July Apple Pies

Chapter Eight

Chapter Eight

 

 “HOW COME YOUR PARENTS AREN’T wondering where you are?” Jack asked after a while.

“I’m supposed to be hiding out from everyone in the party,” Nora explained as she struggled to finish her last rib.

“Why?”

Ryder answered for Nora, seeing as she was too occupied acting like a rabid dog to answer. “Her dress is exceedingly similar to the one my mom is wearing.”

Jack whistled. “Scary shit.”

“Yep.” Both Ryder and Nora nodded, and then she turned to look at the boy driving the expensive family car Mrs. Kremlin called her own.

“What about yours?” she asked cautiously, worried he would shut her out again if she asked things he wouldn’t want to answer. “Aren’t your parents wondering where you are?”

He shrugged. “They are probably just glad I’m not there to embarrass them or something.”

She could tell he hadn’t planned on saying that out loud. That it was a thought that had escaped his lips before he could stop it. But he had said it. And she wasn’t letting him off that easily again.

Before she could say anything, though, Jack spoke. “I think they are not as hard on yourself as you are,” he said.

Nora was surprised at how serious and concerned Jack sounded. It actually made her smile a little, knowing that even if Ryder apparently didn’t have his parents, he had a friend like Jack on his side.

Nora herself didn’t have much friends, she was more of a loner. But she had her crazy family. She had always thought it was like that for everyone, that everyone had close, weird, and loving families like people like her and Jack did. But that was before she had met Ryder. Maybe that was why she had agreed to help him in the first place. Because he seemed in need of another friend. And for some reason she couldn’t quite understand, Nora was glad she could be that for him.

“You don’t know them well.” Hatred and pain tinted Ryder’s voice and his hands were gripping the steering wheel a little too tightly. Nora could tell he didn’t want to talk about it. So she said the first encouraging thing that came to her mind.

“What I do know is that they’d be fools to be embarrassed by you.”

When she realized what she had just said, Nora’s cheeks flushed pink. She quickly turned to look out her side window, hiding her face from a stunned Ryder and a laughing Jack.

“I mean… I mean… You know. Like…” Nora struggled. She had no idea what had possessed her to say such a think. She didn’t even know if she really thought that, but she went over her words, she realized she did. Which was ridiculous because she didn’t even know the boy. She did know Jack, though. And Jack was not the type of guy who would befriend just anyone. Let alone best-befriend.

“Like…” she tried to explain her sudden outburst again. “You were really polite and charming with Jack’s parents and… Well you didn’t really handle the situation with Mama Rita very well, but…”

Ryder let out a small chuckle that stopped her rumbling. When she turned to look at him, he seemed calm again, his grip on the steering wheel loose again. “It’s okay. I get what you are trying to say.”

“Thank you. That was awfully embarrassing,” she said and Ryder and Jack smirked.

“You really are something else,” Jack said unbelievingly.