When I wake up, I'm not sure where exactly I am. I'm in a bed, but it's not mine. I open my eyes but don't recognize the bedroom either. Before I have too long to try and figure out where I am, I hear a voice coming into the room.

"Good morning," It's Amber. I sit up some and see her walking in looking tired but pleasant. "Did you sleep alright?"

"Mhm," I mutter. My mouth is so dry. As I sit up some more, I remember why I'm at Amber's house instead of my own. We were at the bar for a while, dancing and having a good time. Sage hooked up with Wade in the alley behind the bar but he didn't last very long, so she came back in feeling aggravated and dissatisfied. We convinced her to just stay at Amber's house with us as a sleepover so that she wouldn't try to hook up with another guy last night.

So, here I am. Javier hung out with us for a while but after some time, I remember losing track of him, so I'm not sure where he ended up going.

"My dad made breakfast if you're hungry," She offers me. Her bedroom is half decorated with posters and Christmas lights on the walls, but it's half empty too and there's boxes lining the walls. She's going to college at the end of the summer, I remember, so this must be her packing.

"Sure. Thanks," I am hungry, mostly just thirsty. "Is Sage still here?"

"She's downstairs," Amber confirms.

When I get up, I adjust the dress that I'm still wearing and use a hair tie to pull my ratted hair into a bun on top of my head to keep it out of my face. I sluggishly follow Amber down a small hallway and then down some stairs into a kitchen where Sage is having a conversation with an older man about a sports team from the area.

"Oh, well look who's finally awake," Sage notices me coming down the stairs. "I think that out of all of us, you had the best night."

"What?"

"You kissed Javier," She reminds me with a grin on her face. I use the sink to get myself a glass of water before I join everybody at the kitchen table. Amber's dad is right there but he doesn't seem to mind us talking about last night, even though I think that it's pretty obvious that we were drinking. Maybe he doesn't care because Amber actually wasn't drinking last night.

"Oh, god," I groan, hiding my reddening face behind my hands. "No, I didn't."

"You did," She insists. "It's not even like you kissed him back because he initiated it. No, you leaned over, and you did it. You totally made a move!"

"I didn't," I say again even though I know that it's true. I don't forget it, I just wish that I did. "I don't know what to do."

"Call him. I'm sure that Dex can get you his number," Amber insists. They're all eating French toast but I'm not really hungry, but I do chug the water in a few minutes because of how dry my throat was. "Ask him on a date or something."

"No. I can't do that," I shake my heavy head.

"Why not?"

I'm in love with your boyfriend. I think to myself but instead just stare down at the table.

"She gets nervous," Sage answers for me.

"This doesn't sound like Dad Talk," Amber's dad decides as he rises from the table with his empty plate. "I'm headed to the store. Need anything?"

"Nope, see you later," Amber waves off her father as he leaves the kitchen, leaving the three of us alone in the kitchen of her house.

"He obviously really likes you," Sage informs me.

"I know that he does," I mumble. "He told me last night."

"Seriously? What exactly did he say?" She looks excited. Both Amber and Sage lean in closer to me, as if they'll get the story faster if they're sitting closer to me.

"He said 'I like you, Yasmin' so it was pretty straightforward," I tell them. That was pretty much all to share. I don't need to tell them that before that, I asked him if he only liked me for my boobs. "I should get home. The dog needs walked and I need a very long shower."

"Wait, no, boy talk," Sage complains, giving me a pleading look. "What are you going to do about Javier?"

"I don't know," I admit as I stand up from the table to put my glass in the sink. "But I'll let you know when I figure it out, I promise."

"I'll give you guys a ride home," Amber offers. I make sure that I have all of my things and Sage finishes her breakfast before we all pile into Amber's car to head back to our respective homes.

"Thank you guys for coming out with me last night," Sage says once we're in the car. "Despite Wade's micro-penis, I had a good time. I am proud to announce that I am completely over Tyson now. And also that I have the best friend in the world for egging his car for me yesterday."

"Hey, nobody fucks with Sage Ryan without dealing with my un-channeled rage," I tell her jokingly. "I'm glad that you're over him, I always thought that he was kind of skeevy."

"If I never dated Tyson, you would have never met Javier," She points out with that small side smile that she gets. "Or Amber, actually. So the actual relationship might not have been the best, but it sure did lead to some great things. I'm glad that it happened."

"Aw, that was sweet," Amber says with a light laugh. She drops me off first and I notice a nice car in the driveway that I don't really recognize. I'm not sure who it could belong to, but I'm really curious. My father should be at work so he shouldn't have any guests over.

"Wow, Yaz, who's the fancy pants?" Sage also notices the car in my driveway.

"I'm not sure..." I say slowly. "Maybe my dad's made a rich friend or something. I'm too tired to deal with it right now though. Thanks for the ride. I'll see you guys later."

"Don't forget to keep us updated on Situation: Javier," Amber reminds me as I'm getting out of her car.

"I won't," I promise her and then I shut the door and trek into the house. I take off my wedge heels by the front door just as I'm greeted by my big black dog jumping up with his paws landing on my hips. I pet the top of his head some and then move to put my purse down on the coffee table.

"Hello?" I call through the seemingly empty house. There's no answer. If there was a stranger in the house, Zero would not have it, so I know that there's nobody in the house unless it's my dad. "Dad?"

I grab my pepper spray and hook Zero's leash onto his collar so that we can walk through the orchard, just to see if there's anybody back there. It could be vandalizers again, coming to carve 'RobbyTheRobber' into the trunks of the dead trees. Nobody has done that yet, but I guess it was only a matter of time.

As soon as I get about five feet into the organized rows of apple trees, Zero barks a few times. He's obviously smelled something and starts pulling me in that direction. Gripping the pepper spray tightly in my hand, I let Zero lead me through the trees until I hear somebody talking.

"Shit!" There's a curse and then I see some movement behind a patch of shrubs. I watch carefully until I see a head pop up. When I realize that it's Dex, I relax a little bit but he's pulling up his pants and buttoning them, not wearing a shirt. Before I see Gabby stand from the shrubbery, I can tell that she's probably back there with him.

"Dex?" I try to stay calm but I'm clearly very confused and a bit freaked out that Gabby is on my property. What if she finds evidence against Robby while she's here? I'm not sure if she'd be allowed to use that in court or not. They got a warrant a long time ago when he was arrested to search the house, but she's not an officer or a detective. Would she even need a warrant? I have to call Robby's lawyer, he'll know. "What are you doing?"

Sure enough, Gabby appears too as she's adjusting her clothes and trying to fix her hair a little bit.

"Oh. Hey, Yaz," Dex greets me in a breezy voice. "I thought that you were hanging out with Amber today."

Zero is still persistently trying to go after Dex, so I say, "Calm, Zee," And pat his head a few times for him to calm down. He then starts sniffing through the grass and going along with his business. I then look back up at Dex. "That didn't answer my question."

"Right, well... you know how Gabby's parents don't really like me," He reminds me slowly, still looking a bit panicked for getting caught at having sex in my backyard with his side girlfriend who isn't really his girlfriend but they're having sex so it's complicated. "And my sister is at my house, so we didn't really have anywhere else to go."

"So you thought that the best place for you two to hook up was my backyard?" I ask him with raised eyebrows. "If you had driven your car here, you would have been fucked in the metaphorical sense too because Amber—your girlfriend, in case you forgot—just dropped me off. And you know that she's trying to put my brother in prison, right? And you brought her to my house?"

"Well, I-"

"Sweetie," Gabby says in a sympathetic tone. "Your brother is going to prison with or without my help. That's not going to be my fault, and it's not going to help or hurt anything that I'm here."

"She's right, Yaz," Dex tells me with a nod. "I mean, I'm sorry, I know that this is a weird situation. I guess I wasn't really thinking about it. But Robby is 100% going to prison, so what's the harm?"

I pinch my lips together as a realization comes over me like a bucket of ice water. Dex is not who I want him to be.

The mysterious aura that he has about him, that made me instantly captivated by him, has been broken and I've figured him out. Probably on a level that nobody else has ever known him—maybe outside of his family. He's said it himself that I know more about him than anybody else.

What I'm realizing is that he is not who I built him up to be. When he was a mystery, I had made assumptions about who he was under all of the facades and mysterious acts he puts on. I just assumed that there was a really magical boy underneath all of it. Kind of like a hard candy with a soft center. It's an overused metaphor, I know, but it's the first one that came to mind.

He's not like that, though. He's all hard candy without the soft center. He's just a jerk who likes to keep people guessing. Because when they stop guessing, when they've gotten the answer and they know what kind of a selfish asshole he really is, they aren't interested anymore.

"Get off of my property," I say in a quiet voice.

"Yasmin, it's really no big deal," He promises me.

He just uses people, that's all that he does. He uses Amber to make himself feel less lonely, he uses his friends to make him feel good about himself, he's used me in a few different ways. To give him a ride, to give him a place to fuck. He must have figured out a while ago that when you've got the ocean in your eyes, you can make people do whatever you want them to. Like puppets on a string.

He's chosen Gabby over everything. He's risked my brother's case, and his life, just so that he could get laid? He may have used me like a puppet, but he also just cut the string.

"I'm calling Amber," I decide aloud. He used me to keep this secret from his girlfriend. She's so nice and wonderful and caring. She doesn't deserve this. I don't know how he had convinced me for so long to keep this a secret from her. How could I have been such a terrible friend?

Just because he called me beautiful once? I didn't want to upset a boy so pretty.

Fuck him.

He doesn't deserve any of us. Me, Amber, Javier, any other of his friends. He doesn't deserve anybody except for Gabby, who only uses him just like he uses everybody else.

"You're what?" He asks me, sounding surprised. How DARE I stand up to the puppet master?

I don't repeat myself, I just unlock my phone and pull up Amber's phone number. My hands are shaking as I call her.

"Hey, did you forget something?" She quickly answers the phone.

"Yasmin, put that phone down," Dex whispers at me, his eyes narrowing now. He's looking very angry. He looks like a volcano about to explode, but I've got pepper spray.

"I need you to come back to my house," I tell Amber, ignoring Dex's request. "It's really important, please hurry."

"Oh. Um, sure, okay," She sounds confused but, being the fucking angel that she is, just goes with it without question and then asks, "Is everything okay?"

"Not really. I'll explain when you get here," I don't stop making eye contact with him, so that he knows that I'm not going to back down from this.

I didn't tell anybody that he's sleeping with Gabby because I thought that I was in love with him. I'd always known how pathetic that sounds, but now I'm realizing that I was never in love with him. It just felt like it, because he has this way of pulling people in. Everybody feels in love with him, that's why they always do what he says. That's why they orbit him like he's their sun. Puppet master and sun, all in one. What can't he do?

"What is wrong with you?" Dex hisses at me as I end the phone call.

"Dex, we should just go," Gabby starts tugging on his arm.

"No, she won't do it," He tells her, but he doesn't stop looking at me. "You're bluffing, Yaz. You're not going to tell Amber the truth. You aren't that kind of person."

"I wasn't that kind of person. But realizing that you don't give a fuck about anybody but yourself and your skank, I've decided that I am that kind of person," I explain to him. "You can fuck with me all you want, but you've just put my brother in jeopardy. So, if I was you, I wouldn't try to call my bluff."

"She wasn't snooping around the place or anything," Dex defends both him and Gabby. "We were just messing around in the bushes, it is not a big deal. Tell her that you weren't working on the case while we've been here, Gabby."

"Well, of course I have," She objects. "I mean, I tried do, but the house was locked up so it was a dead end."

As she's talking, I take a picture of Gabby standing in the yard. It sounds creepy, but I've got my reasons.

"What are you doing?" She notices me taking the pictures.

"I'm sending these to Robby's lawyer. I don't know if this is legal or not, but he sure will know," I let my rage just flow through me. I remember one time that Dex had told me that I was so easy to read. He could tell that I didn't say what I was thinking, and that I kept everything so bottled up.

After today, I'm sure that he won't think that anymore.

I get a text from Amber telling me that she and Sage are back and I tell her that I'm back in the orchard.

"She's coming," I tell Dex as I'm typing. We're just within the trees so it'll only take them a few moments to get back here.

"If you tell her, I'll tell her that you've known since the beginning of your friendship," He threatens in return. "And she'll hate you too."

"I know that," I admit with a long sigh. "I deserve that, I should have told her a long time ago. We'll both get what's coming to us, you can't scare me off now, Ollie."

"Dex?" I hear Sage from behind me.

"Babe, what's going on?" Amber asks me as they both approach the three of us and Zero in the orchard. "Who's this?"

I don't give him even a second to explain. "Dex has been cheating on you," I say quickly. "With this girl, her name is Gabby. She's not his cousin, she's his whore. I've known for a really long time, I'm sorry that I never told you about it."

I can feel all eyes on me. Nobody can really believe the words that just came out of my mouth. I can tell that Dex didn't really think that I'd do it. I don't know if anybody has ever been freed from his gravitational pull before.

"What?" Amber says slowly, her eyes widening and her lips start to fall into a frown. Her red hair whips behind her as she turns to look at her boyfriend. "Dex, is that true?"

"No. Babe, of course not."

"I saw them having sex in the park once," I explain to her. "It was before I knew that you were together, I'd only met him once. And then at then at the carnival, he convinced me not to tell you. I went along with it because we weren't really friends, but I should have told you sooner."

"Dex?" Amber keeps staring at her boyfriend for an explanation.

He seems to give up on denial as his shoulders start to sag, "Amber, look. I can explain."

I know that I just created such a shit storm for every body, and I think that there were better ways to go about telling Amber the truth. I just got so unbelievably mad at Dex siding with Gabby over everybody else that I just lost my sanity. I'm glad that the truth is out there though.

Now, we just have to deal with it.