that girl, she's like a sunburn

You had me he thinks, for a while.

Like, she had him and she chose that? It was impossible to fathom. Like, sure the guy's decent looking and he drives a kick ass car and he graduated from Harvard Law. Sure, he's smart and he likes literature and all that shit but... What was he compared to Derek? He keeps that mind set for a month.

After that, well, reality sets in.

It is then apparent to Derek that Casey wanted someone better, that she didn't really care about him at all. It becomes obvious that Casey traded up.

And then he starts telling himself that it didn't really matter, anyways.

Yeah, she's a good fuck and she understands him better than anyone else and she's the only one who really gets him going, but, whatever. This is exactly what he wanted. He got to have his cake and eat it too.

A month later, and he's thought himself into a frenzy.

"Tell me," he says, in the hallway at a family dinner, "Tell me that he makes you feel like I did."

"What?" She says, blushing, "I'm not discussing this here. Jesus."

She tries to walk by him and he sticks his arm out, blocking her path, "Just tell me and I'll let it go."

She shoves past him, and he thinks, well.

Before, it was Marti who really got him thinking about it.

"Like, can you quit eye-fucking Casey at every possible moment, please?"

Marti. He rolls his eyes and continues trying, and failing, to fix whatever's wrong with his car. She's sixteen and a tiny package of curse words and sarcasm. She's him, but worse, really.

"I'm not even going to respond to that," he says, which is a response, but whatever. Marti kicks over a box and starts smacking her gum.

"You're an idiot, and Casey's an idiot, but stop being so... Like, tragic about it."

He looks up at her, "I have no idea what you're talking about."

"Don't patronize me, Derek."

Oh, so now she's using big, Casey words. Cool.

She sighs, "You love Casey. That's great, but now you're old and it's time to stop playing this stupid game. Do something about it."

He grimaces, "I'm not old."

"Yeah, whatever, you kind of are. Older than you were with all this shit started. And, like, I'm sick of watching you two flirt around and pretend like there's not this huge elephant in the room."

"Marti, you're crazy."

She shrugs, "Maybe so. But I'm also right, and you know it."

So she flounces off and he sits in his garage, motionless because his sixteen year old little sister just mindfucked him.

She's drunk, like, shitfaced, and she's at his door, shouting at him.

He's had a few beers, maybe a few too many, and everything she says sounds like nonsense, which it probably is.

He says, "Shhh, God, please."

She folds her arms over her chest, "I can't go home like this. Anna will make a huge deal of it, and I can't have them hanging this over my head."

"Casey, it's not the end of the world."

"It is to me," she says, and he's just drunk enough to let her in.

He sets her up on his couch, which he thinks is supremely nice of him, then he gets her a bottle of water and a couple aspirin for that killer headache she'll wake up with. He's leaving the room when she grabs his hand, pulls him down to sit beside her.

"Jason broke up with me," she mumbles, "He said I can't let loose."

Derek rolls his eyes, "I should've known this was a result of a guy hurting your ego."

"Derek, I'm not that hard to love, am I? Do you really hate me that much?"

His breath hitches, just a little, and then they're kissing and he's not sure who started it, but he's hoping it was her. The rest is history.

The middle:

She kisses him, while he's talking about something that he can't quite recall now that her mouth is on his. It's wonderful and weird and really, really hot.

And he thinks he should say something. He should probably say something. She usually wants him to say something.

(He thinks he should tell her that it's more. He wants to tell her that it's more.)

This is how it ends:

"I mean, is there a reason you're ignoring my phone calls, or are you just being crazy with a capital C?"

"Derek, really, let's just - What's the point, you know?"

"What?"

She's not making any sense, but he guesses that really shouldn't surprise him anymore. Casey braces her hand against the doorframe, like she's preparing for something big and her words kind of click in his brain. Oh.

"Wait, are you dumping me?"

"Um," she says, face red, and she's looking at the ground. She's dumping him. She's dumping him, and, really, he didn't imagine it going down this way. He thought he'd be the one ending it, and she'd start throwing things and he'd be like, whew, glad that's over, but it's not like that. At all.

"Well, okay. It's been fun. Thanks... For the sex, and all."

He turns and walks away and all he can think is really? That's it?

That's it.

In hindsight, he probably should have seen it coming.

Casey had broken every single one of her major rules by being with him, and, finally, she'd gotten tired of lowering her standards.

But, like, whatever.

Moving on.

He brings a girl named Courtney to family dinner.

She's blonde and stupid and pretty, and Edwin stares at her while Marti glares daggers at Derek. He ignores her, focuses on the way Casey's mouth moves as she tells the whole family about Patrick's great accomplishments and future plans. Patrick, all humble and clean cut, smiles and makes sure to compliment Casey in all the right ways. The exchange is enough to make him lose his appetite.

He forgets Courtney is even sitting beside him, and, later, when she's in his bed, he wants to forget she even exsists. He wakes up wishing that her hair was brown.

It's just that, you know, he didn't think it would be that easy.

He didn't think he'd get Casey, get her in bed, and then she'd just let him off the hook. She didn't drag him kicking and screaming into a relationship, didn't force him to talk about his feelings, didn't do anything, and it was shocking.

He's just so happy about it that he doesn't know what to do.

Really.

His whole damn family is fucking smitten with Patrick, with the exception of his sister.

Patrick teaches Simon how to play soccer, and that's how easy it is to win his baby brother over. He talks politics with Lizzie, and is conveniently on her side about every issue. Edwin is a harder bid, but it happens, and Derek looks at him like a traitor. Marti, on the other hand, is forever in his corner, snearing insults at Patrick that are barely disguised as nice. Nora thinks he's a keeper and George likes the lawyer in him.

And the worst part is, the guy is so likeable that it's painfully obvious to Derek how good of a decision Casey's made. He itches in his skin at dinner, uncomfortable and angry and confused. Shouldn't he be happy that Casey's off his back and out of his life? Isn't this what he wanted?

And then it's Christmas and Nora has begged them both to stay home for winter break.

Casey walks around the house in her yoga pants with her hair a mess and he wants to grab her, shove her into a closet and just fucking show her how she's making him feel. It's weird and he wonders if she knows.

One night, in the kitchen, she's practically begging him to say something. She's drinking a glass of water, sitting in that spot (same difference), when he walks in. He fills up a cup of his ownn, stands in front of her, and he could just - but he doesn't even care.

"Night," he says lamely, before going up to his room and quietly kicking the shit out of himself in his mind.

Somehow, he gets dragged to the bar on New Years Eve with Emily, Ralph, Sam, and Casey.

He's outside during the countdown, smoking a cigarette because he does that now, sometimes, when she stumbles out the door. Her cheeks are pink and her hair's flying everywhere and she's drunk, her inebriation painfully apparent in the way she plucks the cigarette from between his fingers. He's ninety-nine percent sure that she's going to throw it down and stamp it out, but she suprises him, takes a slow drag off of it before letting the smoke flow smoothly between her lips. She smiles triumphantly and hands it back.

"Who knew?" He says, a little slowly, damn those shots of whiskey,and she looks so.

"Do you miss me?" She blurts out, her eyes wide after the words leave her mouth, like they'd slipped out without her knowledge.

"Casey," he says, "I'm not discussing this here, Jesus." It's an echo of the words she said weeks ago, and she catches it.

She glares at him, "You don't have to say it. I see the way you look at me."

"Cocky much?" He says, and he's like, shit.

"Not cocky, just realistic."

"Are you honestly trying to fight with me about this? About your insecurities? You've been dancing around the house just so you can get a rise out of me. You're fucked." He says, and she steps back like she's been bitten. Her face scrunches up, and she folds her arms across her chest. He knows it's stinging because she doesn't reply for a few moments.

She shakes her head, "I just wanted to know if you fucking - whatever, forget it."

Forget it? He wishes he knew how.

She tries to walk away but he grabs her arm and pulls her back to him. He kisses her fiercely, like he's wanted to do for weeks. Her mouth tastes like something fruity and he keeps on, keeps on, until she finally pulls away from him.

She's breathing shakily as she flees back into the bar. He lights another cigarette, and thinks, why don't you go crawl under someone else's skin?

He throws her late Christmas present away.

She won't look at him for the rest of the break.

He goes back to Queens and he does the dating thing and the partying thing, the trying to forget it thing, and it all seems okay for a while.

Then he sees Casey in the library and nothing is okay, not even a little bit. He wants to just shake her, because it's like his brain is stuck on this thing, repeating over and over, and she's just... There. Like, she has severely fucked him up.

He sees her at a bar with Patrick, and it looks like they're fighting and he gets this huge rush of satisfaction.

Patrick leaves and Casey downs her drink and he sees an opening, but he doesn't know if he should take it. Then, well, after two or three shots, he does.

"Trouble in paradise?" He asks, and Casey looks over, looks at him like, oh, perfect.

"Every relationship has it's hurdles," and he thinks, relationship, there's that word.

"Hurdles?" He laughs, and Casey shoots him a look.

"Yes. There are obstacles, but you get through them."

They didn't get through them. Hell, he wasn't even aware that they had them. Did they? God.

"So you're just an expert on love now, huh?"

"I do know a lot on the matter," she won't look at him.

He scoffs, "Romance novels don't exactly make you a guru, Casey."

"Like I can take your word for it, like you even know what love is."

"I sure know what it isn't," he says, and he doesn't know what he means but he just really wants her to look at him.

She looks at him, fuck, finally, "What are you getting out of this, Derek? Seriously. What is it that you want?"

You. No. What?

"I just... Whatever. Have fun drowning your sorrows."

And then he turns, and then his drunken mind gets the best of him (even though he's not that drunk) and he says, right into her ear, "You're trying to act like you've found your fairytale, but here's the thing: your delivery sucks. I can see it in your eyes."

He finds out through, what a surprise, Marti, that Casey and Patrick have called it quits.

"Can you, like, fucking do something now?"

He hangs up the phone.

A month or so of waiting around for Casey to do something rewards him with... Nothing.

He sits in his room and stares at the ceiling and wonders if this is it. He showed his cards, and she didn't make a move, so this is it.

And then it's raining and she's pounding on his door and she's soaking wet, shivering, and she's angry, brutally angry.

"I need you to tell me, right now, that you wanted anything else besides sex. That when we were whateverwe were, you wanted something more."

He doesn't answer, partially because her t-shirt's sticking to her body all seductively and partially because he can't formulate an answer.

"Right. That's what I thought. This was just another way for you to mess with my head."

"No, Casey, wait."

She stops, turns around.

"I didn't know what I wanted, but I didn't want it to end. I didn't want to be dropped like some bad habit and replaced with fucking Patrick. Fucking vanilla, safe choice Patrick."

Casey fumes, "How was I supposed to know that I was worth keeping around?"

His mouth drops open, "How could you think you deserved anything less?"

She doesn't answer him.

"I might not have been your fairytale, Casey, but the fact is... I would've tried. You just never gave me the chance."

After that, there's more silence.

More days spent going through the motions, but wondering, mostly, where Casey is, what she's doing. Finally, he realizes that all these weird feelings the past few months have been a longing for Casey, for what he never had. He'd missed her, and it was still hard to admit.

He goes home for another designated family dinner, and Casey sits across from him, still as a statue. Nora tries to coax words out of her, but she barely replies, and Derek does the same, too fixated on watching Casey's every move.

That night, in the hallway between their old rooms, they run into each other.

She takes a deep breath, like she's preparing for something, "I'm sorry," she says, slowly,"I'm sorry for not giving you the chance you deserved. I'm sorry for assuming that you didn't have feelings. I'm sorry for treating you like you were disposable. I was trying to protect myself, I didn't want to let myself get attatched to you because I thought you could never feel the way that I did."

He lets out a sigh that feels like relief, "I'm sorry for letting you feel like I didn't want you. I'm sorry for never telling you how much I wanted something more. I'm sorry for pretending, and for letting you walk away."

She nods, "Okay. Apology accepted."

"Good," he says, and then comes the awkward silence.

"We could start over, if you'd like?" She says, finally, the hint of a smile on her lips.

"That'd be cool, I guess."

"You guess?" She says, eyebrow raised.

And then he kisses her and it's good and she blushes for the rest of the night. Marti winks at him when no one's looking and he doesn't know what will happen when they get back to Queens, but knowing that Casey knows now, that she really knows, well, that makes him feel a hell of a lot better.