Chapter Text
“Casey! Casey, breathe!” she vaguely registers Holly’s frantic voice, concerned face and fingertips digging into her forearms through the blur of tears, and the deafening sound of her own ragged breathing.
She knows this is probably a panic attack, and god, they are scarier when drunk.
“I can’t, I can’t. I fucked up my entire life, I ruined everything!” Casey sobs. She’s not one for swearing, she usually scrunches up her nose in distaste whenever someone else does, but apparently alcohol and her current state of helplessness are enough to bring it out of her.
“Honey, no, everything is fine. You’re okay, listen to my voice, okay? Try looking me in the eyes. There, good, breathe with me. There you go, in and out, good.”
Casey doesn’t really know why this is working, she can’t rationalize anything, but she stares into Holly’s warm brown eyes and copies the other girl’s breathing.
“I… ruined… my life,” she chokes out.
“Okay Casey, listen. Nothing is ruined, you can’t prove it yet!” Holly says.
Casey looks at her confusedly, breathing still labored but somewhat calmer.
“See, you strike me as the kind of girl that likes to go with the facts, so just… State the facts to me, and then we’ll figure out if anything’s too broken, yeah?”
“T-the facts?”
“Yes. Tell me everything that happened and we’ll go from there. Come on, you can trust me, we live together after all.”
The cold night air is freezing Casey’s tear stained cheeks, but Holly’s hands are a welcomed source of warmth. She stares at her roommate’s face for a few moments and then takes a deep breath…
---
Casey McDonald’s first year of college is not going as planned. And see, she has always been a plan-your-whole-life kind of girl. Sure, she’d had to wing it a few times, but she had remained somewhat on track throughout high school, even in a hostile environment.
She had a series of ideas and plans on how her life should look like right now. And somehow, she’d managed to fuck up every single one of them.
Not on her own, though.
Casey had come to terms with the fact that she wasn’t perfect (not even close). She’d been well knocked off her high horse and was forced to grovel in the dirt at a new house, with a new family, and had to fight her way to the top.
She had found a new normal in London, away from her ideal life in Toronto. She’d come to love her friends and her new blended family; she even became quite fond of Derek, having finally reached a dynamic in which both their egos and competitive nature could coexist (sort of) under the same roof.
So finally life was good again, she had excellent grades and friends, a scholarship for a great university, and even a boyfriend. Not exactly a good one by any of the standards she had set up for herself so long ago, but a necessary one.
She doesn’t know why she thought she needed Truman in the first place. She just knows that in the midst of all the shit that was going on, she needed someone to be there and take her mind off things. She thinks it could have probably been anyone, because she knows she’s not particularly fond of Truman anyway. And that is maybe a horrible thing to think, and totally not something she would have normally done, but she hasn’t really been herself for a while now.
Casey’s not exactly sure when everything started going to shit. She just knows one second she’s happy, or maybe content. She knows she has friends, and family and a future. She knows she can dance with Derek in front of all of Canada, and help him study so he can graduate high school, and maybe even hold onto his gaze for a little too long, or close her eyes and let herself feel the butterflies for just a second before moving on with her day.
And she knows the next second, her mother is pregnant, Derek’s dating Emily, she’s dating Truman, and she’s standing in a dimly lit kitchen, saying something stupid, watching deep brown eyes frown at her in disappointment.
It was meant to be an innocent conversation, with no heavy meaning behind it. But it didn’t feel like that. It felt loaded with something neither of them had acknowledged before. She saw it in Derek’s eyes when he agreed with her. It was a look of acceptance. You’re calling the shots.
“Derek, you’re the most annoying brother – “
“Step-brother.”
Well, yes. He was not her brother, never had been. Casey thinks she had maybe grown to see him as a part of her family. They live together, they share siblings and parental figures, but she never saw him as a brother. She kind of thinks of it like this: your spouse is your family, but they are not a brother or a sister or a cousin or a son or a daughter. She’s not saying she sees Derek as a spouse or a partner either, just part of her family, in a non familial way.
She’d noticed some changes in their relationship. Looks that lasted too long, touches that lingered, a longing inside of her growing stronger. She didn’t let herself wonder what could be, what it would be like to explore it. She just knew that now it seemed wrong, worse than before.
Her mother was pregnant; they were going to share a flesh and blood sibling. And suddenly every little neglected fantasy seemed to be in a box inside her heart that she had to lock with heavy chains and throw into a volcano.
So –
“Same difference.”
And it felt like such bullshit. She had almost wanted Derek to laugh at her. She has never been a good liar, that’s his thing. But it seemed she had gotten better at it, because Derek just stared at her, with this sad, thoughtful look in his eyes, and said, in a deep voice that cracked her heart, “Yeah. You’re right.”
If before that conversation things hadn’t really started going to hell, she thinks they were positively going to hell now.
Derek started avoiding her like the plague. He pretended everything was normal when there were other people around, but he didn’t engage completely in their arguments, and he didn’t really look her in the eye. She noticed he avoided ending up alone in a room with her, bolting out of sight any time it happened without even bothering to make up an excuse.
So she occupied her summer with preparing for college, hanging out with Emily (sharing her with Derek) and going out with Truman.
Truman is another thing she’s not sure how it happens. It wasn’t supposed to last. She had only agreed to go to prom with him as a favor to Emily and Derek, and even though she took him back, the moment she got home she felt like she had made a mistake.
Whatever feelings she had once harbored towards Truman were almost completely obliterated the moment he cheated on her with Vicky. She figures she was at prom, he looked handsome and was treating her sweetly, and Derek was dancing with Emily, and she just… took him back, without really thinking it through.
So her resolve was to break up with Truman, tell him she thought he was a great guy (not really, but that’s how she is, she is nice), but that she just wasn’t feeling a connection anymore.
But then her mother announced she was pregnant and suddenly, she couldn’t bring herself to break up with him. She can’t explain why. Casey was truly happy about the baby, but a little, quiet part of her she refuses to acknowledge felt slightly… cheated. Like her mom was taking advantage of the situation. Casey had agreed to a marriage and moving all her life to London already, and now a new baby? A baby sibling that she had to actually share with Derek?
Those thoughts were so horrible and made her so sick with guilt that she buried them deep with the other ugly parts of herself that she keeps hidden, like her unruly fantasies, and her insecurities, and her abandonment and daddy issues. And to keep that resentment at bay, she needed a distraction. And that’s something Truman was actually good for.
So that’s how her summer went, with Derek ignoring her, dating Truman and helping her mother around the house when her pregnancy sickness was worse.
One afternoon, she was watching movies with Emily. They both had plans for the night, Casey with Truman and Emily with Derek. At some point between ‘The Notebook’ (and she honest to god cannot remember the movie that came after that), Emily turned to her.
“Case. I need to tell you something.”
“What’s wrong?”
“No, nothing’s wrong I just…” Emily chewed on her bottom lip, “I think I want to… do it with Derek. Tonight.”
It felt like she was hearing Emily from underwater, the words sounded estranged and far away, but each one of them still managed to nail itself into Casey’s brain. Casey knows she’s a terrible liar. She’s learned from Derek, actually, that when you hear something upsetting, but you don’t want to let the other person know how it really makes you feel, you have to say as little as possible. She knew her face was probably betraying her, but she still tried to stick to monosyllables.
“Oh?”
Emily blushed, but smiled. “Yeah, I really trust him, and he’s so sweet with me, and I feel like I really want to do it.” Casey thought she was doing a good job controlling her face, but then Emily asked, “What do you think?”
Oh god why, why me? Casey thought of an appropriate response, but all she could come up with was –
“I mean, if that’s what you really want to do, I can’t stop you.”
She didn’t mean for it to sound so bitchy. She knew it sounded like she was discrediting Derek as someone trustworthy to lose your virginity to, which is not what she thinks at all; she had seen him with Sally and Kendra and she knows he can be sweet and caring. But it was how it sounded anyway, and she could see Emily’s face close off.
“Gee, thanks for the support, Case.” she said sarcastically, getting up from her seat.
Immediately feeling guilty, Casey grabbed her hand. “No, no Em. I’m sorry, you know I support you,” she said in a caring voice, even though it felt like her insides were wrenching. “It’s just that it’s Derek, so it’s a little weird for me.”
Emily sighed, “If you say so.”
Emily had felt the rift between Casey and Derek too. They hardly hanged out in a group of three, just when Sam and Ralph were around to use as an awkwardness buffer, so Emily had had to split herself in two to spend enough time with both of them.
So Emily went on her date with Derek and Casey went on her date with Truman, her head filled up with restless and uncomfortable thoughts.
And as it turns out, by the next day Derek and Emily were broken up, and Casey was no longer a virgin.
She doesn’t know why she did it. She’s not sure how much that conversation with Emily had influenced in her decision of doing it, but she knows it played some part in it. She knows that it was also the illusion of impending adulthood and independence. This is what big girls do, you’re a woman, you’re eighteen and you’re going to University.
It wasn’t horrible, but it wasn’t great either. It just wasn’t really anything. She didn’t feel completed or more grown up or womanly. She just felt… empty, like she had done something wrong. Truman had reassured her that she was perfect, and although she had always loved praise, for some reason Truman’s opinion didn’t hold any real meaning to her. Sex with Truman didn’t hold any meaning to her.
Casey has always been a go big or go home kind of girl. So she did it again, and again with the intention of getting it right, and if Truman’s enthusiasm was anything to go by, she figured she was good at it. But it still didn’t do anything for her. She didn’t feel more of a woman, or more fulfilled. She felt emptier, and in desperate need for filling.
And all that sex was probably the only reason Truman didn’t break up with her over the summer in the first place. And Casey doesn’t want to admit that losing her virginity to him was the only reason she hadn’t broken up with him. But really, it felt like she had given him something sacred and irreplaceable, so even though she knew she didn’t hold any feelings for him, Casey still couldn’t bring herself to break up with him.
So summer ended, and they went to Queen’s and she was still with Truman, and Derek was still acting weird around her. Emily didn’t want to talk about their break up, and Casey didn’t want to ask Derek about it. The official story is that they didn’t want to do long distance and it was better to end it in good terms.
They got to Derek’s dorm first – he’s lucky and got a single dorm (of course he did). Her mom and George were there to help move all his stuff in, and then the four of them went to Casey’s. Her roommate, Holly, hadn’t arrived yet.
She was settled in, and their parents left and suddenly it was just her and Derek standing in her dorm, in Kingston, away from London, away from everything.
They locked eyes and his looked kind of like they had that night in the kitchen, and she was about to ask him if he wanted to hang around for a bit, when she remembered –
‘You’re the most annoying brother – “
‘Step-brother.’
‘Same difference.’
So instead, she said –
“Well, I guess this is it.”
Derek searched her face for a second; it felt weird, like he was looking at her for the last time.
“See you around, Spacey.”
Except she doesn’t see him around. He doesn’t come to see her and she doesn’t go to see him. They don’t call, they don’t text, and suddenly it’s been two months and her life is Derekless. She thought it was going to be a relief, to get away from him, from his pranks and his recklessness and her own weird feelings, but it hasn’t been.
She actually misses all her family, a terrible lot. She misses London, and high school, and having her life under control.
Casey likes control. Sometimes, when she’s in the brink of insanity (people tell her she’s always dancing there on the edge), she takes comfort in knowing that control is all she has. She organizes her whole life, she always has. But since the moment she stepped foot in university, and Derek vanished, and the homesickness started to consume her, the less she has is control.
It started slowly; she couldn’t bring herself to study one afternoon. It was very weird, she was sitting at her desk in her room, and she just couldn’t open her textbook. She felt like she wanted to, she had to, but she just couldn’t. Hours ticked by and she hadn’t gotten any work done. So she just figured she was tired or something, and decided to go to sleep instead.
It only went downhill from there. She couldn’t concentrate on her classes and she couldn’t bring herself to study. Her grades started to flop, and so did her interest to get up to go to class.
She hasn’t made any friends. She talks to some people in her classes, but her heart isn’t in it. Her roommate, Holly, tried to convince her to go out with her a couple of times. But Casey doesn’t really like her. It’s not that she’s a bad person or anything; Casey just doesn’t think that their personalities match. Holly is upbeat and bubbly like Casey is (or like she used to be). But she’s also kind of ditzy and very messy, and Casey hates messes, and she doesn’t think she can handle her right now.
Her family calls her on the weekends, and she sometimes tries to tell her mom that something’s wrong with her. But then she hears all the noise coming from her mother’s end of the line, the ruckus that is always happening in the McDonald-Venturi household, and Casey thinks ‘maybe some other time’.
She thinks maybe she just wants to switch her major. Ever since she was a little kid, she had wanted to be a lawyer like her daddy, but it doesn’t seem to be working out for her. Then again, it’s the only plan she has left to hold on to, so she doesn’t know what to do.
She talks a lot to Emily, who is really happy and thriving at UoT. Casey finds that she’s a really good liar over the phone actually, so she tells her she’s happy too.
Truman called her too, sometimes. Their calls weren’t usually long and Casey really didn’t feel like talking to him. She knows they were neglecting each other, that their relationship was a joke at this point. And so that’s how Casey gets to this Friday, her life a complete and utter wreck; her grades a mess, her social life a mess, herself a mess.
Truman calls and he breaks up with her. And okay, if she’s being honest it doesn’t really hurt (it doesn’t really matter), but she just feels like the ground is going to swallow her whole. So when Holly invites her to go out with her, she says yes.
They go down to a very popular bar just outside campus named Tino’s, and Casey gets drunk for the first time in her life. Holly is actually pretty fun and crazy, like no girl she has ever hanged out with.
She meets a boy named Anthony. He’s very handsome – tall, with a mop of curly black hair and the greenest eyes she has ever seen. They flirt, and she feels very pretty and very free. He makes her laugh and actually, his witty sense of humor reminds her a little bit of Derek. He tells her that this is his last night in town and he’s transferring out of Queen’s, and she knows she’s never going to see him again and she thinks, perfect.
They make out heavily, and their chemistry feels like it’s cackling with electricity. They end up in the bathroom, Casey sitting on top of the sink with her legs wrapped around him, and suddenly she really wants this.
“Do you have a condom?” she gasps, breathlessly.
Anthony looks at her like she’s a gift from the divine, and she feels very powerful. “Yeah.”
So Casey has sex with a stranger in a bar bathroom.
It’s fun, and fast, and messy, and she laughs a lot. She even comes. The night ends and Anthony leaves, kissing her on the cheek sweetly. Holly winks at her.
“Wow, I really didn’t take you for the kind of girl who would do that.”
And there it is, like a bucket full of ice water being dropped on her head, a feeling of unease and remorse crawling up her back. What have I done?
---
So that’s how she ends up here, having a panic attack on a sidewalk, totally drunk and telling her roommate a condensed version of her down-path into insanity.
“O-okay,” Holly says, “Well, I can’t say I didn’t really notice you were having a rough time, I tried to get you to go out with me so I could cheer you up, and I’m sorry it made it worse, but I’m glad you’re actually telling me about all of this.”
Casey wipes her hands under her eyes, “I just feel like I just finished d-destroying who I was. This is not m-me at all.”
Holly tugs on her arm until they’re both sitting on the sidewalk, and she turns to look at her. “But you’re still you; you’ve just been in a funk.”
Casey shakes her head, “I ruined my life.”
“Come on, how old are you? Eighteen? You didn’t ruin anything. You just hit rock bottom my friend, and that is a good thing, because you can only go up from there.”
Casey frowns. That sounds familiar; she thinks she maybe heard it from a movie she watched with Marti.
“Are you quoting something?”
“Okay, I may have heard it from the Hannah Montana movie, but it’s a real thing.”
Casey laughs, and Holly blushes a little, and Casey can feel the hand clutching her heart start to loosen its grip.
“No, but I mean it,” Holly presses on, “It’s only been two months, you can still save the semester.”
But there is another thing Casey can’t get out of her head. “I had sex with a stranger. I can’t deal with that.”
“Why is it so bad?”
“Because it’s not who I am!” Casey shrieks, “I was supposed to lose my virginity to a man I love, not to Truman! S-sex is supposed to be special and I’m having it with strangers, I feel like I gave up something I can’t ever get back!”
Holly rubs soothing circles on Casey’s back, “Okay, let’s get the important things down. Did you use a condom?”
“Yes.”
“Was it bad?”
“N-no, I enjoyed it, but I f-feel terrible now.”
Holly hugs her and Casey lets herself fall against her. She feels comforted, like when her mom or Emily hold her when she’s feeling down. Casey buries her face in her roommate’s blonde hair and cries a little more.
“Honey, it was just an experience. You did it, it’s done. You can’t change that. You were safe and that’s what matters. It doesn’t change who you are. You didn’t lose any part of yourself. You’re whole and safe and healthy. It was just an experience, and you don’t ever have to do it again, it’s your life, and your body, and your choice.”
Holly pulls away to look at her, “It’s your life and your decisions Casey, you can do whatever you want with it. You can choose to never have sex again, or you can wait for the right guy... Or girl.” Holly winks at her and Casey lets out a watery chuckle. “I promise that when the right person comes, whatever you do with them will be special, and won’t have anything to do with what you did in the past.”
Casey looks at her, this girl who doesn’t know her all that well, but is still being kind and supportive. Her words feel full of everything Casey’s been needing to hear for months.
“I t-think you’re right.”
Her roommate laughs, “If only my mom could hear you now.” Holly takes her hands, “Casey. It’s only been two months; you can still pull you grades out of the gutter. I know some friends that do study plans or whatever, maybe they can help you.”
It’s like a fire ignites inside Casey when the words ‘study plans’ register in her brain. Suddenly, the next days and weeks and exam dates are laid in front of her in her mind’s eye, and she can see how to fit every subject in a schedule. It’s going to be a hell of a lot of work. She can feel the familiar thrill of excitement that the challenge brings her.
Holly pulls her out of her thoughts, “And, it sucks that your best friend dated your ex boyfriend, but I really think you need some kind of closure from him,” she says, nodding sympathetically.
Casey stares at her dumbly, “Derek and I didn’t go out, he is my step-brother.”
“What?” Holly looks supremely confused, a look she sports a lot of the time, and a total contrast to the wisdom guru she had been just a few moments before. “Wait. I totally got everything wrong from that story.”
Casey sighs and gets up wobbly from the sidewalk, offering her hand to help Holly to her feet, “Thank you, Holly. I needed that. Let’s just go home and sleep.”
And she feels that spark growing inside of her, and she feels more like herself than she has felt in months. Because getting her shit together is going to be a hell of a challenge.
And there hasn’t ever been a challenge Casey McDonald has backed down from.
---
Casey wakes up at 9 am on Saturday with a raging hangover. She ignores her pulsing headache and bolts out of bed. She grabs paper and colorful markers and starts doing a study plan. There’s two weeks before exams. She has to find a way to fit two months of studying into two weeks.
Holly comes into her room at 12 am with two steaming mugs, “Why are you laughing maniacally?”
Casey points proudly to the floor, all covered in stacks of papers, textbooks and highlighters. “I’m getting my shit together!”
“You don’t look much put together right now.”
Casey waves her hand dismissively, “Oh believe me, this is me at my best.”
And that’s how it goes; she spends the next two weeks holed up in her room and the library studying, with Holly keeping her company.
Casey gets to know Holly better. She’s a very peculiar person. It takes her some time to figure out who she reminds her of, but then she gets it and it’s like a breakthrough. Holly is a female mix of Ralph and Sheldon Schlepper. She’s kind of absent minded and ditzy for a lot of things, but she’s immensely wise, sensitive, and reliable. She’s also the most oblivious person in the world, and lacks a filter when it comes to say the first thing in her mind.
Casey grows to love her very quickly, and she marvels at the difference between how she felt a month ago and how she feels now.
She passes her exams with decent grades, not really all that great, but impressive considering the little time she had to study.
Casey is gushing to Holly about how proud she is of herself when her roommate asks her, out of nowhere, “Hey, what about that guy, Derek?”
Casey halts on her rant, and looks at her uneasily, “What about him?”
“Why aren’t you seeing him? Isn’t he here at Queen’s?”
“Yeah, but… We haven’t really seen each other.”
“Don’t you want to see him?”
Casey chews on her bottom lip, “It’s complicated.”
She does want to see him, but she doesn’t know how he would react if she just dropped by unannounced. She doesn’t even know if Derek would want to see her.
Holly sighs, “Look girl, I just know you were miserable without him. If someone makes you happy, maybe you should keep them in your life.”
---
Casey ponders it the next few days. It’s not like she doesn’t know anything about Derek. She didn’t let her mother know she wasn’t actually seeing him, but she still managed to direct their conversations towards her step-brother in hopes that she would find out something about how he’s doing. She just knows he is in the hockey team and has practice twice a week, that he still hasn’t been expelled or arrested, and that he’s most definitely alive and talking to the family.
She’s in a coffee shop she likes a lot, and there’s a hockey match playing on the TV and she can’t stop thinking about him. She remembers where his dorm is. She could just drop by briefly. But what would she say? Her feet are already carrying her towards his apartment, and she’s still debating whether it’s a good idea or not.
She’s in front of his door. There’s still time to back out.
She knocks on the door. Maybe he isn’t home.
The door opens, and there’s Derek.
She hasn’t seen him in two and a half months, and he looks the same, but somehow seeing him in her new state of mind kicks her in the chest, and she has to catch her breath for a moment.
“Casey?” he looks startled. There is no annoyance or gladness on his face, just plain surprise.
“Hey, D.” She says, slightly breathless.
His eyes search her face, and she lets hers do the same, feeling weird and caught up in the moment, as if Derek had opened the door to another dimension. Upon this closer inspection, she realizes that there are bags under his eyes, much like hers, and his normally cocky and upbeat persona looks kind of dulled.
“What are you doing here?”
While she looks for an appropriate answer to that question, her eyes settle on the inside of his dorm over his shoulder. She gasps.
“De-rek! Look at this dump.” Casey shoves her way inside the apartment, ignoring Derek’s protests and looking around.
Derek’s room back in London had always been messy, but this place looks like a dirty tornado torn everything up. There are clothes thrown haphazardly across the tiny living room area, dirty plates, glasses and coffee cups stacked on top of the coffee table, dust on the floor, and the room honestly smells.
She looks back at him, horrified. “How do you live like this!?”
Derek rolls his eyes and looks up at the ceiling, “Sorry, didn’t have much time to clean up in the short notice you didn’t give me when you didn’t call ahead.”
Casey sets her hands on her hips, nodding determinedly. “We’re cleaning this place up.”
Derek’s eyes snap back to her, “Oh, I don’t think so. In fact, feel free to leave any time now.”
His tone is threatening enough, but she doesn’t miss the way his entire demeanor seems to light up in the way it always does when he is gearing up for one of their fights. She feels the anticipation grow inside of her too.
Casey raises her eyebrows challengingly, “Wanna bet?”
Five minutes later, Casey is cleaning up Derek’s living room while he lounges lazily on the sofa, the TV playing the same hockey game that was on in the coffee shop. Casey complains loudly the whole time, pointing out how disgusting he is, and Derek laughs at her and tells her to leave him alone already, but she can feel his eyes following her every move. She finds herself constantly sneaking glances back at him too, taking him in, for the first time in months.
Their gazes cross paths and she can’t help the genuine smile that appears on her face. Derek smirks back. Her heartbeat picks up joyfully, and she sighs and goes back to her task of turning Derek’s dorm back into habitable conditions.
She thinks of Holly’s words: ‘if someone makes you happy, maybe you should keep them in your life’. She doesn’t know if Derek makes her happy.
She just knows that he makes her feel like herself.
---
Two days later there’s a knock at her door and there’s Derek. He’s holding two coffee cups and has his backpack slung over his shoulder.
“I’m about to fail Cinematography Theory.”
She grabs one of the cups, “Come in.”
“Is Holly in?” He asks, wiggling his eyebrows suggestively.
They make their way into her room, and she rolls her eyes. “You’re a pig. She’s in class.”
“Well that’s just too bad.”
Casey settles herself on her bed, and Derek drops his bag unceremoniously beside her while he looks around her room.
“Derek, I swear to god, I’m not going to study for you, so you better come sit – “
Derek cuts her off, “This has more color than usual.”
He’s staring at her study plan pinned on the wall above her desk.
“What?”
“This… organizing schedule thingy.” Derek points his finger towards it, “It’s way more booked than usual.”
Casey looks away from him, “Well, university is different from high school.”
“When do you even sleep?”
Casey can feel herself begin to blush, uncomfortable.
“Casey? Are you sleeping?”
She doesn’t know why he’s suddenly so interested in her life, so she counters back, remembering the bags under his own eyes. “Are you?”
Derek ignores her, “You know, I noticed you looked like crap. Well, crappier than usual.”
“You don’t look so hot yourself.”
He raises an eyebrow and smirks irritatingly, “You think I’m hot?”
Casey throws a pillow at his head and he dodges it easily, laughing. “Okay so, I’ve been kind of in a funk for a while, but I’m getting everything back on track.”
Derek furrows his eyebrows in confusion, “What do you mean?”
She sighs, “Ugh, look. Long story short, I’ve been kind of crazy and failed a few exams.”
“What!?” Derek exclaims, shocked.
“I have it under control now.”
Derek searches her face skeptically, “Why aren’t you freaking out?”
“I already did, I got over it.” (Sort of).
He shakes his head, the frown still on his face, “But if it was that bad, why didn’t you…”
“What?”
“Nothing.”
Awkward silence falls between them.
“Also, I broke up with Truman.”
Derek’s eyes snap back to her, eyebrows rising. “Well, I can’t say anyone’s going to miss him.”
Casey narrows her eyes at him, “You were the one who got him to go to prom with me.”
“The idea was never for you to actually date the guy!” Derek raises his voice defensively.
“I don’t want to talk about this, can we just get on with studying?”
Derek quietly agrees, and he sits beside her. They study all afternoon, and it actually reminds Casey of that time when she helped him study for his grade 12 exams. It’s a pleasantly familiar feeling.
“So… How have you been?” she asks him some time in the late afternoon.
“Better than you, apparently.”
“How’s hockey?”
“There’s a match on Saturday actually,” Derek says, “You should come be my cheerleader.”
She raises an eyebrow at him, “I thought you said I was bad luck.”
Derek smirks, “Oh, that you are. But I’m not playing, so you can’t hurt me.”
“What do you mean you’re not playing?”
“Freshmen players don’t start right away.”
Casey fake gasps, taking one hand dramatically to her heart. “You mean to tell me they didn’t make you team captain the moment they saw your fine skills on the ice?”
Derek’s mouth twitches the way it does when he’s trying not to laugh and give her credit when he thinks she’s being funny, and Casey’s heart tugs proudly. “I was surprised myself.”
“Why would I want to go if you’re not even playing?”
“To show support to your dear step-brother!”
“Oh, how didn’t I think of that?”
The lock of the front door rattles and Holly steps into the apartment.
“Hey, Case!” She calls.
Casey narrows her eyes at Derek, “Behave yourself.”
Derek smiles maliciously back at her.
“I’m actually off, thanks for the help, Space Case.”
Derek grabs his stuff and heads for the door, shooting a flirty smile towards Holly on the way out.
Holly turns to her with wide eyes, “My, who was that?”
Casey grins despite herself, “That was Derek Venturi.”
“That was Derek?” Holly exclaims, “The guy who’s supposed to be your brother?”
“Step-brother.”
“Why does your mother hate you?” Holly asks absentmindedly.
Casey sighs.
---
Casey ends up going to Derek’s game on Saturday and she takes Holly with her as moral support. He doesn’t play, but he looks up once from the bench and sees her, and smiles an actual smile.
After the match, they wait for him in the parking lot and he takes them to eat pizza with the hockey team. Derek introduces her as ‘Casey’, and she tries not to dwell too much on the fact that he didn’t mention that they’re step siblings.
Holly gets along pretty well with Parker, one of Derek’s teammates, and spends the night talking to him. She expects Derek to ditch her too, but he stays by her side all through dinner, and Casey finds she really likes the hockey team.
After that, Derek and Casey start seeing a lot of each other. Casey often helps him study, or she goes over to his dorm to hang out and pick a fight. Derek starts pranking her again, just little things that are mostly inconvenient and not actually hurtful. Their dynamic feels like it is back to normal, how it was back in London. But it also feels different now.
Before, it sometimes felt like they were following a script; their fights, and constant antagonism, and all the competition. They still do all of those things, but now it feels more lighthearted, like there is not an ultimate goal of winning, or being the alpha dog in the house. Casey thinks they are just having fun, learning to lean on each other like normal people, almost like friends.
She also starts to go out with Holly a lot. Her roommate introduces her to friends, and some of them are weird, but they are all nice, and Casey feels like she fits in. She starts talking more to the people she shares classes with, makes plans to study with them, and ends up making friends of her own.
Sometimes, she even hangs out with Derek and Holly at the same time. Derek really likes Holly. At first, Casey thought it was because he wanted to get inside her pants, but then she discovered it is actually because she reminds him of Ralph. Derek finds Holly hilarious, and Holly likes him too, even though Holly likes everyone really.
“You sound different honey,” her mom tells her over the phone one day, “Happier.”
“I feel happier mom, the first few months here were a little rough, but I feel like I’m finally finding my place.”
“We just miss you guys so much; you both should come visit us for a weekend or something.”
Casey considers this, “Well, the semester is about to end and Derek and I both have exams coming up, but after that I think we could go for like a week.”
Her mother’s voice raises joyfully, “Oh that would be wonderful.”
Derek, Casey and Holly finish up their exams. They all do well, but Derek almost fails Literature.
“I don’t even get why I have to take Literature,” he says as he puts sugar in his coffee cup, “I’m going to be a director, not a freaking writer.”
The three of them are lounging in the coffee shop Casey likes so much, celebrating the end of the semester.
Casey scrunches up her nose, “Derek, learning about Literature is important for everyone, not just writers. It would probably help you with your storytelling.”
“I already am an awesome storyteller.”
Casey remembers their home movie project and snorts, but doesn’t contradict him.
“I actually know a guy who took that class with the same professor as you last year,” Holly says thoughtfully, “He slept with her and she gave him a passing grade. Maybe you should sleep with her too so that she boosts your grade up.”
Derek covers Casey’s ears, “Shh, Holly! I wouldn’t want to hurt Casey’s virginal sensibilities.”
Casey abruptly tenses up and Derek looks at her weirdly.
“Ohh, Parker!” Holly attracts their attention towards the front of the coffee house, where Derek’s teammate and Holly’s kind-of-boyfriend is standing. “See you in a week, guys. Good luck on your trip, don’t fight too much!”
Casey turns to Derek after Holly and Parker leave.
“So, what time are we leaving?”
“I’d say in about, three hours. So go do all your provisional packing or whatever and be ready, I don’t feel like driving at night.”
Casey rolls her eyes, “If it bothers you so much, then let me drive.”
Derek snorts, “Yeah, right. I would like to see Marti one last time before I die, Spacey.”
“I taught you how to drive you jerk!” she throws a napkin at him.
Derek laughs and gets up from his seat, stretching his arms over his head. His shirt rides up a little, exposing his abdomen.
“Shall we go then?” Casey snaps her gaze up to his face, feeling caught. He smirks at her knowingly, but he doesn’t say anything.
“Y-yeah.”
---
They go to London, and it’s like she’s travelled months to the past. Everything is the same, and being around her big loud family again envelopes Casey with a comforting sense of warmth. She breathes her home in, drowns in hugs and kisses and ‘Welcome Home’s.
Edwin is the same height as her now, and she laughs when she sees Derek’s eyes widen in trepidation out the corner of her eye and makes a mental note to tease him about it later. Lizzie also looks more grown up, and absolutely beautiful with streaks of purple in her hair. “I chose the color!” yells Marti, who hasn’t let go of Derek since they entered their home.
Her mother is glowing radiantly, her pregnant belly bigger now, only two months away from the due date. Casey hugs her and melts against her, she had missed this so much, and she hadn’t even fully realized it.
They all catch up in the kitchen while George cooks dinner, when he realizes they are out of a few ingredients. Casey offers to go to the grocery store, eager to be helpful after so many months away from home, and George tells Derek to go with her. He agrees with only minimal protesting.
They are standing at the checkout line when Casey remembers Derek’s reaction to Edwin’s height from before.
“So, getting scared that your little brother will soon be able to beat you up himself, are we?” she taunts him.
Derek snorts and shakes his head, “Casey, Casey, Casey. When you have efficiently oppressed someone all his life, they won’t even consider rebelling, even if they are a hundred against just one.”
“You do realize you are a sociopath, don’t you?” Casey asks, amusedly.
She feels a gentle tug on her hair and turns around, startled. Standing in line behind them, a distracted lady is holding a baby. The little boy looks at her with wide eyes, a little scared at her sharp turn. Casey immediately smiles at him reassuringly, but the baby still looks wary.
Then, Derek grabs the baby’s hand with a gentleness Casey didn’t know he was capable of, and slowly disentangles the toddler’s little fingers from her hair. He makes a face to the baby, who promptly bursts out laughing.
Derek has always been good with kids; they all seem to naturally adore him. Casey had always secretly liked that quality of his, it made him seem more human and approachable. The baby’s mother finally notices the exchange and smiles sheepishly at them.
“Sorry, he likes pretty, long hair,” She says.
“It’s alright.” Casey smiles back.
They checkout and make their way back towards the car.
Casey turns to Derek, “I actually like seeing you with kids. You let your guard down. It’s cute,” She teases him.
Instead of sputtering, and denying, and telling her about all the reasons why he’s so not cute like she had expected him to do, Derek actually smirks.
“I know. You get all starry eyed.”
Casey’s jaw drops and she halts in the middle of the store’s parking lot, feeling her face grow hot instantly.
“W-what? No I don’t!”
Derek laughs and pinches her nose, “Yeah, you do. You make that puppy face.”
Casey harrumphs and Derek only laughs louder, ruffling her hair and –
Wait.
Is he… are they… is this flirting?
Derek is looking at her with that arrogant smile she knows so well. She had seen him use it with countless girls before, and she can tell that he’s turned up the charm tenfold.
He steps into her space, and lowers his voice. “Just admit it Case, you know it’s true.”
She looks up at him, mesmerized. He’s so close; she can actually see his freckles and the golden specks in his brown eyes. She had always found him attractive – she has a pulse, but she had never found herself in this position before. She feels trapped by his presence, but finds that she doesn’t want to leave.
If I lean in just a little, I could kiss him.
The thought startles her so much that she sucks in her air a little too sharply. Derek notices and pulls away, a little self consciously. He clears his throat, “We should go.”
“Yeah.”
---
After that exchange, things get mostly back to normal, although she can tell there is a new tension around them. The rest of the week passes in a blur, and before she knows it they’re back in Kingston, starting the new semester.
Time passes, Casey keeps moving forward. Classes this semester are easier than the first one, she feels more organized and confident. She starts dancing in a studio downtown that she had discovered when she mysteriously found a pamphlet about it that someone had put in her backpack.
She and Derek still have this pseudo-friendship thing going on, and Casey feels very comfortable for the most part. There are awkward moments though, when the tension sparkles around them like electricity. Sometimes, she could swear he’s actually flirting with her.
They had always kind of flirted. She’s not stupid, she had gone to kindergarten, and she knows the pulling pigtails move. But this feels different. Less antagonistic, and more like… normal people flirting. And it scares her.
One night she’s at his dorm, and they are watching a movie. They fall asleep, and she wakes up with her head on his shoulder. He has an arm wrapped loosely around her frame, and her heart starts wrecking havoc inside her chest.
She ponders for a moment what she should do. It’s like her entire being wants her to let her head fall back against him and close her eyes, but she can’t. They can’t do this.
So she quietly gets up, trying to keep her klutziness to a minimum, and sneaks out of his apartment. Her heartbeat is still pounding in her ears as she walks back to her own dorm.
When she gets home, Lizzie sends her a text that says ‘we miss u’ and has an image attached to it. It’s a picture of her mom and Marti, the 9 year old girl with her arms around Nora’s pregnant belly. It’s a beautiful photo, and Casey feels guilty about the wave of nausea it provokes.
---
On a Wednesday, after spending all day in her dorm studying, Casey is officially bored. Holly goes out with some friends they don’t share. She hasn’t seen Derek in a week, since he had booby trapped her entire room and she had screamed his ears off, so she changes out of her sweats and goes over to his dorm, planning on nagging and annoying him as payback.
It ends up being the other way around though, Derek acts more insufferable than ever, mocking her relentlessly the entire evening, managing to get her to make his bed and do his laundry in the process, and making her wonder why she even bothered to get him back into her life in the first place.
She ends up closing her eyes and counting to ten inwardly, gathering strength so as not to kill him. When she opens them, Derek is looking at her intently.
“What?” she snaps.
“Are you going somewhere? Afterwards?”
It’s almost 11 pm, and the question is so random that she’s taken aback, her previous annoyance forgotten, “No, why?”
He keeps looking at her with a strange expression on his face, searching her eyes. A beat passes. “No reason.”
It’s not until later, when she’s back in her dorm and wiping her makeup off her face to go to bed, that she realizes she’s wearing sparkly blue eye shadow.
---
It’s Thursday and Holly has been nagging Casey all afternoon about going down to Tino’s bar.
“I’m sorry Holls, I have class in the morning, but we can go tomorrow!” she tries to sound cheery, but Holly only rolls her eyes at her.
“Boo, so boring. Come on Case, they have Happy Hour all day today! It’s a Happy Day!”
Casey eyes her friend critically, “And that’s why we should get drunk on a Thursday,” she says, flatly.
“Nobody said anything about getting drunk, but that’s the spirit, girl!”
It takes some hours until Casey finally caves (Holly is one of the most stubborn people she’s ever met) and they end up at Tino’s bar, which is bursting with college kids.
On her way to the bathroom, Casey bumps straight into a strong chest.
“Oh, I’m so sorry!”
“Casey?”
Casey looks up at the handsome boy questioningly; she takes in his shaggy black hair and bright green eyes, and gets suddenly hit with the urge to run. “Anthony!?”
The boy smiles charmingly. Oh no. “What are you doing here? D-didn’t you transfer?”
Anthony looks taken aback by the accusation in her tone, but recovers with a warm smile that makes her knees a little weak. “I did. I’m in Kingston to see my parents, and I thought I’d reunite with some of my buddies from Queens while I’m visiting.” He steps closer to her, still smiling flirtatiously, “Is that a problem?”
“Um.” Yes. Disappear.
Suddenly, a leather clad arm drops around her shoulders and she’s enveloped by a familiar scent.
Oh god, please no.
Derek.
“Hey Tony, be careful with this one buddy, she’s accident prone and this place is full of sharp objects.”
Casey feels cold dread creep up her spine. Of course Anthony would come back to Queen’s. Of course she would run into him at the scene of the crime. Of course Derek would be there too. Of course they would be freaking buddies.
Because when does life ever make it easy for her?
“Hey D, you know Casey?” Anthony looks between them suspiciously.
Before Derek has a chance to respond, she jumps. “Derek is my step-brother!”
Derek removes his arm from around her and looks at her weirdly, because it’s probably the first time in her life that she has ever made emphasis on the ‘brother’ part and not the ‘step’ part, but she needs Anthony to understand that there is no way in hell that telling Derek how they know each other is a good idea.
Anthony seems to get it immediately, and blanches. “O-oh heh, t-that’s, um…”
“How do you know Klutzilla here, Tony?”
“I just met her!”
“The library!”
Casey and Tony look at each other bewildered, and Derek raises an eyebrow. “I’m sorry?”
Tony looks at his watch and starts backing away from them hurriedly, “O-Oh, would you look at that? I actually have to get going back to my parent’s place, but it was cool catching up, bro. Bye, Casey!” and then he bolts out of sight.
Casey’s sigh of relief is short lived.
Derek turns to her, “Whatever did you do to the poor guy to have him running away from you like that?”
“N-nothing, I don’t even really know him!”
He narrows his eyes at her, “But you do know him.”
Just then, Holly comes up to them, “Hey, Derek!”
“Hey, Holly. How did you get Ms. Uptight Pants over here to get out of the dorm on a Thursday night?”
Holly laughs and waves her hand dismissively, “I have my ways.” She turns to Casey, “Hey, who was that guy you were just talking to? He looks really familiar.”
“Does he now?” Derek says tauntingly.
“No, he doesn’t!” Casey says desperately.
Derek gets an evil glint in his eye, “Casey actually knows him Holls, I’m sure you can remember where from. It’s probably embarrassing.”
Casey panics, because even though Holly always has the best intentions, she has an absolute inability to read a room, and there is no way Casey can communicate to her to shut up, do not tell Derek who Anthony is!
“Mmm.” Holly taps her finger against her chin in thought, oblivious to Casey’s wide eyed expression. “Oh! Is he the guy you accidentally pushed into the fountain?”
Derek cracks up and Casey takes the opportunity, “Y-yes! That’s him, so embarrassing, ha-ha.”
Derek watches her face, unimpressed, “World’s. Shittiest. Liar. That’s not it Holly, keep thinking. Where’s your table?”
Holly and Derek start moving towards the girls’ table while Holly keeps thinking, “Was it the guy you dropped your lunch on last month?”
They sit at the table and Casey tries her damnest to distract Derek out of the subject, while trying to kick Holly under the table to get her to shut up, but all she gets is, “Case, you keep kicking me, you should get that reflex checked out, it could be a nervous tick.” Which makes Derek burst into laughter.
So she keeps embarrassing Casey all night, randomly bursting with a bunch of different scenarios in which she had managed to make a total fool of herself in front of guys. It’s an alarmingly high number of scenarios. Casey is mortified and nervous as hell, but Derek seems to be having the time of his life.
Suddenly, Derek pipes up, “You know Holly, this guy actually transferred out of Queen’s a couple of months ago, so you probably want to think way back. His name is Anthony, by the way.” He eyes Casey challengingly.
Holly frowns and gets this ‘deep in thought’ look on her face, one she doesn’t sport too often, and Casey starts sweating.
Holly is terrible with people’s names and faces. She gets Edwin, Lizzie and Marti mixed up all the time and Casey actually had to introduce her to Derek three times before she caught on about who he was. But the clues Derek had given her were very specific. And the Anthony incident was huge, and kind of important in their friendship timeline, so it was probably only a matter of time before she figured it out. Casey just had to keep distracting Derek, hoping he would eventually get bored of hanging around them and go look for his own friends instead.
Casey turns to Derek, “So, how was practice today?”
He lifts an eyebrow, amused by her attempt to diverge the conversation, but humors her anyway. “It was good, Case. Coach is keeping a close eye on me. I think I might start soon.”
He gets this luminous, pure look in his eyes, like he’s proud of himself, like he’s excited to tell her and he wants her to be proud of him too.
Her heart fills up with an emotion all too familiar now, one that she has felt a few times before, when Derek did the unusual nice thing for her. An emotion that is mostly associated with him at this point.
She smiles warmly, sincerely at him. “That’s so great, D.”
She says it with all the honesty she can muster, means it with all her heart, and she sees the chocolate in his eyes melt, his gaze boring into hers.
She blushes and looks away, and Derek clears his throat and takes a sip from his drink.
And it is at that moment that Holly slaps the table triumphantly, making Casey gulp and Derek smirk around the rim of his glass. “Oh my god, Casey! That’s the guy you banged in the bathroom!”
It’s like a record scratch; Derek spits out his beer all over Casey’s face and the front of her shirt.
“De-rek!”
Their eyes lock and suddenly, the rest of the world blurs around her. She can’t read the look on his face. There’s so much going on behind his eyes, a swirl of emotions she can’t identify.
Casey had half expected Derek not to believe Holly. She knows that in his mind he sees her as ‘virginal Casey’, and she doesn’t know what her face is giving away right now, but the mildly horrified and incredulous look on his own tells her that he knows it’s true.
She wants to say something, for him to stop looking at her like that. There is an oppressive feeling in her gut, eating at her the way guilt does. The feeling of hurting someone you care about, the dread of not being able to take it back.
She can’t say anything though; Derek’s intense stare has her petrified, and he is not moving a muscle either, his entire frame pulled taut, like he wants to bolt but just can’t break away from her gaze.
“Oh gosh, I’m so sorry,” Holly says, breaking through the fog in Casey’s brain, “I totally forgot that this is your brother, he obviously doesn’t want to know about that.”
And god, if resisting the urge to cringe could kill you, Casey would be dropping dead right this second.
Holly’s statement seems to finally break Derek out of his trance, he averts his eyes and his face looks a little green in the dim lighting. He pushes away from the table and heads straight for the exit.
“Derek…” Casey calls weakly after him. He doesn’t stop walking.
Holly hands her a napkin, a sheepish look on her face, “Sorry, that was awkward.”
Casey wipes her face mechanically; eyes still on the spot Derek had been sitting on seconds ago.
“He seemed like, really upset though,” Holly says, a confused frown on her face. Casey bolts out of the chair and rushes after him.
She finds him outside, bent over with his hands on his knees.
“Derek?”
He straightens up immediately and faces her, his expression totally composed.
She clears her throat, “Are you leaving?”
“Yeah, I forgot I had somewhere else to be, less lame people to hang around. See ya, Spacey.” He starts walking away, and he seems completely normal and ready to forget about what he heard inside, even though it obviously freaked him out. And this is a good thing, so she has no idea why she blurts –
“I’m sorry.”
Oh my god, please keep walking.
He stops dead in his tracks.
Oh shit.
He turns around and narrows his eyes at her, “And what exactly are you sorry for?”
What is she sorry for? She didn’t do anything wrong, doesn’t owe him any explanations about her actions, however out of character they may seem.
“I didn’t know he was your friend.”
And damn it, what is this freaking guilt? She didn’t do anything to him! The air is so charged and chilly around them. She feels like she just stepped into the Twilight Zone. What the fuck.
Derek scoffs out a laugh, it’s dry and humorless and nothing like his usually boisterous one, “Guess we’re even now.”
It’s like the air has been knocked out of her. And he’s lying, he has to be lying because…
Because if Derek and Emily had slept together, Emily would have told her.
Right?
‘I mean if that’s what you really want to do, I can’t stop you.'
Right.
Something must have been obvious on her face, because she can see the exact moment when he regrets it. He takes a step forward, “Case…”
She takes a step back. Whatever guilt she felt before isn’t there anymore. She turns around and reenters the bar. He doesn’t follow her in.
She finds Holly and convinces her to leave early. Her friend pesters her with questions the entire way to their apartment, but Casey just shakes her head and continuously claims she just has a headache.
They get back to their dorm and get ready for bed. Casey grabs her phone so she can set her alarms for the next morning and there is a text from Emily shining on the screen.
Casey deletes it and goes to sleep.
---
The next day she is fuming all through class. She can barely pay attention to the lessons and keeps looking at the clock, willing it to get to 2:00 pm so she can leave and continue to sulk in her dorm.
She’s walking through the quad, not really looking where she’s going – What else is new? When she runs right into a now familiar chest.
“We have to stop meeting like this.”
“Yeah, no kidding,” Anthony says, and he sounds quite annoyed, actually.
Casey’s about to tell him that he’s bumped into her the same amount of times that she has bumped into him, when she notices the nasty bruise around his left eye, which had definitely not been there the night before.
“What happened to your face!?”
He laughs humorlessly, “I ran into your brother this morning. Thanks for telling him, by the way.”
“Derek? You got into a fight with Derek?”
Tony runs a hand through his hair, “It wasn’t much of a fight, more like a one punch kinda thing. Could have been a lot worse, I had it coming after all.”
“What? You just let him hit you?” she asks incredulously, “Why did he hit you?”
“Let’s just say that if I found out one of my friends slept with my sister, and had previously bragged to me about it, I would have done a lot more than just punch him. So yeah, I let him hit me.”
There is so much wrong within that sentence that she can’t even begin to dissect it.
“What!?”
Tony sighs, “Ugh, look Casey, I’m really sorry. This will most definitely make you punch me. But last night before we went to the bar, I told Derek I had been with a girl there in the bathroom, no names or anything, how the hell was I supposed to know it was his sister?”
“Step-sister,” Casey says through gritted teeth, “And?”
He winces, “And… I kind of told him how it went… with details.”
It’s like a piano being dropped on her fucking head because seriously, how the hell is this her life? Who the fuck do these things happen to?
And now she knows why Derek had that look on his face, of horrified realization. And why he hadn’t even questioned it. It’s because he already knew it was true. He knew a lot more than what Holly had told him.
And she knows guys are pigs and they all brag about conquests with their buddies – girls talk about what they do with guys too, if she is being completely honest. But… details? What kind of details?
“What did you tell him!?” she shrieks, horrified.
“I’m really trying to be a gentleman here.” Tony looks very uncomfortable.
God, why are men so freaking useless? You can’t even trust them with disappearing like they said they would. They end up coming back and telling your step-brother all about your sexual performances.
She groans and stalks away, a woman on a mission, her previous desire of getting to her dorm vanishing in the form of a new destination: Derek’s dorm.
---
Derek opens the door.
“What is wrong with you!?” she barks at him.
“Right now? There’s a keener at my door and I have practice, so why don’t you just – “ He makes a shooing motion with his hands.
“You don’t have practice until six!”
“Thanks for the reminder, now leave.” He starts closing the door, but she puts her foot in before he can shut it.
She shoves him aside and enters the apartment.
“Why the fuck did you hit Tony?”
He raises his eyebrows, “And you curse now too? You know, I’m sure my friend Tony would appreciate your concern, but you’re not really supposed to get attached to one night stands.”
She rolls her eyes, “God, shut up Derek. That’s not why I care; I care because he told me you hit him because of me.”
He seems taken aback for a second before he shrugs, “Just some brotherly concern. A guy was bragging about screwing my sister, so I punched him, like a good big brother.”
“Step-brother,” Casey hisses.
He narrows his eyes, “Same difference.”
She reels back as if he had hit her. There is a new tension in the room, and even if he’s trying to hide it behind a façade, she can tell he's pissed off.
She should let it go as a passing comment. She really, really should. But it’s so obviously a direct attack that she just has to take the bait.
“Is that what this is about?” she asks slowly.
He falters for a second; obviously surprised she had risen up to the challenge, but smirks maliciously. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
And now is definitely the time to drop this conversation and burry it deep into the ocean, no traces found. Still, she pushes, because he acted weird around her all summer, because maybe she hadn’t gone looking for him the first months at university, but neither had he.
“Oh, I think you do.”
She has seen Derek ready for a fight before, they fight all the time. But the look in his eyes is so intense; she realizes he’s been waiting for this particular one. She can feel how much he wants this as if it was her own desire.
He takes a couple of steps closer, making her step backwards, like he’s caging her in. “Reeeeally?” he drawls, “Then do remind me, sister dearest.”
She could, she could remind him. She could tell him that she thinks he’s angry at her because she said that there wasn’t a difference between him being her brother and her step-brother. She could tell him that she knows she disappointed him. That she knows she hurt him.
She could tell him that she knows there’s a difference, that she wants there to be a difference. That that difference is the only thing that lets her sleep at night, the only thing that keeps the guilt from consuming her every time they get too close, every time she lets herself wonder what if.
She could tell him that she’s tired of pretending, but they have to.
She could tell him so many things she always wanted to tell him.
But she can’t.
“Anyway,” she chokes out, changing the subject, “This is about you overstepping into my own personal business.”
The fire leaves Derek’s eyes, and she can tell he’s upset, that she has failed him somehow, again, but he’s not surprised. It breaks her bruised heart a little more.
He rolls his eyes, “Okay then, if it is about your own personal business, then I won’t overstep anymore. Consider me out of it.” He backs away from her and turns on his heels, making a beeline for his bedroom and tossing over his shoulder, “Fuck off, Case.”
---
They don’t see each other, they don’t text. Derek doesn’t sneak into her dorm to pull pranks on her or ask her to help him with his studies, and she doesn’t go to his hockey games or goes over to his dorm to nag him.
It’s like the start of first semester all over again, except this time there is an actual fight keeping them apart. But the subtext is still there. And it’s probably the same one as before.
Holly feels guilty about telling Derek about Anthony, saying it’s her fault that they’re fighting. But even though Casey is still a little annoyed with her, she doesn’t blame her. She knows the fight isn’t really about Tony. She doesn’t really know what it is about, though she has a few theories, but she doesn’t let herself dwell on them too much.
It’s been three weeks since the fight, and Casey is lying on her bed after giving up on studying for her exam. She can’t concentrate.
“Okay, you need to go make up with Derek,” Holly says from the doorway.
Casey snorts, “I have nothing to say to him.”
"You always have something to say to him."
Casey throws her hands in the air, “He’s the one who’s being childish, not me!”
Holly comes in and yanks the covers away from Casey’s body, ignoring her ‘Hey!’ of protest.
“Then go tell him that. Casey, you have an exam on Monday and you’re not studying, you’re obviously getting depressed. Go see him and yell at him, it will make you feel better!”
“I’m not getting depressed!”
“Yes you are! You need your Derek fix. Or else you’ll end up miserable like before!”
Casey thinks about those two months. How lonely she felt, when she didn’t have anyone. Now she has many friends, and Holly. She could live without Derek. But she knows she only started getting happy again once she got him back in her life. I don’t want to lose him again.
She makes up her mind and gets up from the bed. She quickly puts her shoes on, and throws on the first coat she can find.
She rushes out of the apartment and Holly yells after her, “You’re leaving your cell phone!”
But she has already shut the door behind her.
---
Derek opens the door and frowns down at her, “It’s like you’re a fucking boomerang.”
She shoves him aside, “We have to sort this out.”
“No, we don’t.”
“Yeah, we do. I’m tired of this ‘not talking things out’ shit we do.” Casey whips around to face him, all geared up to fight, hands set on her hips.
“When have we ever talked shit out?”
“Never! But… friends figure their stuff out – “
He immediately cuts her off, “We’re not friends.”
“Yes we are!” she snaps, annoyed.
“Are not!”
“Are t – you know what? This could take a while.”
Derek opens the door again, “Yes, so save us the time and leave.”
Casey sets her foot down, “I’m not leaving.”
Derek drags his hands down his face, groaning in frustration and closing the door once more.
“Why the hell is it such a big deal to you if you know I slept with a guy?” Casey shouts, “Like you didn’t bring Sally, and Kendra, and whoever home while I was in the next room!”
Derek raises his eyebrows, “Oh, were you listening?”
“De-rek!”
He merely shrugs.
She remembers something else, “Oh! And let’s not forget about Emily! My best friend.”
Derek’s entire defensive demeanor changes and he cringes. “Okay, I kind of lied to you. I didn’t sleep with Emily.”
Casey’s shoulders slump involuntarily. She searches his face, and even though he’s the Lord of the Lies, she knows he’s telling the truth. She tries hard to shove back her relief, “What?”
“I never slept with Emily.” He rubs the back of his neck awkwardly, “I just said that because I knew you wouldn’t like it. It was a low blow.”
Casey laughs hysterically, “Well, that’s rich. Thank you for your honesty now! It still doesn’t excuse your shitty behavior just because I slept with – “
Derek cuts her off again, “God, I don’t care who you sleep with! You can do whoever the fuck you want!”
“Then why are you so mad at me!?”
“I’m not mad at you!” he shouts, losing his cool, “I just need to get away from you!”
She flinches, “Why?”
“Because a guy is entitled to have some time away from his annoying step-sister every once in a while!”
It occurs to her now that Derek hadn’t actually seemed mad about the whole Tony thing. He was freaked out and uncomfortable, and maybe he needed time away from her to sort it out in his head. She wracks her brain for the actual reason, and suddenly it hits her, the moment Derek had actually shut her out.
It was when they brought up the kitchen conversation, and she had dismissed it. That conversation, the one that had created a wedge between them, the one that made him avoid her all summer, and the one that had caused them not to see each other in the first months at university.
She thinks it’s finally time, to clear the air, to get out from under the weight that has been hanging over them for months. She goes for it.
“I’m sorry!”
Derek looks at her like she’s insane, “What the hell are you sorry for now!?”
“The kitchen! Same difference? It’s bullshit.”
Derek reels back away from her. His eyebrows are about to disappear into his hairline and he tenses up completely.
A few seconds pass.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Yes you do!” she screeches.
Derek steps back into her space, “Then tell me!”
Casey steps back away from him, “I can’t,” she says in a small voice, “I already apologized, what else do you want?”
Derek closes his eyes and pinches the bridge of his nose, “I want you to say what you want to say, or stop. Bringing. It. Up.”
Casey breathes out shakily, “But you admit that that is the problem.”
“Casey,” His voice wavers pleadingly.
“You do, don’t you?” she whispers.
“What do you think the problem is?” he whispers back.
“Derek…”
He shakes his head, “You can’t even say it.”
Seeing that kicked puppy look of deception is what it takes for the dam to finally break.
“Okay! You’re not my brother, happy? I never, ever saw you as my brother and never will.” She’s back to shouting, and he steps away from her again, bewildered. “And I don’t see you as my brother because there’s this,” she takes a shaky breath “Thing… between us. And it was driving me insane, and you were dating Emily and my mom is pregnant with our brother!”
Derek’s eyes are growing wider by the second, obviously shocked that she’s actually saying this, but everything is pouring out of her and she can’t stop the word vomit.
“And I didn’t talk to you the first few months because I was afraid of what would happen when we were finally alone, and I was miserable! Are you happy now? What else do you want Derek? Do you want me to call my mom and tell her?” Casey raises her voice hysterically, “‘Oh hi mom, I know you’re about to give birth to our brother, but could you maybe cancel it? Because I have feelings for Derek!’” she ends the sentence with a sob, and realizes the enormity of what she just said, sees it in Derek’s horrified face. She closes her eyes and a few tears fall, “I don’t know why you keep punishing me for being scared.”
Moments pass and the only thing that breaks the silence is her ragged breathing. Then, Derek’s arms are around her, squeezing her. Casey stiffens up entirely, and he buries his face in the crook of her neck. She’s waiting, terrified, because she doesn’t know what he’s doing or why he’s holding her.
It takes her another second to realize that this is a hug. Derek is hugging her.
“Shh,” he murmurs into her hair, “I’m sorry.”
And then Casey is melting against him. She brings her arms around his waist and breathes in his scent, a full body shudder shaking her. This is something she has always, always wanted, something she had nagged him for repeatedly, and he had never, ever willingly given to her.
“Oh,” she tells his chest, “That’s a hug.”
He chuckles softly, nervously, and she feels his frame vibrate against her. She tightens her arms around him.
“Yeah, I know.”
“That wasn’t so hard now, was it?”
Derek shivers, “’I don’t know why you keep punishing me for being scared.’” He quotes her.
She pulls away a little to look at him, surprised by his admission. His eyes are the softest she’s ever seen them and he’s looking at her intensely.
“Case,” he whispers. His hands travel from her back, up her arms, to cup her face. Her eyes fall involuntarily to his mouth, and Derek’s thumb runs softly across her bottom lip.
Her eyes begin to fall shut, and then Derek’s phone blasts from the coffee table, making them jump apart.
He goes to pick it up, looking shell shocked, never taking his eyes away from her.
“Hey Dad,” his voice sounds strained.
Derek’s expression turns somber as he locks eyes with her. She feels the dread like a weight in her stomach.
“Okay, I’ll tell her.” She can hear George’s frantic voice being cut off when Derek snaps the cell phone shut.
“Derek…” she trails off.
“Nora’s in labor.”