She had the most brilliant and carefree smile he had ever seen. When he first met her he thought her  a weirdo. James knew plenty of tomboys but he'd honestly thought she took it a little to far, where in she might've simply been a boy and no one would know the difference. A boy though not a man. She seemed to spend free days just riding her skateboard and challenging kids she met at the hoops to one on one basketball matches.  After an hour of speaking to her he had become captivated by her. It wasn't  long before he was texting her almost every day. It was like they had always known each other rather than had just recently been nothing but strangers. With each passing day James curiosity became something close to infatuation.

Amber treated him like all her other friends. Still every now and then James had caught her looking at him not like a friend or a sibling but as something more. His hopes would start to rise but then the look would be gone replaced by one of sadness. It was strange for someone so perpetually happy to look so sad. He sometimes wondered how well he knew her. They were almost inseparable and yet James kept all the questions her had about her and about them locked inside afraid that it would change the perfect peace they had. 

Even without the questions though, their relationship changed and fell away. When the accident that took away all his dreams and hopes of the future happened Amber had been his lifeline. When he'd told her he wasn't contemplating giving up on his life anymore just on his dreams she angrily asked if it wasnt the same thing? Giving up when there was still hope would be something he'd regret his entire life. He wondered if she regretted giving up on something long ago.

She was always there smiling and telling him that everything would be ok. Whenever he felt at his lowest she would always some how know and stop by or Skype him when she was overseas. "Let's not give up, James." "Let's keep holding on a bit more, ok?" She would always say "Let's" with that big ol' smile of hers, the one that he'd fallen in love with, the one that seemed to now mock him. Whenever he was in a particular dark mood that smile would get to him, not in the way Amber had intended he was sure. It just rubbed salt on his already raw wound. "What's so hard about doing what you love and happily prancing around without a care that you would even think about giving up?" He'd yell and rant at her, sometimes he'd say things so nasty that he immediately regretted them, only to have her smile and say "Anger is good too. Sometimes anger is the only thing pushing us to go on."

The more he was her and that smile of hers the more he resented her. She obviously knew, she started keeping her distance. Her visits and calls  dwindled until she was only texting him, somehow that angered him even more. Eventually even that stopped. Days and weeks turned to months. By the second year after his accident James was starting to finally come to terms with his anger and resentment towards not only his injury but with Amber. Even though she had given up on him somehow that seemed to be the extra push he needed. He worked harder to prove to her that he hadn't needed her to be there for him. And even though James would never  be able to play as smoothly nor as fast as he used to he was finally confident enough to play live. On his first official performance as the bass player she was there. Right in the front row happily smiling up at him. "Let's not give up," she mouthed. James wondered for the first time who it was that had really given up and who was still desperatly holding on?