The Quirky Tale of April Hale (Quirky Series #1)

20: The Party of the Neurotypical

recap: Quentin and Ryder had always been enemies, but Quentin wanted to make up with Ryder because he finds out Ryder's dating April. Nobody finds out that Ryder's been crashing at April's bedroom, though, so no worries yet. Quentin asks Ryder to get April to this party at Andrew's house, and Ryder complies.

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20: The Party of the Neurotypical

There were times when I thought Ryder had tricked me into doing all the wacko things he wanted me to do. Firstly, he tricked me into liking the nickname Kitten even though I was of the homo sapien family and nowhere near the feline family. Secondly, he somehow managed to make me hit the skid on watching TV series and started to watch his behavior instead. I've come to know a lot of things about him in his short stay of three weeks, which is faster than my knowing Quentin, which took twelve years and quite a few crying sessions.

(Anyway, as proof of how much of Ryder that I knew, I could just tell it all to you:

1. Ryder was almost always concerned with the way he looked when he started touching his hair. That happened a lot when he was in public place that had a lot of people from our school: like in the cafeteria.

2. He was very good at making people think he was calm when it was actually the other way around. The trick into knowing whether he was genuinely calm or not is to look to his hands. Were they balled into fists? Were they slightly trembling? Were they covered with thin veil of sweat? You got your answers with that tiny obvervation.

3. Most of the time, Ryder was quiet and didn't have much to say, but there were times when he was aching to say something but couldn't, due to unknown reasons (I can totally understand this, by the way). When this happened, usually he would be drumming his impossibly long fingers on whatever hard surface near him, like the table, counter, or even a hardcover book.)

Now, thirdly, he wanted me to go to Andrew's party with him.

Which was totally insane, because the last time I went to a party, we didn't last more than thirty minutes and I had a big row with him.

"I don't want to go," I said for the 54th time. "ANTM is on tonight and I want to see skinny beautiful people whine about how very unattractive they are."

"Highschool parties have a lot of those girls. Give them something strong to drink and either they start humping whoever's slobbering their back or they cry because of all the emotional trauma of not getting enough boys to fawn over them."

It was a very mean judgement but I giggled anyway. "But it's still full of people. I'm not good when locked down with a lot of people."

"Oh, April, April," Ryder came up to me and stretched both his arms wide. He tilted his head, as if asking permission for him to touch me, and then pulled me into his chest. "You're going to be fine. I'll be there. Your brother's going to be there, too."

"Quentin easily gets drunk," I said to his chest, liking the way he smelled because he was just freshly out of the shower. "He's the Pass Out and Fall into a Coma type of drunk, not the Stay Awake and Keep Partying kind of drunk."

"I promise I won't give him so much to drink this time." 

"I still don't like being around too many people."

Ryder surprised me by planting a wet kiss on my forehead. All of my senses were suddenly sensitive of his body, the way his hands were on the small of my back, the way his muscled chest were hard against my cheek, the way his other hand stroked my hair gently. This was yet again one of Ryder's trick. He could make me do anything that he wanted with the power of his lips.