Life had been surprisingly good. Uneventful. Mellow. Just the way I liked it.

It was a rare 60 degree day in early November, and I was savoring every minute of it. Although the mountains were covered in snow, most of it in town had melted to reveal pale grass and dark rocks. I was sprawled on my stomach, flipping through The Illustrated Man, my latest find from Spencer, enjoying the peacefulness of the moment. A rare glimpse of the summer that had disappeared long ago.

I closed my eyes, drifting away through my thoughts. One of the biggest things on my mind now was college. Although application season was still a year away, I couldn't help but wonder where I would be in two years. I hadn't visited any schools yet and didn't have the faintest clue what I wanted to study. Business? No thanks. I couldn't get paid enough money to sit in a cubicle all day. Education? I don't think kids and I would be a good match. Patience is a virtue I never seemed to have acquired. Medicine? Too much work. Too much school. Too much pressure. Not to mention all the blood.

I tried sorting through a list of things I liked, things I was good at. Running. Hiking. Arguing. Reading, but only specific books and only those that Spencer provided. I tried going to the library with Ella once, and it was disastrous. Every book she picked was either some brazen hero saving her dystopian world from government corruption, or some sappy love story she referred to as "beach reads." Every book I picked up was either extremely long, unnecessarily boring or too complicated to understand.

"I thought I'd find you out here," a familiar voice said. I opened my eyes and glanced up, my mom was smiling down at me. "Who thought we'd ever see the day Maximum Martinez would be reading for pleasure."

I smirked. Times had most definitely changed. "It's interesting," I said, gesturing to the cover, "I've never actually enjoyed short stories before, but these are interesting. Nowhere near as good as Shawshank, but passable."

"You better not tell Spencer that you've deemed Ray Bradbury, one of the most iconic American writers, as 'passable.'"

I shrugged, "Its an acquired taste. I have high standards."

My mom just rolled her eyes, but I noticed her try to suppress a smile. Her eyes gave her away in the same way Ella's betrayed her emotions. "I was thinking that we should have a girls' day. Or activity. Or weekend. You and Ella have been so," she paused, obviously trying to only be mildly offense, "preoccupied with your boyfriends, that we've barely spent any time together. We could use some forced family fun."

I opened my mouth to protest, but she cut me off.

"I know, you've been busy with other things. Schoolwork, of course, is always my number one priority, but considering you're currently voluntarily reading, and alone for once, I figured you couldn't be that stressed."

"I'm not always with Fang," I grumbled, ripping a blade of grass from the ground.

She raised her eyebrows.

"It's not all the time," I insisted. "I'm not with him now." After the, incident (fiasco might be a better way to describe it) with Dylan, our relationship had gone very public, very quickly. Thankfully, our friends neglected from peppering us with dozens of questions and "told you so" moments right away, but I think it was mostly because they hadn't seen Fang in such a mood for a while. He stomped around at school, glared when anyone mentioned Dylan or Lissa, even with the faintest reference, and sat in a stony silence in the cafeteria for the following week. However, it had been six weeks, and he had gotten out of his funk, so Nudge had resumed her role as "trusted confidante." Essentially, she just wanted all the tea on our secret relationship, and neither of us obliged.

"Quite the compelling argument." She paused again. "Well, Ella's inside baking, so I figured I better capitalize on the moment."

I scooped up my book, and watched as I blew at a dandelion, the delicate seeds floating with the wind over the ledge and into the field below. I guess the environment was pretty cool. And climate change sucks. I had done a presentation on corporation pollution in a biology class, and it was horrifying. Huge companies just leaked toxic chemicals into the atmosphere, the ocean, wherever it was convenient without any regard to the damage they caused to the wildlife. Maybe I could look into environmental science as a potential career path. Or something educational like that.

"So, what's our forced family fun exercise for today?" I asked.

"You didn't say we were exercising," Ella groaned with a pained look at my mom.

"I meant activity. Like an event. But some exercise wouldn't kill you, El."

"I'll have you know I was just watching You, and my heart rate was elevated the whole time. That's sufficient cardiac output for the day."

"You realize that if you don't have anymore cardiac output for the day, you'll die right?" I asked, smirking. Ella just rolled her eyes.

"As I was saying," my mom said, and I could here the forced patience in her voice, "we should spend some quality time together since you too have been elsewhere lately."

Ella opened her mouth to protest, but then seemed to have thought differently and closed it again. That was the big difference between us. She knew when it was worth responding and when it was worth just ignoring the bait and moving on. "We could go shopping," she suggested. "Ooh, we could go into Boulder to shop!"

I feigned vomiting into my open bag of pretzels. "I thought this was supposed to be forced family fun," I said, stressing the last word. "As in fun for all."

My mom wisely chose to ignore this, "We could get mani-pedis at the new salon. We could play tennis at the park."

Ella laughed, "When have we ever played tennis, mom? We don't even own rackets."

"It was just a suggestion," she responded, but she was also laughing at the idea of us trying to maintain a rally across the net. The more likely scenario involved me smashing my tennis racket while Ella tried to get cute pictures and my mom hopelessly attempted to volley with the neighboring court. "Thoughts? Otherwise, you're going to get stuck cleaning the house with me."

"We could go on a hike," I tried on a whim.

"Veto," Ella immediately said. "Ooh, how about we do a cooking class?"

My mom raised her eyebrows. "That's an idea. I would love some tips and new fun recipes."

"Iggy told me I was never allowed to enter a kitchen again," I said pointedly. When I had tried to help with dinner last school year, I nearly caught his kitchen on fire, which is his claim to fame. He does have a certain proclivity for pyrotechnics.

"You'll be well supervised, Max. Besides, they just put this place up in town where you can take group cooking lessons. It looks so cute; there's a bright orange awning over the entrance and the windows have little flower boxes underneath."

Ah yes, because orange awnings and flower boxes determined where I liked to get my food. But, it seemed as though I was outnumbered. Besides, cooking would be a useful skill to eventually learn.

A few hours later, we were in a spacious room with large counters and an abundance of overhead lighting. Ella had selected a lesson on homemade pizzas where they walked you through making the dough, sauce, toppings and then sliding it into their wood burning oven.

By some act of God, I had managed to finish not only the dough, but also the sauce without catching anything on fire. When I pointed this out to my family, they were unimpressed primarily because the dough required minimal ingredients, none of which used any heating devices. They gave me slightly more credit for the sauce, but considering we just let it simmer after measuring and mixing all the ingredients, they offered minimal congratulations. Meanwhile, I was shocked. I had never cooked so much as toast without completely burning it.

While the sauce was simmering and the dough was rising, our teacher announced we were going to make the dessert: Devil's Food chocolate cake. Pizza and chocolate cake, this forced family fun was something I could maybe get behind.

However, it turns out my cooking luck was very short-lived. Following the directions and trying to imitate Casey the Cook, I plugged in my hand mixer to combine my dry and wet ingredients. Turns out the button to change the speed is super touchy. So instead of level two, I was on level six, and the flour had exploded into the air around me. Caked in white powder, I grimaced and looked into my batter. At least it was somewhat mixed.

Ella and my mom didn't even try to hide their laughter, while Casey and a few of the other groups tried to appear impassive. Casey the Cook offered me a damp cloth and offered to finish the mixing step for me. The flour was caked into my eyebrows and my hairline, and after several attempts, I gave up trying to scrape it off.

In one of the final steps, I was adding in my vanilla when I realized I had just poured a tablespoon of vanilla into the mix instead of the recommended teaspoon. Oops. Rather than embarrass myself, again, for Casey the Cook and co., I just added in some more salt. Salt and vanilla seemed to be relative opposite flavors to me, so I figured they would balance each other out. Turns out that wasn't a great prediction, but at least the cake turned out to be edible.

Once the dough was ready to be rolled out, we got to select our toppings. Naturally, I gravitated away from the vegetables and right to all the different types of cheese. Fresh mozzarella, not-fresh mozzarella, some parmesan Reggiano, some ricotta. I even grabbed some gouda for kicks just because it sounded fancy. I crumbled up some bacon and sprinkled it over my very lovely five-cheese pizza.

I turned to observe my tablemates. Ella's pizza was covered in large chunks of fresh mozzarella and a few cherry tomatoes. How basic. My mom decorated her perfectly rolled pizza with prosciutto and arugula before topping it off with a balsamic glaze.

"Don't you want some veggies, Max?" she asked after spreading the finishing touches of her glaze.

Hm. I browsed the ingredients. Mushrooms? No. Onions? No. Spinach? No, thanks. This is pizza, not a salad. I settled on two basil leaves which I added with a flourish on top. Then I tossed some pepperoni on for good measure.

My mom rolled her eyes and Ella eyed my bacon with an expression of between revulsion and intrigue.

"So," I asked, as we waited for the pizzas and cakes to cook, "how's Iggy? Do I need to beat him up anytime soon?"

Ella blushed but looked very pleased all the same. "Not yet. We're hanging out tonight though. If that's okay?" She added in a rushed tone.

My mom nodded, "What have you planned?"

She shrugged, "Nothing exciting. I think we're just going to watch a movie. Maybe play some games with Gazzy."

"Any double date plans?" my mom asked looking between us. "It's the first time you're both dating at the same time."

"Going to school counts as my double date," I muttered, and my mom just looked at me before rolling her eyes. Sure, Iggy was one of my best friends, not to mention one of Fang's best friends from childhood but seeing him and my sister exchange in romantic conversation and excessive compliments sounded like one of the last things I wanted to do.

My mom muttered something that I didn't catch, but Ella smirked. "What are you up to tonight, Max?"

I shrugged like Ella. "Probably see Fang." Most definitely see Fang. Our relationship had been relatively smooth, and I had just as nice a time sitting in his basement hanging out than I did on a fancy date. Maybe even a better time considering it was free and did not require uncomfortable shoes. "We'll probably just hang out too. Fancy dates are overrated."

Finally, our pizzas were brought out of the wood burning oven, and I dove in. The pizza made up for my mishaps with the cake. The cheese had browned slightly, the curst was thin and crunchy, and my two basil leaves had shriveled up into the middle of the pizza. Feeling satisfied with both the outcome and effort of the pizza, I grinned over at Ella and my mom.

We wrapped up their leftover cakes, mine was too salty from my attempts at balance to bring home, and then walked back home, enjoying the remaining sunlight and the rare warmth.

Shortly after we returned home, I changed out of my flour-encrusted clothes and walked over to Fang's house.

"Hi," I said brightly when the door swung open.

"What's in your hair?" he asked. "And your eyebrows?"

Oops. I recounted my tale of attempting to bake, and succeeding to cook, to explain the coated powder. He smirked, undoubtedly picturing me holding an aggressive hand mixer with flour everywhere. Not one of my most graceful moments.

Angel was playing a game with his parents, so we headed downstairs. Fang sat down on the leather couch, and I made myself comfortable next to him, resting my head on his shoulder. "Your shoulder is bony," I muttered, and he just rolled his eyes, but I saw the corners of his mouth twitch, and he tried to readjust himself.

He clicked through the channels, until finally we came across Star Wars. We had finished the trilogy, and then the second trilogy, long ago early in our friendship, but Fang clicked it on, enjoying his favorite movie. I had finally moved past my qualms with Chewbacca and was able to thoroughly enjoy the movies. Fang's arm had reached up from my shoulder and began stroking my hair absent-mindedly. I closed my eyes and smiled, feeling content and safe. A peaceful ending to a peaceful day. For once, it seemed that things were truly going my way.

So so beyond sorry for the longest gap before that last chapter. I apologize the ending was rushed and sounded unfinished to me, but I just wanted to get some new content out there. This chapter is a little different, and I wanted to add in some development for Max outside of her relationship/friendship with Fang. Please, please review and let me know if I should keep going with this story. I've had lots of ideas, but they're all over the place and I don't have a coherent, concrete path in mind for the plot. Also, please let me know your thoughts on chapter length! A lot of these chapters have been super long and could likely have been split into 2+ chapters. I'm happy to oblige to whatever people prefer. Any and all thoughts are soo appreciated to help me keeping moving with the story. Happy quarantining.