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

2.13: hit pause

2.13: hit pause

-

"What are you thinking?"

It was a question that Ryder often asked me lately. And a question I usually have an answer to. But not today. Or yesterday. Or in fact, this week.

I wished it was because I was thinking too hard about some complicated things that it had almost been impossible to put it into words. But I wasn't born with innate depth that sometimes occurred to other people. No, I was just too exhausted, too tired to be thinking of anything of importance.

"Nothing," I said as non-offensively as possible.

And it seemed as if my non-offensive 'nothing' proved to be way more offensive to him than if I told him that I was thinking about him with an additional 100 pounds of pure fat.

"Are you sure? Your eyes seem so far-off."

I closed my eyes just so that he couldn't find proof in places he shouldn't trust and shook my head again. "Nothing. I tried to hard to think about something right now, but I couldn't conjure anything."

The chocolate on Ryder's eyes darkened. I hated that look on him. I didn't like to see him tauten his face and made his nose all scrunchy. Especially, I didn't like that I was the source of this expression.

"Did I say something wrong?" I asked. "Did I watch too much movies or was it because I was talking to Jughead of Riverdale too much this time?"

I wished I could say that I was sorry about the second offense, but somehow the writers of Riverdale managed to make Jughead both original and compelling at the same time. Already I was on full-spirit to make Jughead fanfiction and that required me to have a mental conversation with Jughead in my spare time.

Apparently, my question and genuine concern made Ryder scrunch his face even more. "Are you kidding me?"

"No?"

He paced around my room, his eyes wild, his shoulders hunched. It was the kind of body language actors used whenever they tried to emulate anger on their characters.

Ryder was no actor, however, and what was shown was the whole truth.

"Are you angry?" I asked him.

"It's amazing that you seem to always catch on my negative feelings and never when I'm trying to be nice to you."

I laughed because I thought his joke was quite funny. "Or when you're trying to get all touchy with me."

The hunched shoulders became more pronounced, and the eyes now close to black. I found the hair on my neck stood. It never occurred to me before, how big of a body Ryder actually had. He was tall and imposing when we were in high school, but now he was actually bigger, much bigger. He had always been gentle to me, and he never left me any kind of bruise whatsoever, except from that little stint in one of our makeout sessions. He was a roaring lion in front of everybody, but when it was just the two of us, he was a toothless beast.

So why did my instincts told me to run?

"I wasn't trying to be funny, April."

"But I was," I explained my original intentions. But it seemed that whatever I was saying, he wasn't getting it. At least, he wasn't processing my words like the usual.

"We're in the middle of a conversation," his words took a sharp note. "Can you not tap on your phone?"

I pocketed my phone immediately, as if a teacher had just reprimanded me. I was in the middle of a textargument with Alex, since he was so adamant that female-Watson was the true main-character in the show Elementary. It bugged me so much that I had to text him with lots of wikipedia links and forum-posts just to make him reconsider his opinion.