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

2.20: the only thing more erotic than making love is a stolen glance.

R Y D E R

Ryder makes it a point to always groom himself into an acceptable level of neat. He likes the feeling of a clean body and he likes not having to worry about any flab on his stomach when he sits (not that he ever needs to anyway, the amount of work that his body does whenever he goes into the workshop is crazy).

He knows. He definitely knows how the opposite views him. The adoring eyes, the silent 'O' that ensue whenever he walk past a group of girls, especially the younger ones. He never pretends as if he's one simple man, and most of his male friends joke about him being gay.

(He's definitely not.)

But even armed with his gift, even knowing that his body is in its best shape yet, and even knowing that he's made more money than he ever thought he will make, he's still nervous as fuck.

As fucking fuck.

Ryder catches himself and then groans. He tries his damned best to reduce the swearing, but sometimes the words creep into the back of his tongue unexpectedly.

(April doesn't like swear words).

When Aubrey (or Ariel or Aldrin for all he care) kept contacting him for a collaboration, Ryder was absolutely pissed off. The only reason why he opened one of her 102 emails was because he drunkly misread her name (Adrian? Ari? Aluna?) to be April. And once he replied to her, he was doomed. She never let him go and she was relentlessly emailing and g-chatting him. He could call the police and they would rule his case as 'harassment'.

The only reason why he visited her in her apartment is to tell her directly to stay away from him. He never expected Auriel (or Aria or Arianna)'s apartment to be that nice, and he never expected to see April inside of that rainbow haired girl's apartment. April, April, April. That April. The April. Ryder had tried meeting a lot of Aprils before. The blonde ex-cheerleader April. The red haired fox April. Even one April that looked almost identical as his April.

They may share her name, but they didn't share her antics, her mannerism, her innate ability to make him want to be good.

He's meeting April Hale for today. He doesn't expect anything to come out from this meeting, though, because there will be too many people. That Audrey (or is it Aubrey?) girl, her annoying twin brother, and probably some other people who will be around just to make sure that Ryder's not going to try anything to April.

A small smile appears on his lips. She's found herself a lot of people who care about her. Yes, those people will exert an enormous amount of effort to keep April and him apart, but if he would do the same thing if he were in their place.

It's a good thing that he's a selfish fuck, because despite the obstacles, he's not giving up on her.

Oh, shit. No more swearing.

(But he's so fucking excited to meet April.)

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2.20: the only thing more erotic than making love is a stolen glance.

My schedule was out of orders.

Which means I was experiencing Pandemonium in the worse sense of word.

Today was supposed to be Strawberry day, but for some unexplainable reason, every store within the walking distance was out of strawberry.

Even worse, Audra had eaten the last of strawberry jam. Apparently, there was a thing called sleep-eating.

I don't judge. Everybody's got their own condition, but why would she eat the last of my strawberry jam at my Strawberry day?!