"So how was your day?" Brandy asked me as soon as we'd gotten in the car. I shrugged my shoulders and gave a short response.

"It was okay," I said, "How was yours?" Brandy thought for a moment before answering.

"I mean, errands are errands. It was pretty boring to be honest. I ended up just cutting it early so I could come pick you up. I was hoping we could hang out tonight. Y'know, have some of those bonding moments I read about in the parenting books," she said with a smile as she gave me a quick glance. To be truthful, the idea excited me. It wasn't that often I had the opportunity to spend quality time with anyone, but I was a little nervous at the same time. I still didn't really know Brandy that well. Sure she's nice, but I'd also only known her for about 48 hours at this point. There'd be no harm in giving it a go though.

"That sounds great!" I remarked, "What were you thinking of doing?" I was very curious as to what Brandy actually wanted to do together, but I'd be cool with pretty much anything.

"Well I was hoping we'd watch a movie and maybe play some board games if you're up to it," she answered. That sounded like a pretty good plan to me.

"I'm game," I said with a smile. We arrived at home and made our way inside, jumping into the evening itinerary almost immediately. Brandy walked me to a closet under the stairs where she had a shelf full of board games. When she opened the door I noticed that all of them were brand new and still had their plastic wrap. It was evident that none of these had ever been played before. Brandy seemed pretty excited, which made me happy and sad at the same time. She obviously hadn't done this with anyone in a long while.

"So what game do you want to play? Pick anyone you like," she said. I took a look at what was in stock. It was your basic assortment of family games: Monopoly, Risk, Sorry!, Uno, etc. Obviously I had to pick Monopoly. It still remains my favorite board game of all time, but I never got to play it very often. For how popular Monopoly is, everyone I knew seemed to despise it, or maybe they just didn't like playing it with me. I grabbed the game and held it out to Brandy.

"How about Monopoly?" I asked. She smiled and took it from me.

"Good choice! Monopoly used to be my favorite when I was a kid. Chilli hated it though because I always won," she said. I laughed at this and we walked back to the kitchen. Brandy went to make some tea, so I sat down at the table and started to set up the game. The benefit of setting up the game yourself is that you always get the first pick of the pieces. I of course chose the battleship.

"How do you like your tea?" Brandy asked me.

"Plain is fine," I said in response. She nodded and went back to what she was doing. In the meantime I passed out two stacks of money. A few minutes later Brandy came and sat down herself, placing a cup of tea in front of me.

"Thanks. Now, do you want to be the Banker or do you want me to do it?" I asked.

"You can do it if you'd like," she said. I grabbed the tray of money and set it on the table next to me while Brandy picked her piece, which ended up being the top hat. Then we started playing. She got to go first, but it wasn't a good turn for her. She landed straight on the Income Tax space, which made me laugh. The game continued as normal. Her strategy seemed to be acquiring the coveted dark blue spaces, Boardwalk and Park Place. Personally I viewed that as a blunder. They're very expensive squares, and they cost even more to upgrade. Additionally, it's pretty rare you land on them in the first place. In my opinion you're better off taking a couple of the other sets like red and orange. They're cheaper to upgrade and not landing on them is pretty difficult. In the late game you can absolutely bankrupt your opponent with this. Nearing the end of the game she had her two dark blue spaces with something like two houses on each. On the other hand I had my two full sets almost completely upgraded to hotels. Somehow she seemed to skip my spaces every time she passed by, whether it be free parking or community chest. She spared no opportunity to rub it in my face. Meanwhile, I was landing on one of her spaces almost every time I rounded the board. However, her luck had to run out eventually.

Finally she landed smack dab on one of my highest value spaces. It was gratifying taking back some of the money that I'd been robbed of, but the feeling didn't last long. She had finally upgraded her properties to hotels. I would surely go bankrupt if I happened upon one of those spaces. However, her position wasn't the best either. Those upgrades had left her cash poor. If she landed on one of my hotels she'd go bankrupt as well. Now it was a game of chance. Whoever landed on the other's property first would lose. The game continued in this state of stalemate for a little while, but I finally had another stroke of luck when I landed on the "Go Directly to Jail" space. In the late game going to jail was actually a great strategy because you can't land on someone's property if you're in jail. After two turns in the Jailhouse it finally happened. Brandy took an unlucky roll and landed on Illinois Avenue. She didn't even bother trying to mortgage. It was over.

"Yes!" I exclaimed as I jumped up from the table and did a little victory lap. Brady laughed and sighed,

"Alright! Alright! You won! Good game," she said. I finished my lap and took a seat back at the kitchen table.

"Yeah that was a lot of fun," I said as I started to clean up the game.

"Well, I think it's probably time for that movie," Brandy remarked as she glanced at the time on her phone. She stood up from the table and started towards the living room.

"Great. I'll join you as soon as I'm done cleaning this up." I finished packing up the game and placed it back in the closet under the stairs where we'd gotten it from. I then put my empty teacup into the dishwasher before going to the living room myself. The lights were off and Brandy was sitting cross legged on the black couch scrolling through movies on the T.V. She turned towards me as I entered the room.

"What do you want to watch?" She asked. I walked over and sat down on the couch next to her.

"Uh...You like Star Wars movies?" I inquired. I love Star Wars, probably a little too much.

"I haven't seen many, but that sounds good," she said as she scrolled over to the Star Wars movies and handed me the remote, "Pick out whichever one you want to see. I'm gonna go get some popcorn." I scrolled through the available films looking for one that peaked my interest. I'd seen pretty much all of the main films at some point, but I'd never seen the spin-offs. Eventually I decided onRogue One: A Star Wars Story.It seemed like a pretty interesting choice. The Death Star is just so cool, and this movie was practically all about it. I selected the movie and paused it while I waited for Brandy to come back, and I didn't have to wait long. Only a minute or so later she walked back into the room holding a bowl of popcorn.

"Alright let's get this show on the road!" she said as she sat back down next to me, placing the bowl between us. I unpaused the movie and we got to sit through 2 minutes of ads before it started. It was such a cool film. I was captivated by it pretty much the entire time, and Brandy seemed to be enjoying it as well. The ending was so good too. Those final scenes of the Scarif base destruction and Vader boarding the Rebel capital ship were incredible. Brandy's reaction was so funny to see. She was clutching her tail in her hands for the last 20 minutes or so of the movie. Anyway the movie ended and Brandy checked her phone again.

"Alright, I'm going to go get started on dinner," she said as she stood up and walked out of the living room with the empty popcorn bowl. I got up as well and went upstairs to my room. I sat down at my desk and pulled out the paper and pencil. This time I decided to try and do a drawing of the Death Star. I'd made a similar drawing previously, but this time I wanted to capture some more detail. I grabbed my MP3 player from the corner of the desk and started some music. I'd always worked better while listening to music anyway. I picked up the pencil and got to work on my masterpiece. I was careful with my lines. Probably the hardest part was just trying to draw a perfect circle, or as close to one as I could get. The sketch came together pretty nicely. I was able to add a good amount of detail to the circle, including the infamous trench. I decided to draw the Death Star as it was firing, which was a difficult effect to pull off in black and white. In the end I was pretty happy with it. I put it in the drawer with the drawing I'd made of Brandy the other day. Satisfied, I flopped onto my bed and layed there listening to my music while I thought about the night's events. It really meant a lot to me that Brandy wanted to spend time with me. I had a great time playing games and watching that movie with her, and I hoped we'd get to do more stuff like that. Maybe even with more of the family. Though it was only about 8PM or so, I was beat. However, that sleep would not come to me.

"Dinner!" Brandy called from downstairs.