Because everybody was hungover on Saturday, Amber and I meet at the preschool on Sunday to work on the mural instead. I have to show her the new sketch that I decided to go with instead of the underwater scene so that'll be interesting. I think that she'll like it because she seems pretty agreeable.

When I arrive at the preschool, I go through the front doors and down the hallway to where the cafeteria is. Amber is already there, I can hear her voice before I open the door to go into the large room. When I go inside, I can see that she's on the phone with somebody and she's got her face twisted into a scowl so I take it that the conversation isn't going very well.

"All I'm saying is that you're being kind of a jerk right now. And I didn't do anything," Amber says into the phone. She glances up at me and waves me into the room but doesn't say anything to me which is fine. One of the cafeteria tables has been left open so I take a seat there and pull my sketch pad out of my bag.

After a pause while Amber listens to the other person, she responds to them with, "Okay, well then why don't you tell me what you want me to do, Dex. What am I supposed to do?"

I should leave the room to give her some privacy because their conversation doesn't seem to be any of my business but I can't just roam around a preschool and I don't know where I'd go. I just keep my head down and pretend like I'm not even here. Hopefully, she'll be done with this conversation soon so that we can get started.

"I'm so done with you right now, you are being impossible," She huffs into the phone after another short silence. "Fine, whatever you say. I'm sorry for worrying about you, I guess. Asshole."

And then she hangs up the phone, which I appreciate. I'm curious about what they were fighting about but I know that I can't ask her about it. It's really none of my business. I wonder what Dex looks like when he's mad. I bet he grinds his teeth and clenches his jaw. I wonder if he's a violent angry person, somebody who feels the need to throw things or punch the wall. I could also see him as a silent angry person, who just stews in the anger and doesn't let it out at all.

"I'm so sorry about that," Amber breaks my inappropriate train of thought. "Just Dex. He's... being Dex. Anyway, are you ready to get started?"

"Yeah," I confirm with a nod, opening up my sketch pad to the new drawing. "I've changed directions with the sketch. If you don't like it, we can go back to the underwater scene."

"This is really great," She tells me once she's sitting down beside me at the table so that she can see the sketch. The tables are built for preschoolers so they've very low and uncomfortable. My knees are pressed up against the bottom of the surface and my back is hunched, so I'm ready to stand back up now. "I love this."

"Okay, awesome. This is the finished sketch so if you want, I can go ahead and start outlining on the wall. You don't need to stick around, if you need to go talk to Dex or something."

"Oh, no, I definitely don't want to go talk to him right now. He got himself put in the hospital and then he got all mad at me for being worried. He just texted me to tell me that he was in the hospital so I was freaking out and yeah, I called a ton of people to see what was going on," Amber starts explaining the story to me. "Which he didn't appreciate. So now he's pissed at me for freaking out because he wouldn't text me back."

"He's in the hospital?" I question, feeling just a bit alarmed even though I know that there's nothing seriously wrong because if there was, Amber would probably be at the hospital with Dex right now.

"Yeah. Earlier today, he was drag racing with Tyson and them and it ended badly. Everybody's fine and Dex is the only one that got hospitalized but I still don't even know how badly he's hurt because he won't tell me anything. He keeps saying that I'm being overdramatic and annoying," She explains to me. "I swear to god, it better be because of some drugs they have him on and if it's not, he's going to need to be put on those drugs after I'm done with him."

"It's not a bad thing to care about somebody," I give her my opinion even though she didn't really ask for it. I feel like by her telling me this story, maybe it warrants permission for me to tell her what I think.

"Right? That's what I said," She exclaims. "But that's enough about me and my problems. I guess just getting into a car accident would make a person grumpy so I'm sure that he'll just apologize later and it'll all be fine. What do you need to start working?"

"Just a pencil for now," I answer her. If she isn't going to leave, I'm not sure what she's going to do here. She can't help me draw out the outlines and that's really all there is to do right now. I don't mind her being here though so I just leave it alone and just wait to see what she decides to do.

Once she gets me a good pencil, I start on the right side of the wall and I start replicating the sketch on this huge scale.

"What do you think of Dex?" Amber randomly asks me as I'm working. I'm starting to get the feeling that she's still here because she needs somebody to talk to about her boyfriend problems. She has friends though and I don't think that she'd consider me a friend so I'm not sure why she wouldn't want to talk to somebody else about this.

"What do I think of him?" I repeat her question slowly. "Um, I don't know. I don't really know him very well."

"But you've met him a few times now, you have to have some kind of opinion of him. Right?" She questions me. I hope that she can't tell that my face is heating up. I keep myself facing the wall to keep it hidden. What do I think of her boyfriend? Well, I think that he's the most beautiful, mysterious, amazing version of personified perfection that has ever existed. Maybe that's not the answer to say out loud though.

"He's nice, I guess," I try to shrug off her question. I want to change the subject but I'm not really sure how to do that. "What do you think of him?"

"I love him," She assures me quickly but then after a long pause, she continues with more. "I think that he's misunderstood by a lot of people. He's really kind and smart, he's funny too. He just tries too hard to be admired by everybody... you know? He wants everybody to think that he's this big bad, great guy who never messes up. I think that if people really knew him, they'd admire him anyway but he doesn't believe me. I love him."

I keep drawing, not really sure how to answer that. If his goal is to make everybody think that he's perfect then he's clearly accomplished that with me. It doesn't make sense because I know that he's made mistakes but there's just something about him that has convinced me to believe that he's amazing.

"But he's also an asshole," Amber adds. "Because he shuts down when people get too close to him. I thought that I was passed that with him but I guess not. Every time that I show that I care too much, he starts getting upset, like I'm doing something wrong."

"That sucks," I know that it's the wrong thing to say but I don't know what else to say. I have absolutely no experience with relationships so it's not like I can give her advice or anything.

"What would you do if you were me?" She asks for explicit advice, clearly not hearing my inner thoughts where I just declared that I was not qualified in doing this.

"I'm not sure," I admit to her with a small, helpless shrug. I keep facing the blank wall as I draw because I'm also thinking about what I would do if I was dating Dex. If I looked like Amber, I would jump his bones immediately. "Maybe he is just upset about being hospitalized and once he gets out, he'll make it up to you for being a jerk, I guess."

"In an ideal world, you're right," Amber tells me. "But in this world, it's not going to happen. He's too stubborn, so even if he knows that he's wrong, he won't admit it until he absolutely has to. And his apologies are always half-assed because he only apologizes when he knows that it's the only way that he's going to get laid."

"That doesn't sound like a sincere apology," I mutter, my voice low because I'm not sure where I'm going with this or what I'm getting into. I shouldn't be meddling in their relationship, especially since I've never had one myself. She's clearly upset though so I should do something to at least try to comfort her. "But at least he's trying."

"You know what it is? He knows that I love him and that's the most dangerous thing," She begins to explain to me. "Because once Dex knows that you love him, he'll use it against you. He knows just how far he can push me and he knows that I'll always forgive him. No matter how badly he fucks up, I'll always let him come back. I love him, and I can't help it."

"There has to be something," I sigh and I know that I should shut up. I think that Amber deserves to know all of Dex's secrets but I can't be the one to tell her. Especially after I've promised Dex so many times that I'd keep my mouth shut.

"What?" She sounds confused.

"I mean, there has to be something that makes you stop loving him," I elaborate. I wish that there was some paint out here so that I could just swallow it and be done with this conversation. "Everybody has their breaking point."

"That's easy to say," Amber agrees with me. "But it's not that easy in real life. There's never really one defining point in a relationship where you hear the snap once you've hit the breaking point. You don't' know when it's happened. And even if the relationship has broken, that's not going to stop me from trying to glue it back together. Like you and your brother. It's obviously not the exact same thing but even after all of the things that he's done, you still love him. Do you think that there's a breaking point there?"

"No," I admit. "There's really not."

"See what I mean?"

"I guess."

"I'm sorry that I'm bogging you down with all of this talk about my boyfriend," She randomly apologizes from behind me. "I just needed to vent. Are you sure that there's nothing that I can do to help? I feel so useless back here."

"Yeah, I'm sure. Once I've gotten it all sketched out, you can help me paint the basics but it'll take me all day to get this whole thing sketched out," I explain to her. "You really don't have to stay with me, I'll get this kicked out and then we can start painting next weekend. You should go to the hospital and give Dex hell for trying to use your feelings against you."

"You think so?"

"I do," I confirm. "And even if he's being a jerk, I think that he'd like to see you. He's in the hospital, obviously not in the best place right now."

"Alright. If you're sure that you don't mind."

"I really don't," I promise her again. "You should just talk things out with him, I'm sure it'll be fine."

"You're right. I should just go talk to him," She decides from behind me. "Thanks, Yasmin. You're really easy to talk to, you know?"

"Thanks."

"So, I'll take off then. Let me know if you need me to come back or anything, I'll have my phone on me," She offers me as I can hear her packing up her things into her bag.

"I'll be fine," I tell her. "Good luck."

"I'm going to need that," She says, only joking a little bit, it seems. "See you later."

She leaves the cafeteria which leaves me alone to continue this sketching. I look down the long wall to see how much work I have left to do and it's a lot. I know that I can get it done in a few hours but my hands are certainly going to be sore by the end of it.

Since I'm by myself now, I play music from my phone to get into the zone and I just bust it out. I have to drag the table over to the wall so that I can reach the top of the wall to sketch out the sky and tops of the trees. I add a few birds flying through the sky just so that the top doesn't look like just a bunch of blue and white space.

I have to go through a few pencils to get the entire sketch done too but after a lot of crouching and climbing, a bit of erasing and measuring, I get the entire wall sketched out. It's hard to see as one big picture because the sketch marks are light on the white wall but I can tell that it'll all be cohesive and cute. I'm actually pretty excited to get painting on this sucker next week.

Once I'm sure that I'm finished with the sketching on the huge wall, I massage my hands a bit and then gather my things from the table and head out of the preschool building. As I'm walking home, I try to ease the soreness out of my hands but by the time that I get home, they still hurt some.

That's to be expected considering how much drawing I've done today. I don't think that I'll be picking up another pencil for a few days.

I convince my dad to take Zero for a walk so that I can get in the shower instead of dealing with the dog right now. The preschool is an annoyingly long walk from the house and my dad had the car this morning when I left to meet Amber so I couldn't borrow it.

Once I'm out of the shower, I return to my room and I'm about to start getting dressed when I catch a glimpse of myself in my full-body mirror.

I hear Amber's voice in my head, asking me what I would do if I was in her position. If I was dating somebody who looked like Dex, I wouldn't be able to look like this.

My boobs are kind of saggy, and I know that most boobs sag and that it's normal but I just think that mine sag too much. It's kind of gross to look at. My hips are wide and I've got a muffin top that puts my pant size right on the borderline of plus size. It depends on the store that I'm shopping in if I'm plus size or not, which is wildly inconvenient.

I've never shaved my pubic area because I've never found the need to so it's all messy down there too. Speaking of shaving, I rarely even shave my legs because I don't see a point in it. I don't wear shorts outside of this house (unless I'm drunk, apparently) and it's just a lot of work for something that nobody is ever going to see.

I know that there's more to relationships than just sex but it definitely is a part of it. And I know that I can't be in a relationship because I will never, ever let anybody ever see me naked. I can barely even look at myself naked in the mirror right now, so how can I expect other people to be able to stomach it?

From boobs to pubes, I'm a complete mess.

I throw on some clothes and hang up my towels to dry before I upset myself anymore than I already have. Moping about my lack of self-confidence isn't going to help anything so I might as well just drop it.

I'm not Amber, so that what-if scenario is obviously never going to happen. I'm never going to be Amber, I'm never going to be in her situation because I'm never going to date Dex and I'm never going to know him as well as she does. I'm never going to be the girl that any guy falls in love with. Not just Dex, I won't ever be able to let anybody love me the way that Dex used to love Amber, or how he loves Gabby now.

Right now, that thought upsets me but thinking back to how much trouble love seems to be causing Amber, I think that maybe it's not such a bad thing after all.