Reality VS Expectation

You would think that having your first kiss would dramatically change you. Make you into a woman you were meant to be. Make you all more confident and better looking and people will automatically 'know' that you've kissed and that you're all cool and all that jazz.

It doesn't. None of that happened to me.

Maybe I missed my note on being a normal teenager with normal hormonal problems when the doctor diagnosed me with The Syndrome. Maybe I missed my note on being a teenager with normal hormonal problems when I decided that watching TVs and obssessing over my food schedule was a far more superior hobby compared to gossiping about boys.

Either way, I was still same old same old. I woke up at the morning to find that Ryder, like always, had woken up earlier and went out through the window. I brushed my teeth, took a shower, lamented over the new scars that the pimple had been giving me, and then went to school with my brother, who would be all pumped and excited to meet his friends.

When I was younger, I used to wonder what it would be like to be Quentin; to have friends waiting for you when you come to school. To have friends waiting for you after school. To have friends waiting for you just to talk to you and hang out with and chill and -insert bonding ideas for friendships here since I'm too uncreative to think any-

Now, at 17 year old, I could finally feel maybe a third of what Quentin felt when he found out that he was popular.

I had Ryder waiting for me at school.

Maybe having only a single person with the social ability of a wolf would not be enough for others. But I had come to think of Ryder as my Precious Person, no matter how uncomfortable he often made me feel.

And Ryder, as my Precious Person, often deliver.

He was never one to sit on the cafeteria table during lunch break. It was beneath the mysterious bad boy with mystic aura that nobody could point their fingers into. But then one time, two weeks after our first kiss, he actually dragged his feet to sit next to me, giving both Marcy and Corrine a run for their cardiovascular health.

"Whazzup?" he said to my friends, who only managed to respond with total silence.

This effect -I might have to call it the Ryder Effect- didn't only contaminate my friends, but pretty much everyone who saw him sitting with us the Golden Nerds. Within three meters radius, 75% of people had their eyes much bigger than their usual states and their mouth open wide for the flies.

It was not a pretty sight, and not to mention made me nervous as sith.

But Ryder didn't care, or that's what he tried to make it look. I saw his fingers shook a little bit as he raised his sandwhich to his mouth, and that his feet vibrated under the table, making a mini earthquake that only I and he could feel. He was as uncomfortable as me sitting here, and yet he put on a countenance of overt blaseness.

Marcy and Corrine somehow recovered from their comatose period, and after a very obvious reclusive discussion, started to talk.

Corrine: "I didn't know you two are friends!"

Me: "..."

Ryder: "We're neighbors."

Marcy: "B-But y-y-you t-two n-never talked b-b-b-before."

By the time Marcy finished her stuttering, Ryder was sighing in impatience. Again, he repeated his previous sentence. "We're neighbors."

"We're neighbors," I repeated.

My friends obviously weren't satisfied with this. The fact that I was sleeping ten meters away from Ryder shouldn't be enough to make me qualified to be on his radar. I, April Hale, was one of them, the resident of the scraping bottom of the school's pyramid. Girls like us weren't supposed to snag guys like Ryder, who, in lieu of his lack of friends, was notorious and exceedingly good-looking and had a body that looked photoshopped.

"You guys got any problem with that?" Ryder asked them as he inched closer to me.

Marcy and Corrine shook their head in unison, their mouth clamped shut as it to prevent further interrogation.

As for me, I was pretty much silenced as I tried my best to not let the warmth of his palm on my knee give me heart palpitations.

I thought that I was done with the whole Ryder Effect, but turns out that Ryder baring his teeth to Marcy and Corrine was just the beginning.

Halfway through the lunchbreak, Quentin and Andrew were standing in front of our table.

Despite being twins with Quentin, I almost never sit with him together for lunch. He had the best table, by the window, and it was always packed with an immense amount of people trying to impress him and his friends. There was that incident in which Quentin wanted me to sit side by side with Andrew, but since it didn't flourish well, I backed away to avoid further awkwardness.

Now, with Ryder, Quentin, Andrew, Marcy and Corrine combined into our sucky table near the trash-bins, things had taken a stronger turn than mere awkwardness.

"'Sup," Quentin raised his head towards Ryder.

Ryder responded by raising his eyebrows. "What? Now? You want to fight now? Can't you just wait until I finish my food?"

Our faint sibling telepathy informed me that Quentin was a hair away from jumping towards Ryder and headbutt him. But then Andrew elbowed him subtly and Quentin relented.

"Wanna join our table?" Andrew was the one who talked, since Quentin was still in the middle of catching his calm.

I shook my head, but it seemed like both my brother and Andrew expected this. Without further ado, they both sat on our table, and since ours was small, we were all cramped up.

Since none of us were familiar in engaging conversation to one another, there was a very, and I mean very, long silence.

It was long enough for me to see an imaginary movie inside my head.

By the time Quentin was slapping my back, young Spock was meeting the old Spock (1) on the private movie inside my mind, and the lunchtime had ended.

"Uh. So, yeah. Haha, " he said 'haha', but he wasn't laughing at all. "I'll be going. Good luck on... on whatever it is happening in your life." And then he dashed out from the cafeteria.

"Bye Ap," Andrew had a much easier time expressing himself. "Ryder. Uh. And whoever your names are," he waved to Marcy and Corrine and followed my brother.

"What the hell was that?" Ryder asked me.

"I don't know," I shrugged. "I don't know."

"Your brother didn't even try to provoke me into fighting," Ryder pointed out. "It has never happened before."

I wanted to say that it was also the first time Ryder didn't provoke my brother into fighting, but stopped myself. Instead, I only shrugged, and stared more at my feet.

Not a few seconds thereafter, there was a brisk walking coming from the exit of the cafeteria. The figure that stopped in front of me, again, was my brother.

"And uh," he raised his hand midair, and the hand stayed there, as if he was hesitating where to put it. In the end, he put the hand on Ryder's shoulder, who flinched more than the usual. Both of them stared at each other with strained expression. "Uh. There's this party this weekend. At Andrew's. And. Uh. I don't know."

Ryder waited calmly, or so that was how he made it seem to be. His whole body was perspiring and his fist kept balling and unballing, a serious sign of anxiety.

"Uh, well, if you want to take April, it's fine," my brother finished.

I could hear everyone around the three meter radius that had been eavesdropping us gasp collectively.

Quentin Hale, the president of Jocks, had just invited Ryder Black, the resident lone wolf. The fact that all they had been sharing were punches and kicks instead of party invitations and awkward bro gesture made everything seemed even more bizarre.

Now that Quentin had laid his cards, everyone was looking at Ryder, who, at this point, still hadn't said a single word.

Ryder's lips parted, but it took him a while before a monosyllable came out. "Oh."

The heads turned to Quentin.

Quentin shrugged. "Yeah."

The heads turned to Ryder.

"Cool."

The heads turned to Quentin.

"Cool."

I surmised that when faced to each other, their talking ability plummeted to the ground.

Quentin scratched the back of his head, and then walked away, leaving approximately 65 (me included) people befuddled, confused, and ultimately, surprised.

Maybe Andrew did the 'talk' well with my brother, anyway.

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Ryder asked me to meet him at the parking lot after school, so I did. We had been kissing occasionally for over a week, and yet this was the first time he ever want the quality time alone with me outside my bedroom. I was actually quite nervous about this since the adrenaline from the previous brouhahas regarding Ryder hadn't left my body.

When I found him, he was on top of an old-looking sedan, just sitting. One look and I knew that the car was three colors away from being the moldy shade of green it was now. From the scratch on the side, the previous color had been brown.

"This is not your car," I said to him. I remember the Black family had a Ford, not this car that looked like it needed quite a few trips to the service station.

"It's not," Ryder confirmed, as he jumped off to the ground. "It's my friend's. I want to visit her, do you want to tag along?"

New person to meet. My brain alerted me that it wouldn't be a good thing, because most like I would screw it up.

Apparently, I had just said it out loud, because Ryder's face softened. "No, you won't. You're funny, and even if you say things that may offend people, it's absolutely crystal clear that you don't mean it."

I didn't know how to respond to that, but my cheeks definitely could, because I was blushing ten shades of red.

"T-Thank you, for always complimenting me."

"Kitten," Ryder came closer and pressed his smiling mouth to my forehead. "That's not even close what I'd call a compliment."

"It makes my heart soar and it makes me happy, so it's a compliment for me."

The smile widened, before then it fell again. "Anyway, I know that Quentin drives a nice car, but I don't have any car and can only borrow from my friends."

I nodded. "I know. The cost of medicine is really on the high spectrum of expense, and most probably it does a number to your family's financial condition. I mean, I remembered that you used to have two cars and a dog and a bike, and now it's down to only one car with no dog and bike. And your father-" I trailed off because I had just realized how very offensive my statements were. "Sorry."

Ryder said nothing, but he closed his eyes, as if practicing patience.

This was even worse than him reprimanding me.

"Are you mad at me?" I inched closer to him.

There was a loud exhale. "I am, but I'm practicing this thing in which I try to understand you, so I try to not lash out at you."

The words came out before I even realized it. "Why me?"

"Huh?"

"Why you choose to understand me? I'm difficult. My mind is difficult. I can't really tell what you need or what you want or what you would like me to say. I can't say things that will make you swoon as hard as you make me swoon. I am as broken as a dog toy that has been chewed over for years, and I don't think I can ever change." I bit on my lip, my chest was full with unknown things that made me feel dizzy and watery on the eyes. "You have better chance understanding Quentin instead, really. Or Corrine, once you can get past her obsession with tumblr quotes. Marcy might be a little on the hard side because she was convinced that she was gazillion smarter than everyone and-"

Ryder put a finger on my mouth.

"Well," he sighed. "That started as a good and emotional rant, but you strayed away again."

I put his finger away because it made my lips tingle so much. "It was never meant to be a rant. I was just very confused."

"Come here," he said, and then he got inside the car and tapped the passanger seat. I sat on the place that he gestured, and was pleasantly surprised that even though the car was old, it was well-cared.

"Stop looking at the clown decoration and listen to me, okay?" Ryder's fingers found their way to my ear and grazed it softly, sending goosebumps all over my body.

"It's going to be hard when you're touching me," I told him, since I had the feeling that he had something important to say, and yet his touch distracted me so much.

"Okay," he lifted his hand away, his face softened again. "Did you remember the scene on lunchbreak before?"

I nodded.

"Everybody was shocked to see me sitting with you guys. Everybody. I could hear them whisper, I could see them peering over us, as if I was bullying you or something. And then Quentin came and they became even more interested. They expected a fight. They expected me to lash out like some psycho and then provide them entertainment so that they could talk about it during late night skype session."

"The late night skype session was probably a little too far-fetched, but that's probably because I never skype with anyone-"

"The thing is," Ryder put pressure on his tone. "They don't see me. They see my image. They see me as a troublemaker, a bad boy, Quentin's nemesis, a dreg, a jerk, a manslut, whatever." His face reddened a bit.

"They expected me to behave like the version of Ryder that they had warped inside their mind. They want me to, and that's okay, because I know that's how people work. You build an image, people will want you to behave like the image that you've built.

"But I'm not like that, okay? I don't like fighting that much. I don't like to change girlfriends as often as like I change my underwear, because I'm not like that. But everywhere, everyone is expecting me to be that fighting machine with blackened heart and soul. They want me to cause trouble, they want me to self-destruct, they want me to further cement my title as the school's most prominent troublemaker."

I was about to open my mouth, but he gave me a look that told me to wait.

"And I did all of that. I did everything that they expected me to do. I became the troublemaker everyone wanted me to be, because I wanted to fill my role, because I would be nothing if I wasn't that.

"And it made me angry. It made me so angry. I was angry at everything, at the authority, at people, at myself, I was just so... mad.

"But you're... different. As cliched as this might sound but you're different. You might have heard of my reputation, and you're constantly afraid that I might eat you, but you're actually nice to me. It's almost as if I'm a blank canvas to you, and I have the chance to be any kind of man I want to be, in front of you. So guess which kind of man that I choose?"

I was drawing a blank. I couldn't pinpoint Ryder, at all. He could be very reckless, and yet he was soft at the same time. He always looked calm, and yet he was always paranoid. He was angry, but then he was nice. He put on a rough exterior, and yet deep down he was hungry for appraisal. Everything about him was a contradiction, everything about him confused me, although it was in a good way.

"You're not a bad person." So I smiled at him. "Because when you're drunk, you're a five year old."

"What?"

"August 17, the first time you asked to sleep in my room. You were stinking drunk, and you acted like a five year old," I giggled because the memory was so funny. "It's kind of eye-opening."

"God!" he buried his face on his palm. "God!"

"It's actually really cute, and it makes you look less scary to me," I nearly gagged after I said that word. I had just said that Ryder was 'Cute', when he had specified that the last thing a guy would want to be called was cute.

"What did you just say?"

"C-Cute," I backed away a little. "Sorry, I forgot that you hate to be 'cute'. I take back my word and replaced it with 'cool', then."

But then as I was about to repeat my previous sentence (of course with the changed up word), Ryder was already crossing over the seats, so that now he was half on the passanger seat, half on the gear stick. That position must have been taxing, but he didn't seem to care, because his face made this intense look and his pupils dilated so much it spelled MAKE OUT SESSION.

"Now," he breathed to me, and I surmised that he had had a mint candy to cover the smell of his previous sandwich. "You were just complimenting me."

"S-So now you think being cute is a compliment?"

He didn't answer, because he had closed his eyes and kissed me on the mouth.

It took me a while to register all of these. His hand touched my neck, and his lips massaged my lips softly, and I closed my eyes, feeling the Big Bang Theory that was happening in my innards.

And we kept doing this for a while, until finally Ryder gave in to the impending cramp on his thighs, and he backed away from me, leaving me breathless and flushed.

My lips were still tingling from all the sensation, so wordlessly, I put my hand on his thigh and massaged it gently.

Ryder's eyes averted to me, his whole face was red to the point of near purple. "You know what, if I didn't know you, I would have thought you wanted something else."

I kept massaging him as I thought of the possibilities. "I certainly wasn't trying to tickle you."

"Not that," he looked away. "Something else. And I suggest you stop before I need to take cold shower right now."

We drove to Ryder's friend place, and during the trip, even though we didn't talk much else, I felt like I knew him much better.

I finally understood the 'cold shower' reference months later, when I was watching Austin Powers, and had to bury my face on the pillow because at how compromising the position must have been that time.

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