200 reviews! Thank you to everyone who has reviewed!

By the way, I did not think of the "I'm Fang" thing. I read it somewhere, can't remember where.

Random Quote of the Week: "Fear is only in our minds, taking over all the time." from Evanescence's "Sweet Sacrifice"

Fang's POV

By the time I woke up, the sun had already risen. Max and I were in no rush to go anywhere today, so I took my sweet time getting up. Max was still lying down next to me sleeping soundly like always.

I continued to lie beside her, warming up both of our bodies. Since body temperatures decreased while sleeping, we could've both used a little extra heat. Contrary to what Max believed, I did get cold; I was just good at keeping it to myself. I experienced multiple long stretches of time locked outside of my house during the winter when I was younger, so I learned to adapt to chilly temperatures. On the other hand, the same thing happened during summer several times, and I ran at least 250 days a year, so I could handle heat as well. My parents' negligence turned out to be a blessing in disguise.

Max was way different than I was in this way. She had a higher heat threshold than I did, but got cold pretty easily. My jacket was practically hers now, given how much she used it. Every time I wore it again, the inside smelled like…well, Max. There wasn't really a word to describe it, but it smelled good. The scent was not at all like perfume, but it had a comforting twinge that made me feel warm.

Even though my black jacket went a lot better with my all-black outfit, it made Max look more beautiful and powerful. At first glance, she was not someone not to be messed with, with her facial structure and pointed glare, but in black? Her levels of badassness just skyrocketed.

Another thing I noticed about her was even though she was tough, Max blushed over the smallest things. Every time some said a comment that made her even slightly uncomfortable, her face immediately reddened. I actually found it kind of cute.

Suddenly, I felt a brush on my lip. I froze. I was quick, but I wasn't quick enough to stop what had just happened. I definitely deserved to be called a rolling ball of awkwardness.

You see, when I lay down, I was facing Max. I logically figured our chests gave off more heat, so we'd trap it better. All good, right?

While she slept, Max rolled over and ended up facing away from me. I subconsciously inched a bit closer while I slept, too. My head also found a nice pillow on a tuft of grass several inches closer to Max. At this point, we were about a foot apart, with my head being a little closer.

You can probably guess what happened next. After I was already awake, Max flipped back over and caught me by surprise. I would've been able to scoot out of her way, but I didn't notice her rolling. As her left side landed on the grass, her lips brushed mine.

Yeah.

I scrambled back and got to my feet, praying, praying Max was still asleep. My lips were tingling from our half-kiss (is that what it's called?) and my head was spinning. The contact only lasted for a split second, but I remembered every bit of it clearly. The remnants of the taste of Max's lips lingered on mine. I swallowed, trying to forget it all. This couldn't happen. It just couldn't. A romance between Max and I would never work, and neither of us wanted it. It just made no sense whatsoever to anyone but Ella, Nudge, and Angel. I would never let the gods of love snatch my best friend away from me.

When Max shifted, I saw her eyes were still closed. Thank God, I thought. I cursed fate for letting it happen. Why couldn't I see it coming sooner? Why did Max have to roll over at that exact moment? Why couldn't our noses have touched instead? That wouldn't have been too weird. I think.

My brain was still recovering from the short-circuit Max's lips gave it, so I stopped thinking. I lay down several feet from Max and closed my eyes, trying to forget what happened. I would've loved to say that I fell back asleep, snapped out of my daze, and this little incident turned out to be a dream.

No such luck. My brain, now on overdrive, wouldn't calm down. My mind rarely stopped, or even slowed down, but this was different. Normally, my brain generated too much for me to say, so I shut my mouth to avoid looking stupid. I wasn't the dark, angsty kid most people viewed me as. But this was not a normal occurrence. I didn't have too much to say, I had nothing to say. My brain was moving so fast, I couldn't pick out individual thoughts.

I suddenly realized how pathetic I was, again. Once again, Max had a crazy effect on me by doing something so simple. But this was worse. When our hands met, for instance, my brain simply sped up. That wasn't bad at all compared to completely freezing up and nearly spontaneously experiencing a heart attack. And that was just a brush of the lips. A full on kiss…I didn't even want to think about it.

I decided the best way to distract myself was food. I took out a can of rice, cut the lid off, and downed it in four scoops. I stuffed everything back inside my bag and sat down, carefully keeping my distance from Max. She looked at peace, as if nothing had happened.

After another hour or so, Max finally woke up. She stretched slowly, sat up, and faced me. When she looked at my eyes, she frowned.

"What's up?"

"Nothing."

"Something's wrong. And you were the one who was telling me I could share stuff with you?" she said, frowning. What the hell? How could she tell? Crap. How do I get out of this? I couldn't tell her about our accidental half-kiss, but I didn't want her thinking I was a distrusting hypocrite, either.

I forced a laugh. "You're kidding, right? Do you think I could put on a convincing show to you this early in the morning?" Another lie. I was definitely a morning person. Plus, it wasn't early at all. The sun was already up, and I'd been awake for nearly an hour.

She looked into my eyes again, looking for any signs of lying. Even though Max was good at picking out my true intentions, I blocked out my emotions and yielded nothing. Very, very few people could call my bluff when I put on my best poker face.

"Yeah, sorry," she said, really meaning it. I felt immensely guilty, but what else was I supposed to do? I picked my poison, and I thought I chose the right one. Still, it didn't stop my heart from cracking when Max looked up at me with her big brown eyes asking for breakfast.

After she ate breakfast, we walked back into the city. She mentioned something about a geology museum, and I figured it would be better than sitting around and reading depressing news. I didn't know anything about geology, and the only thing I could tell about rocks was how comfortable it was to sleep on them.

We reached the museum within fifteen minutes of light jogging. We passed the security guards and entered the building through a small tunnel. The narrow threshold opened up into a cavernous lobby. The ceiling had to have been at least thirty feet high, and the towering tendrils of rock in the center of the lobby looked small in the middle of such a spacious room.

"Where do you want to go?" Max said.

"I don't know, there?" I said, pointing down a corridor lined with black rock. Max shrugged and followed me around the lobby and to the hallway.

"Do you know what his black rock is called?" Max asked me.

"Nope. I don't know any geology."

"Really? That's just sad. Everyone knows this is obsidian."

"Ob-what-ian?"

"Ob-si-di-an," Max enunciated carefully.

"Oh," I said stupidly. "Did you take a geology course?"

"No, it's just common knowledge."

"How is knowing the long name of a random black rock common knowledge?"

"It's not some random rock. It's one of the most distinct and commonly used rocks in history."

"What could you possibly do with a hunk of this stuff?" I asked. Like, really. It looked uncomfortable to lie on, too heavy to throw, but maybe it could be used as a paperweight? It seemed pretty useless to me.

"You seriously don't know? Obsidian is one of the sharpest rocks there are. It's used for a bunch of cutting tools."

"Wait, you're saying this is sharp?" I asked, placing my hand on it. It felt glassy and smooth to the touch, and not sharp in the least.

"When you cut it or break it, you idiot. Do you really know that little about geology?"

"I mean, when in life would I need to know anything about this piece of useless garbage?"

"Okay, picture this. You need to cut something, and you have a chunk of obsidian and a dead twig. Knowing you, you'd probably choose the twig, but I'm going with the obsidian."

"Hey! Wait, how would a chunk of obsidian cut anything?"

"You're not serious, are you? Didn't I just say that you break it?"

"And how would you break it?"

"Chuck it at a harder rock."

"Oh," was all I could say. Note to self: don't try to argue with Max about something you know nothing about. It's a huge ego-bruising experience.

Looking through the rest of the exhibit was pretty boring. Everything looked the same. Everything was either a hunk of obsidian or an arrowhead. I had to give credit to the architects, though, because I felt pretty awesome just standing in that hallway. The walls, ceiling, and floor were all black. It reminded me of an aquarium, except this was ten times darker. The only lights in the entire hallway were the soft white lights illuminating the exhibits. Throw in all the black rocks, and I was pretty much in my element.

"Fang?" Max said, turning around. "Where'd you go?"

"I'm right here," I said, startling her. Her eyes widened as she jumped backwards.

"I didn't see you there. Don't scare me like that next time."

"What am I supposed to do, act like I'm invisible and ignore you?"

"Never mind. This place is a bit depressing, don't you think?"

"How is this depressing?"

"It's all-wait, never mind. You're emo, so you're used to black."

"Shut up. I'm not emo."

"Whatever. But seriously, why do you always wear black?" she asked.

I shrugged. "It's just my color. Goes well with my hair and eyes."

Max stifled a laugh. "So you do care about how you look?"

"Never denied it."

"But there are tons of people with dark hair. Most of them have heard of a new scientific development called color."

"I guess I'm not one of those people. I never said I was normal."

"True. Hey, do you wanna check out the limestone hallway?"

"Sure," I said, knowing better than to question her this time. We walked back to the lobby, where Max led me into the 'sedimentary rocks' section. I understood what that meant as much as I understood why chicken noises are referred to as cock-a-doodle-do, but I honestly didn't care. It wasn't like my life depended on whether I could classify rocks or not. Hell, I would've been satisfied with calling all rocks 'rock'. We walked into the limestone hallway, where the color immediately blinded me.

Not really, but you get the point. The bright whites and greens were a complete one-eighty from the obsidian hallway. I wanted to go back, but I didn't think Max would've enjoyed standing in a black room all day. We stayed in the limestone hallway for about an hour, and I learned quite a bit. Once I got over the fact that everything was white, or close to white, I looked around and read the signs. The most interesting fact I saw was that water could dissolve limestone. That led me to believe that this rock was just as useless as obsidian, but at least it could look cool while getting melted into oblivion. That counted for something.

The rest of the day passed by quickly. We walked around most of the museum, and I learned a bunch of random, useless facts. At around six, when the museum closed, we left and walked to the park. We sat down on a bench facing the lake and talked while we took in the beautiful scenery. A mild breeze rustled the trees, and made Max's hair float a little. Looking at Max's face without any distractions reminded me of our kiss this morning.

Oh, that. I should've known I could only forget about it for a few hours before it came back to me. Even though the whole situation sucked majorly, I was grateful Max didn't know about it. She had enough on her plate to deal with without me bringing up her mistakes while asleep. Was it weird that she pronounced her undying love and half-kissed me both while asleep? I mean, I wasn't her boyfriend or anything, but it would've been pretty pathetic if I was. A girl's sleeping hours aren't the best hours to get in on some action. Unless my eighteen years of life have lied to me, girls value their sleeping as much as their makeup.

How did I end up comparing sleep and makeup, again? Oh right, girls. They were the common theme between pretty much any two things in the world.

Anyway, we sat by the lake (me wishing Max wouldn't push me in again) well past sundown. The circle of lampposts skirting the edges of the park provided us with ample light to see the lake. Even though it was a new moon today, the lake tonight reminded me of the lake we slept by on our fourth day together.

After Max started to get tired, we traced our footsteps to the bushes we slept by yesterday. Max pulled out her diary as I lay down next to one of the rows of bushes. Even though I was asleep within several minutes, I still vaguely remembered feeling Max set her body next to mine after I drifted off.

Random Fact: The story in my Word document so far is exactly 45,678 words not including Author's Notes.

Question of the Chapter: OC ideas! I need a bunch of OC's for later in the story. They will not play main roles, but they will be an important part of the story.

Name:

Age (Must be 5-25):

Hair Color:

Eye Color:

Height:

Weight:

Personality:

Thank you! (:

-J