I'm a terrible person for not updating. I know. I'm sorry, don't kill me. This is such a filler… but the next chapter will be better. I promise!

Oh, and thanks for 300 reviews. That mean so much! Thank you!

I had the next day off, and since it was raining cats and dogs, my dad had the suggestion of going to the movies.

Hey, I'm not going to turn down an offer to get fattening popcorn that costs ten dollars for an extra small. Especially when my dad's buying.

But we decided to have a nice morning together.

If you had asked me a year ago if I had thought I'd be eating breakfast with my dad in Naples, I would've asked you if you were high. I don't know what changed in my dad over the time that I hadn't seen him, but I was pretty sure that it was for the better.

I woke up with the most insane smile on my face. It quickly changed to a look of confusion, however, because I remembered dreaming of Percy. Percy. As in Jackson, the guy who'd taken me out on the date or whatever it was the night before. He'd kissed me on the cheek right before he'd left.

Okay, even though it had been only a kiss on the cheek, it still kept me flushed for a while as I got up. Apparently, I had tried to get him off my mind last night by reading the Odyssey again, because the book went falling to the floor and closed. I sighed. There went my page number.

I took a short shower because halfway through, thunder shook the house. I knew being in the shower during lightning storms wasn't very smart, so I got out and pulled on some sweats and a baggy t-shirt.

As I came downstairs, it was around nine AM, and my dad was making waffles and toast. There were glasses of orange and cranberry juice on the counter. He grinned at me as I slid into a seat. "So, how was your date last night?"

He better be glad that I wasn't drinking anything, because I would've pulled a Percy if I had. "God, Dad, it wasn't a date."

"Where were all the other people?"

My brain failed to make a comeback.

He laughed, and I was sure that my cheeks were the color of the cranberry juice. "You know, your lying skills have really gotten bad. You could've just said they left and he made sure you got home. But now the truth is written all over your tired face."

I glared at him. "It wasn't a date."

"Whatever floats your boat, sweetheart."

I grumbled to myself as he slid a plate full of yummy food up to me. I immediately dug in and it all tasted great. My dad sat down next to me and started to eat too, and we didn't talk the entire time.

When I was on my last bit of waffle, thunder boomed so loudly that I dropped my fork in shock and let out a small yelp. Lightning flashed and the lights in the room flickered. The TV in the living room turned off and the fan slowed down. The clocks went off. We were put into darkness, our only light coming from outside.

I sighed. "When does your backup generator start working?"

Dad looked sheepish.

Oh, for the love of all that was holy. "Are you telling me that you have a multimillion dollar home and a crazy nice car and very successful construction and architectural company, but you have no generator at all?"

"Perhaps."

I shoved the last bit of my breakfast into my mouth and swallowed. "Okay, well… I might as well just start reading."

Dad got up and started searching a coat closest, and before I could even get up and go back to my room, he came back and set down a chess board in front of us. "So we never had a chance to play chess last night, so now that the power has gone out, we might as well play."

"What? I though you wanted to play checkers?"

"I decided to man up."

I was the white side and he was black. We began to play at the counter, and he actually could play. I wondered why he didn't want to. Chess was way more challenging and interesting than checkers. An idiot could play checkers. Chess was all about skill and forethought.

During high school, I had been one of the only people on the small chess team. Honestly, it just gave all the kids I knew another reason to bully me. They'd been doing so since I was a kid, but I always tried to ignore it. I got joy out of playing chess, especially since I was the best person on the team, but even my teammates made fun of me because of that.

I pushed the thoughts from my mind as we continued to play. "So, you and Percy Jackson," my dad ended up saying.

Why wouldn't he just leave the subject alone?

"He's a good kid. I've known him for a few years. I'm glad you're talking to him. He'll be good for you."

What the hell was that supposed to mean? He didn't bring it up again though.

I was surprised that within ten minutes of playing, my dad had already put me into check three times. "You're really good," I told him, moving my rook forward and putting him in check for the first time in the game. "Why don't you play?"

"I haven't played in a long time," he simply answered, and by his tone, I knew to drop the subject.

He probably had used to play all the time when he was with my mom. She was the one who had taught me how to play in the first place. Normally I would've annoyed him about it, but I didn't say anything. He went on to take my rook with his queen, and then I took his bishop with my queen. But by doing so, I opened up my queen for him to take.

"Bad move, Annie."

"You really haven't given me much of a choice." But it was all part of a set up so that I could call checkmate. I was trying my best to plan ahead.

"True." But he didn't take my queen. Instead, he slid it down the board so that it was in line with my king. And I bit back a curse. All of his pieces had been set up perfectly, and I had been too caught up in my own plans that I hadn't seen the opening. "Checkmate, dear."

"Screw you." Yeah, I said that to my father. Deal with it.

He laughed. "Well, there's only one thing to do in this kind of weather with no electricity."

"Rematch?"

"I was thinking the movies? I'll pay."

We barely made it to the car without getting drenched. My rain coat actually soaked through, proving the fact that I needed a new one. We took my dad's car and made sure that the top was up before leaving. I was glad that I wasn't in New York, because things could get crazy with this kind of weather, and not all people were the safest of drivers.

The movie theater wasn't as far away as I thought it was going to be. Dad was nice enough to drop me off right at the front of the theater so I wouldn't get too soaked. I stood next to the door and laughed as he had to run all the away from the back of the parking lot. A lot of people were at the theaters because there wasn't much to do when it was raining this much.

I looked through all the movies. Turbo, The Smurfs 2, and Planes were all for little kids and didn't draw my attention at all. There was 2 Guns, Grown Ups 2, and Red 2. Okay, I was so sick of Hollywood making stupid movie sequels. They were obviously just running out of ideas.

"How about We're the Millers?" Dad asked.

"You just want to see Jennifer Aniston as a stripper," I joked.

He gave me a knowing smile. Oh Lord…

I looked at the choices again. The Sea of Monsters looked really weird. It was all about a group of kids with mythological powers because they were demigods. They went on quests. But the weirdest part was that there was a guy named Percy and a girl named Annabeth. I wonder where the author had come up with those two names, because they weren't really that common. I'd never met another Annabeth and the first Percy that I had met was the one that I worked with. The one with the hottest body and perfect hair with dazzling green eyes…

I blinked. I was getting carried away.

"How about the Conjuring?" I asked.

"Yeah, that sounds good." He went up to the counter to buy the tickets and concessions, and I stood back, observing all of the posters. I nearly jumped out of my skin when someone tapped me on the shoulder.

I turned around. Of course it would be him.

Percy Jackson.

He was giving me the goofiest grin. Maybe I had thought about him too much and he had shown up.

"What are you doing here?" I asked, flipping my hair behind my shoulder. Percy stood there in a jacket, put he was covered in water. He was still wearing swim trunks. Did he ever take them off? Behind him was Connor, Travis, and Rachel, and when they saw me, they came closer, waving and nodding their hellos.

"What, no hello?"

I rolled my eyes. Or maybe he was a stalker. "Hello there, stranger."

"Hiya. So, what movie are you going to see?"

"The Conjuring."

"Oh, that's so weird. We were going to see that too."

"I thought we were going to go see the Wolverine," Rachel mumbled softly, so quietly that I might have heard her wrong. Percy shot her a look.

"Of course, the Smurfs looks pretty good," he admitted. My lip curled at the thought and he caught the venom in my gaze.

"What? You don't want to go see the Smurfs 2?"

I shivered. "Those little blue freaks are scary."

"Yet a horror movie is like a walk in the park? Your logic fails."

Shrugging, I turned away. My dad was watching from the other side of the movie theater with an amused expression. I resisted the urge to flip him off. "Well, my dad's waiting for me, so I gotta go."

"See you inside," he said, and I walked away.

That was really bad:( If you haven't seen the Conjuring, it actually isn't that scary. I saw it two weeks ago and it was pretty good. Reviews are, as always, loved.

-BBH