill the food.' 'OMG she missed stuffing the spoon inside her mouth, milk and sugary granola falling. No, no, no, the table is wood!'

Okay, so I probably over-exageratted on the self-narration. But I knew my parents. They loved their furnitures. Since Mom and Dad had twins on their first pregnancy, money had been tight for them. Now they were a little bit comfortable financial-wise, but that didn't mean their poor-people habits vanished.

"Oh God, the table!" Dad was freaking out. "Meredith, you keep your eyes on the Little Shit, I will grab some napkin before the milk stains!"

"Right on it, Partner!" Mom said with her military voice, her eyes still narrowed against Ryder. "You don't get to hurt my daughter in front of me, criminal."

There was another audible gulp coming from Ryder's direction. At this point, he didn't need to hydrate himself with water because he must have swallowed enough of his own fluids.

Quentin shook his head and then gulped down his water.

Dad came back a few seconds later and wiped the milk away from his precious table. I said thanks, and he smiled sweetly at me. But when he turned into Mom, his eyes were all business.

"I want to be the Bad Cop," Dad demanded.

"No. I get to play the Bad Cop."

They did this complicated Japanese janken and Mom unfortunately won.

She narrowed her eyes even more, when the oven dinged.

"Go!" she shouted as Dad dashed towards the kitchen.

"Whaddaya cook, Mom?" Quentin asked.

"Chicken," Mom said, her eyes still straight to Ryder.

"T-That's great, Mrs. Hale," Ryder said.

Mom's eyes turned into slits. "So I heard you're this great woodmaker now, huh?"

"Yes Ma'am," and then, as if realizing that affirming any good news on his behalf wasn't going to win him any points, Ryder shook his head. "I mean, I'm only okay."

"So what are you? Are you doing great or 'only okay'?!"

Dad came in between Ryder and Mom while he brought out a tray of chicken. Each of us took a piece, but Ryder hadn't moved a muscle. I had suspicions that he was looking for an 'okay' from my parents to eat.

"Why don't you eat something?" Dad said.

"Does my food look so unappealing to you?" Mom took in a hurt note. "I can't believe I actually liked you and complimented your eyebrow technique a lot when you were younger!"

She sounded so genuinely upset that Ryder stabbed a fork into one of the chicken and then took some.

"Psst. That's a big one you got there," Dad whispered (although not so discreetly) "Since I'm the Good Cop, take my advice. Don't take the big one. Just take the smaller one."

Poor Ryder moved to the smaller piece, but Dad wasn't letting him do that either. "That piece's too small. That might insult my wife because she'd think you didn't really want to eat her food."

To be honest, even I could see how little Ryder wanted to eat right now. His whole face was red, and if there were smoke suddenly coming out from his ears I wouldn't be surprised.

Just before Ryder started putting meat on his mouth, Mom slammed her hands against the table. "We need to say grace!"

Our family never said grace once in our whole life.

"Ryder, will you?" Mom urged.

"Oh my God!" Quentin finally caved in with the abnormality of this situation. "Mom! We never say grace for the last 20 years. Dad! The way you're smiling and glaring at Ryder looks so psycho! What is wrong with you two?"

"What we're doing Quentin," Dad started. "Is sending a message."

"Uh-huh," Mom was nodding enthusiastically. "Someone needs to know how much of an butthole he had been."

"That's subtle," Ryder managed a crimped smile.

"Let me guess. You guys have been watching my Good Cop dvd collection and are testing the classic interviewing techniques!" I asked. "It was an A for an effort, but the execution would made the characters cry. It was so...-"

"So bad," Quentin finished for me. Our twin-sensory were overloaded now that we were back in our nest. "So cringey. I could die from secondhand embarrassment."

Dad was whispering to Mom, "I told you, I was a better 'Bad Cop' than you!"

"That would scare me either way, Mr and Mrs. Hale," Ryder said quietly. "To be honest, I didn't know what to expect when I came here. Okay, so maybe I was expecting a bit of friendliness and some of your amazing waffles," he grinned towards Mom, who visibly fighting a creeping smile. "But if you'd like to scream and shout at me, that's fine, too. I know I deserve it."

"Ah, Bud," Dad's eyes softened.

"If you want to use the Good Cop Bad Cop routine to me, then I'll comply," despite the silliness of his words, Ryder looked sincere. "But please don't let me ruin your family dinner. I know how long it has been since the four of you ate together. I can come come out and let you guys eat first, if you'd rather not have me here. I promise I will wait outside until you're ready to question me."

The five of us went silent after that.

"Just stay here. It's been a while since we saw you, too." Mom said, tentatively at first, but upon a nod of affirmation from my Dad, she kept going. "We admit that we're still a little irked, but April has told us all about all the things you went through."

"Believe me, if I were a penniless guy with a lot of debt, I would leave my girlfriend, too," Dad leant in to Ryder. "Then come back later when I'm rich and succesful, which is what you did.

For some reason, Ryder actually laughed and high-fived my father.

"This is actually a relief," Mom said, her shoulders dropping, her eyes finally releasing all the tension within. "We're not usually this... passive-aggresive, you know."

Ryder nodded. "I know. I lived across your house for ten plus years, Mrs. Hale." And then he winked. Ryder Black might be a poor ex-boyfriend, and an even worse cook, but he sure knew how to charm the living life out of Moms.

"And what's up with your upper body?" Dad was pointing at Ryder's chest. "It got like, humongous."

"Hey, dad, your very sporty son here," Quentin was jabbing his thumb towards his own chest. "Did you notice my chest to hip ratio? There are actually an actual article dedicated to my torso."

"Well, you're a professional baseballer!" Dad countered back.

"Objectively, physically you have the bodies most teenage girls will want in a boyfriend," I said, because I knew how dedicated Quentin was to sculpt his body to look as similar as his photoshopped official photographs. "You forgot to dye your hair, though. It's a little bit too light if you want to be taken seriously."

Quentin cursed. "That's worth at least fifty dollar to the Mean Jar!"

"The Mean Jar is still going on?" Ryder asked.

"We're on our fifth jar already. I swear, at this rate, that trip to Asia will come sooner than later," Quentin slung an arm around my shoulder and pulled me closer to him. He fiddled with the ends of his hair. "Actually, you're kind of right about my hair. Now I know why all of my dates are 'only' interested in the physical stuff."

There was a collective Ews coming from the older side of the party. Mom and Dad were sticking their tongues up, their noses were all scrunched in disgust. "We should invent a Nausea Jar. Everytime Quentin says something Nauseating, he will have to pay."

"Hey!" Quentin laughed.

Ryder watched us as we ate and threw snide comments at each other. That was how weird my family was. We didn't say a lot of sweet comments, and most of the time, we deviated from the standard family structure (I had suspicions that Mom and Dad had us a bit earlier than they had planned, but I was saving that question for later). Casual bystander would think that we were abusive towards each other (it had been said before, and Mrs. Black had made concerned comments a few times whenever my mom showed her affections to Quentin and Ryder by hugging them to the point of near bone destruction.)

As Mom and Dad ganged up against Quentin (they kept teasing him about how 'big' and 'strong' he got. I gave it five minutes before Quentin pouted and Mom would feel so guilty she would give him her favorite expensive biscuits.), Ryder reclined back to his chair. Some of the redness on his cheeks were gone, and the crinkles re-appeared on the sides of his eyes when he smiled. Genuine.

"I forgot one of the perks of being with you."

I blinked. "What?"

"Your family," he said, his eyes still fixated on them. "They're silly, misguided, and weirdly creatives with their ways to collect money from one another."

"Whoa. If I were anyone else I would have thought that you were trying to insult my family," I said, but even as I said it, I felt my chest swelled up with unexpected pride. "But the tone that you used indicated a lot of admiration, so thank you."

And I watched him watched my family being their silliest, dorkiest selves.

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Author's note:

Don't forget to check out Alex's story on my profile! It's called Pizza Delivery Girl VS The Rich Kids :)

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