Dead Apples

26- Nice Gestures

It takes me eight hours to finish the mural in the preschool. Javier helps me as much as he possibly can by bringing me food and motivation. He paints some simple things that he definitely can't mess up, but I do mostly all of it by myself. It's almost one o'clock in the morning when I eventually finish the entire mural. I'm exhausted and covered in paint, hoping that it looks good. After staring at the wall for so long, I'm afraid that I'm going delirious, but I think that it turned out well.

"It looks finished," Javier says with a yawn. "Let's clean up and get out of here."

"I could shade the apples some more," I notice, going for the brush with the red paint.

"Yaz, no," He intercepts me and doesn't let me get the brush. "It looks great. You look like you're about to pass out. You can retouch it later if you want."

I am really tired, so I just listen to him and stop painting for tonight. Hopefully, Amber won't notice the badly shaded apples on the trees when she comes in the next time that she's volunteering. And hopefully, it'll be enough to at least convince her to talk to me again.

He helps me wash all of the brushes and put everything back in the art room before he drives me back to my house. "Thank you for helping me tonight. I had a lot of fun," I admit to him as he's driving through the night. More at the beginning when I had more energy, we did have a really good time. We had time to talk, we played around with the paint, and just spent some time the two of us.

Just a few days ago, that would have freaked me out, but I feel really comfortable with Javier now. Even though I've got a streak of green paint on my cheek things to a previous paint war.

"I had a lot of fun too. I'm glad that you got it done. I think that Amber will really appreciate it."

"I hope so."

"You're a good friend, Yaz," He informs me. "She'll see that."

I don't think that I'm that great of a friend, especially not to Amber. I try to be, but for our entire friendship, I've known that her boyfriend was cheating on her and it took me this long to say something. I don't want to seem like I'm fishing for compliments or anything, so I don't disagree with him.

I'm so tired that the ride to my house is pretty much quiet and when he pulls into my driveway, I offer him a smile and say, "Thanks for the ride."

"No problem. Let me know how this goes over with Amber," He tells me. Before I get out of the car, Javier wraps his hand around my arm to keep me in place and then leans over and kisses my cheek. "Also, you look ridiculous with this paint on your face."

"We both know that that was your fault," I defend myself. "And you've got paint all over your shirt too, so you look just as ridiculous as me."

"That's not how I remember it," He says jokingly.

I smile at him and then kiss his cheek like he did mine. "Goodnight, Javi."

"Goodnight."

I wave goodbye to him after I get out of the car and shut the door, heading inside to get to bed. I've been painting for the past eight hours so my entire body is sore, starting with my headache and going all the way down to my aching knees from squatting and stretching so often to get all of the corners and edges of the wall.

It was worth it though, if it gets Amber to talk to me again so that I can apologize in person. I don't know how I'll explain why I did what I did but I know that I have to try. I really enjoyed being her friend and I don't want to mess that up just because I was temporarily blinded by Dex's blue eyes.

Once I'm in my room, I take off my pants and fall into bed. I'll shower in the morning but I'm too tired right now to do anything. I also have to call Sage tomorrow, because I didn't have time today to see how Amber is doing and to tell her about what's going on with Javier.