Chapter 6 (These Scars Remind Me)

Still Saturday

"Fuck!"

Derek kicked angrily at a discarded can before dropping himself down onto the curb a little ways down from Dennis's house. He ran shaking hands through his hair and hung his head. He'd love to tell Casey that he could remember all the details of that night. He'd love to tell her that he'd spent weeks thinking about "Gabrielle" or trying to find her. He'd love to tell her that he felt anything like she felt back then. But he couldn't.

Casey had driven away from the diner, wanting some time alone to think. Derek had stayed in the parking lot for a while to do the same. He'd stared around him and tried to take it all in, and while some of that night came back to him, it was almost all lost. He cursed himself yet again for being so out of control in the past, trading real interaction for blurry blacked-out memories.

It had started well before the time he met Casey that night; if he remembered his timeline correctly. In fact, he had the vague feeling that it was around then he decided it wasn't worth all the things he was missing, or all the stuff he kept hearing he'd done while drunk. But for the year and a half or so before that, it had felt like a perfect way out.

When the house wasn't shaking with the force of his parents' arguments, it was quivering with the thick tension of their animosity. He knew now that this happened to too many families, but at the time, it felt unfair. Without completely realizing his motives, Derek decided to flout every rule in existence – kind of a "fuck you" to the world that had done this to him. He'd also hoped that concern for him would bring his parents together, but every time they seemed to argue more; so Derek would act even worse, hoping he'd find that breaking point for them.

Then one day, coming in late at night from a party, he heard a noise coming from the kitchen. As he moved toward the stairs, it became clearer. Crying. He stepped quietly through the dining room until he stood right outside the kitchen.

"Abby, don't." His father was pleading, his voice breaking.

"Stop it, George," his mother answered coldly.

"Let's just calm down. I love you."

"I don't care, I can't do this anymore."

More sobbing. Derek walked away then, not being able to deal with another moment of this raw emotion. The next morning, his mother was gone, and a bleary-eyed George had told Derek and Edwin that their parents would be divorcing. Derek had screamed and thrown things, had blamed his father for not being enough of a man, and run out of the house. Privately, he also blamed his mother for being stubborn, for caring too much about herself and not enough about her husband. He also blamed himself, for taking the wrong course of action, but now it was the only thing he had to make him forget.

Meeting up with his friends, he told them what had happened, and they empathized with their own parent divorce stories. He realized then how many screwed up relationships existed and, thinking himself the smartest thirteen-year-old in the world, decided never to commit himself to that kind of potential pain. Instead, he would live for himself only and never let a woman destroy him.

He went through many nights like the one in this parking lot, and built up a small reputation as a womanizer and party guy both in London and Toronto. And then one day, Derek woke up, fourteen years old, dried vomit on his shoulder, on the floor of a strange house, surrounded by kids he had no memory of ever knowing. He felt the looks on him as he rode the bus home, having been deserted by whoever he'd been there with. Old women looked at him contemptuously and the one closest to him covered her nose at his offensive odor. A mother told her child to stop staring at what he later saw was his bloodshot, baggy eyes. And a boy of about twelve seemed to feel bad for him. Derek had shrugged his jacket higher to his face and turned away.

When he walked into the house, his father looked up at him, exhausted. Instead of yelling or crying, George simply turned back to his work and said nothing. Little Marti ran to the top of the stairs to greet him, but suddenly turned away, afraid of him. The haze of anger lifted from Derek's mind, and he realized that he didn't hate anymore. And so, he cleaned himself up and became the Derek that he was now – not destructive, but safely pushing limits and still intent on living life whichever way he chose for himself.

And then George and Nora started dating and he met Casey. She reminded him of everything his mother had been that he blamed for destroying his father and their family: she was stubbornly independent, uncompromising, thought only about her own goals, and could turn cold and caustic at the drop of a hat. And he hated her. As time went on, despite learning more about her and softening towards her, he still held a certain wariness of getting close or emotional with her. Maybe he'd known that something like this would happen if he did. Maybe he'd known that it could never end there.

The walk to Dennis' house had passed in a blur as he ran through all the things that had led him to this point in his life. He realized with some surprise that he'd forgotten why he felt this way about relationships and Casey – it had simply become fact. The truth was he no longer believed Casey was a cold, self-centered woman. The truth was he'd been dropping his guard little by little the whole time. When push came to shove, he knew that they were there for each other.

Derek jumped off the curb, only half-knowing what he was going to do when he got into the house. He could feel he was on the verge of something huge for him, and true to his nature, he let the instinct carry him. He found Casey sitting at the kitchen table, her cheeks shining with drying tears; she didn't acknowledge him. He turned and closed the door gingerly, and the now-quiet and stiff air made him notice an anxious tingling underneath his skin. He sat down across from her, but she still didn't look up.

"Why didn't you tell me?" Derek asked quietly.

Casey sighed. "I don't know. I mean… I do know, but it's stupid." She took a deep breath. "I wanted you to remember. I wanted some kind of sudden romantic realization, but it never came. And then every time I wanted to tell you, it never felt right, because I couldn't tell you while we were fighting, and then I couldn't tell you while we were getting along, and I couldn't tell you when our family started coming together. And then too much time had passed, and I just felt ridiculous."

Derek was trying to think of a response, but Casey's years of bottled emotion flooded into the silence.

"I know it's stupid, Derek, and I know that no matter how I try to explain how it's felt these last few years, I will never be able to really tell you. There were times I wished I'd never met you, not now or before. There were other times when I couldn't bear the thought of you not being there. But mostly I just wondered what would've happened if…"

"If…?"

"If I hadn't run. If you hadn't driven away," Casey finished the thought, closing her eyes, exhausted. Now that the words were flowing, she wanted to kick herself. She knew that this was more than she should have ever said to Derek. She expected any minute to feel the dust left behind as Derek fled the room screaming.

But instead, she felt his hand on hers. Her eyes flew open, and she found herself facing a smirking Derek.

"Let's find out."

"Excuse me?"

"Let's find out what would have happened if we'd stayed together after that night, Casey."

"Uh, I can tell you what would have happened. We would've both gone on being drunken idiots and failed miserably at life."

Derek groaned. "You're really ruining this, Casey. What I'm trying to say is, let's start over now. Let's take advantage of the time we have right now, alone here, and see if this could work."

Casey's eyes widened. "Are you asking me to… play house with you??"

"Honestly, Casey, I don't know what the hell I'm doing right now. I know that most of me wants to run. But there's something else telling me I need to do this for you –"

"Don't do me any favors," Casey spat out.

"No, no, agggh, nothing's coming out right!" Derek grabbed at his hair. "I want to do this for both of us."

"You want to do this because you think every night is going to be like last night," Casey cut in.

"No night could be like last night!" Derek grinned.

"DER-EK!" Casey yelled, turning bright red. She tried to hide the half-smile forming, but Derek caught it. He took her hand again.

"Casey, listen. I don't blame you for questioning my motives. Hell, you'd be stupid if you didn't. And like I said, I don't really know where I'm going with this, but that's never been a reason for me not to do something before. I figure this can go one of two ways: either we find out we've been doing it right this whole time and go back to fighting, or we find out… something else. And maybe it's good."

Casey was quiet for a minute, and Derek could sense she was still skeptical. He took a deep breath and tried his best to articulate what he was thinking. "The thing is, Case… I've lived my life with certain assumptions for a very long time. I think it's time… to question them."

Casey was so confused. It was what she'd always wanted. She was supposed to be running over to him and melting against him right now. But she couldn't move. She was terrified. If she did this, and something went wrong, she would lose everything that meant anything to her; she'd lose Derek and, silly as it was, she'd lose the romance she'd built up in her head for so long. It would all just be real and hard and cold and she'd never be able to go back and do it again…

"Casey?"

Derek's voice brought her out of her trance, and she snapped her face back up to him looking like a deer caught in the headlights. "I need…" Derek looked at her, his eyes coaxing her to go on. "I need to go upstairs now," she blurted out, and hurriedly got up from her chair.

"Are you SERIOUS?!"

Casey turned back and immediately knew she'd hurt his feelings. She'd already screwed up. "I'm sorry, Derek, I just need to think, I just don't know —" She was tearing up again, and it got worse when she saw Derek get up to leave.

"Fine. You keep thinking, Casey." Derek angrily swiped his keys off the table and headed out the kitchen door, slamming it behind him.

Casey dropped to the floor and sobbed. She couldn't keep thinking; she could only hurt. Several minutes later, she picked herself up slowly, holding her stomach in a vain attempt to assuage the pain, and stumbled to the couch. She threw herself face down into the cushion and screamed.

What had she done? She'd been so desperately afraid to go through the pain of it not working out that she had to immediately destroy it.

So this is how it ends? This is how the whole goddamn thing ends? her mind screamed in agony. She kicked and kicked in anger, thinking that if she expended enough energy, maybe she could change something.

She became aware suddenly of the crunching beneath her feet, and realized she'd been beating the hell out of her applications. She reluctantly sat up to salvage them, choking back sobs, trying to calm herself down. A tear dropped onto one of the papers that had been nearly ripped in half. She leaned down to smooth it away and involuntarily read the essay question underneath it through her blurred vision.

"Regret for the things we did can be tempered by time; it is regret for the things we did not do that is inconsolable." Write about a time that you did or did not take a risk, and how it affected you."

--

Now mid-afternoon, Derek found himself in a back corner of the diner parking lot, the only place he could think to stop. He slammed his fists against the steering wheel until they became nearly numb.

He had been more open with Casey than he'd ever been with anyone. He'd thought for just one second that maybe, maybe, he was wrong not to risk real feeling. He'd trusted that Casey would believe in him; that she'd grown to understand the things he couldn't say. But he'd been wrong. He felt an odd sinking pain in his chest, and leaned back against the seat.

He didn't understand why this was hurting so much. Derek didn't often get rejected - outside of last night - but he knew that it never really felt like this. This was the pain he'd never wanted. The pain of being left by someone he --

"DEREK!"

The shout was followed by the sound of screeching tires. Derek's head shot up. Casey was screeching through the parking lot, practically tilting the car to a wheelie position, until she stopped abruptly next to his car. Derek climbed out of the car in a panic.

"Casey, what the hell are you doing?! Are you trying to kill us both?!" he shouted as she hurriedly unbuckled herself and leaped from the car into his arms.

"No, I'm trying to save us both."

"What do you mean?" Derek said, his heart still racing with fear.

"I mean let's do it," she said, her voice muffled against his neck. "I mean I don't run. And you don't drive away."

Derek held her as tightly as he could, a breath he didn't know he held escaping against her hair. The pain was gone as though erased by her body pressed against his. In its place was relief, excitement, and maybe even happiness. He held her face in his hands and kissed her without reservation. He knew this wasn't going to be easy. He knew that tomorrow, their fears would come back. But he also knew there was no one he'd rather fight them with.