A/N : Here it is! The first chapter rewrite. I felt like my writing was pretty sucky on the original. So here it is. I changed the title so I could leave the original up. Thanks so much to those who are reading this, and supporting me by doing so!

I clucked my tongue in disgust as my older brother slurped down his morning cereal. Much to my dismay, he had a friend over - Derek. Essentially two Marks. I could barely take one brother without his stupid friends spending every waking moment of their spare time here. You'd swear none of them had their own place.

"Ugh. Okay, seriously Mark. Could you be any more primitive?" I asked, scrunching my nose in disgust.

"Nope," he replied through a mouthful of Frosted Flakes, "All guys are cavemen, right Derek?"

"Uh huh..." Derek mumbled. His eyes were unfocussed as he stared at the flakes of cereal floating in his bowl. I noticed how he merely poked at his cereal, making no attempt at eating it.

"God Mark, how many hours of sleep did you guys get?"

"Oh. I don't know. I stopped looking at the clock after the sun came up." he raised his head from his bowl to glance at the stove clock behind him.

"Hot damn! I knew we could make it on an hour!" he raised his hand toward Derek in a high-five motion. To my delight, Derek chose to leave him hanging, his eyes glassing over.

I took this time to notice the brilliant blue color of Derek's unfocussed eyes. They kind of faded from a sharp indigo around the rims, to an almost- cornflower near the pupil.

Ok, enough Meredith. No thinking about the brother's good-looking friend. I internally tried to smack some sense into myself.

Good-looking was quite an understatement, though. Derek's hair was curly, thick, and raven-black - the type of hair that begged to have fingers run through it.

Maybe even my fingers...

He had just a hint of facial hair around his jaw line and up his cheeks. His nose was crooked, like it had been broken and healed wrong.

I must have stared at Derek just a smidge too long, because he noticed. I was biting my pinky nail, trying to keep my hand from reaching up to brush a lock of fallen hair out of his eyes. I looked down from his messy locks to find his eyes trained on mine. He blinked slowly and one side of his mouth turned up in a smirk as I snapped my head to the side, blushing furiously. Mark looked at me quizzically and then looked at Derek, who had gone back to contemplating his bowl of cereal.

I refused to even look in Derek's general direction for the rest of breakfast, even though I could feel his eyes on me every once-in-a-while.

"So Meredith, how's sophomore year treating you?"I looked up at the mention of my name to find Derek looking at me questioningly.

"Er...good I guess. The teachers are kinda brutal...but I guess you already knew that." my voice trailed off at the end of my sentence.

I think he already knows that, moron! When my subconscious started calling me names, I vowed to stop the inner monologue thing.

Anyways, Derek and Mark were juniors, fresh out of sophomore year.

"Eh, yeah I thought they were too. But hey, I guess I should be asking you how AP sophomore year is treating you, huh? All those advanced classes." He ended his sentence with a smile before adding, "Smart girl." For some reason, I blushed at his comment and couldn't help but think about how cute his smile was.

Mark interrupted my thoughts by announcing he was going out to his truck in search of his cell phone. He stomped down the stairs and I noticed his keys sitting on the table in front of me.

I wonder how long it will take him to search his pockets before he comes back inside. Stupid.

"So is this new?"Derek asked casually, a small smirk playing on his lips.

"What?" I looked up.

"You. Staring at me. Do you always do it or...?"

My mind went blank and I felt my face heat up.

"Uhhm..." I stuttered. I opened my mouth once, twice, three times to speak, but nothing came out. "So you can talk! And here I thought you were too tired."

Ooooh, good comeback.

He chuckled quietly to himself, his smirk growing into an all-out grin. "They say the best thing to keep you alert is a pretty girl."

Pretty?

His grin made me want to hit him. Or kiss him. I'm still having mixed feelings on that one. The mere thought of kissing him made me turn thirteen more shades of red and he chuckled louder.

"Hey now, you keep that pretty little mind of yours out of the gutter." He said. He shot me a dreamy smile before he went off to take my very confused brother his car keys. I, on the other hand, still sat at the table, spoon half raised to my mouth, staring at the spot Derek had be sitting in.

The most pathetic part? I didn't know whether to be embarrassed by the fact that he knew I thought he was cute, or excited that he called me pretty. Twice.

I got up and walked to the window that faced the driveway. I saw Derek toss Marks truck keys at the back of his head, and laugh when Mark spun around with his hands raised. Derek picked the keys back up and slapped Mark on the back before climbing into his own Jeep.

I bit my lip and smiled but then blushed again when Derek made eye contact with me before winking and dramatically blowing me a kiss. He backed out of the driveway slowly, smiling the entire time.