A/N: I am not exactly thrilled with this chapter...sigh...and I am sorry for it.

Disclaimer: I do not own LwD or the Toronto Maple Leafs(I have no clue about Derek's favorite hockey team so I made them it).

And thanks to Caryla for beta-ing this chapter. It was a lot worse when I sent it to her. :)

Nora looked around the table apprehensively. This lunch had been the worst, most awkward lunch she had ever attended—far more awkward than the time when her ex-husband and George had been seated at the same table.

Derek and Casey were unusually quiet and kept sneaking glances at each other when they thought the other wasn't looking. Vicki kept looking at them thoughtfully while Edwin and Lizzie made no bones about their fascination with Derek and Casey and openly stared at them. Only Marti seemed like her normal self. Well, as normal as pretending like a cat could get.

Nora didn't think she could take anymore of this awkwardness. She would even have welcomed some old-fashioned sibling rivalry from Derek and Casey. She quickly amended that. Derek and Casey gave a whole new meaning to sibling rivalry; they made it a sibling war. But still, it made everything feel right. This silence was all so wrong. It felt as though she was trapped in some sort of warped universe.

She was going to split the family for dinner. She would send the kids out and then George and she would take the adults and Vicki out for dinner. She felt slightly better after making the decision and concentrated on her steak. George had actually done a decent job with the food.

Casey poked at her steak, lost in her own world. Vicki's words played over again and again in her head. Where in the world did Vicki get the idea that her and Derek made a good couple? Definitely not from her and definitely not from Derek. Cousin Vicki was deluded, Casey concluded, immediately feeling better after coming to that conclusion.

Derek steadily shoveled food into his mouth. So far things had been going smoothly and Casey's cousin actually believed that they were together and were attracted from the very beginning. He did not agree with the second part of it, honestly. There was no way he was attracted to Casey. Sure, she was good looking but she was just not his type. This was funny because Derek's type was just about any girl—just not Casey type girl.

Edwin and Lizzie looked from Casey to Derek, back and forth, trying to glean any bit of information they could from surprisingly impassive faces.

--

After lunch, Derek went straight up to his room and threw himself on the bed. He had his earphones and was nodding along to the music when the door opened and his headphones were gently taken off. He opened his eyes to see Nora standing over him.

"Derek, I need to ask a favor of you," she said sitting down on his swivel chair.

"What favor?" Derek asked sitting up.

"I need you take everyone out so that George and I can take Vicki and her parents out," Nora said tentatively.

"No way," Derek said flatly. Taking everyone to the mall was something he refused to do.

"Please, Derek. I need to keep Casey and Vicki apart. I know sooner or later I am going to witness a throw down." Nora pleaded.

"Fine. But what's in it for me?"

"A 'get out of chores free for a week' card?" Nora asked hopefully.

"I don't do them anyway, so it's not much of a bribe," Derek pointed out helpfully, smirking.

"Um…I get you tickets to the Toronto Maple Leafs game!" Nora said brightly, knowing she had winner.

"You got me there," Derek said ruefully. Damn. Nora was much too clever and she knew all his weaknesses.

"Fine. I will go." he said throwing himself back on the bed.

'Thank you, so very much, Derek." Nora stepped forward to hug him and Derek awkwardly accepted. Nora was nice, but not when she went all motherly on him. Okay, well, sometimes it was nice. But he was sixteen, for goodness sakes, and he couldn't be accepting hugs from his stepmother.

He made the exception this one time though because she looked so harried and tired and he kind of felt bad that in someway he was a contributor to the tension, just by being a part of Casey's plan.

--

At any other time everyone would have protested about going to the mall but because of the present situation everyone was eager to get as far as possible from Vicki. Casey especially. Even though she was going to the mall with all her siblings and Derek, she was happy about it. Well, she was as happy as she could get about going with Derek.

There wasn't much to choose between Derek and Vicki, but Casey would have picked Derek over Vicki any day. Which, coming from Casey, gave a very fair estimate of how much she disliked Vicki. I mean, considering that she would pick Derek—the person who constantly annoyed her, pulled a million pranks on her, and in general made her teenage life miserable—over her.

Edwin and Lizzie sat in the backseat with Casey while Marti sat up front with Derek. There was constant chatter on the way to the mall, but all of it came from Edwin, Lizzie, and Marti. Casey did not even once criticize Derek's rash driving, and Derek had nothing obnoxious to say.

Casey stared out of the window. This felt really weird. She had never been out with Derek without George and Nora. Derek stole a few glances at a pensive Casey from time to time in the rear view mirror. He had to admit; when she was quiet she actually looked pretty. Well, she always looked pretty, another thing he wouldn't let her know, but during moments of solitude the prettiness always seemed intensified.

He suddenly realized that he had been debating Casey's prettiness and that made him want to say something rude to get her all riled up. But the saddest thing was that he was unable to think of anything rude to say.

For the first time in his young life Derek Venturi had nothing rude at all to say to Casey. A fact he noted with great disgust.

He dropped them off in front of the mall while he went hunting for parking space. He told them he'd meet them at the food court. All his Casey-centric thinking had given him an appetite which only be satisfied by the downing of some heavy-duty junk food.

He got out of the car and locked it before making his way to the mall. On the way, he passed a few pretty girls and shot them a dazzling smile. It automatically happened—whenever he saw a pretty girl, he smiled at her. His brain was just wired that way.

He entered the mall and saw that Edwin and Lizzie were browsing through a bookstore while Casey was trying to unsuccessfully drag Marti away from the charms of an over-size teddy bear. He wondered whether he should step in to help, but was distracted by a pretty girl at the candy counter. So instead, he made a beeline to her, and was found there later by an indignant Casey carrying Marti on her hip. He reluctantly abandoned his pursuit of the blond beauty—but not before giving her a cheery wink and getting her number.

Casey glared at Derek. It was so like him to go off gallivanting and leaving her to manage everything. She fumed silently, wondering why she had thought she would pick him over Vicki. It was like choosing between the devil and the deep blue sea. But the thing with Derek was that, out of the blue; he would do these really sweet things for her despite protesting left, right, and center that he did it for himself. Like when he had agreed to help her out with this entire evil cousin business. Sometime she just didn't know what to think of him.

Derek noticed Casey stewing and prudently went and fished Edwin and Lizzie out of the bookstore. He really did not feel up to a shouting match with her.

Marti loudly announced that she was hungry, so they all made their way to the food court. It was funny in a way. They looked like a family with Derek shepherding Edwin and Lizzie and Casey trying to handle Marti, and more than one person gave them a second look as they made their way by. Casey and Derek did make a very attractive couple, though if they had known that was what people were thinking they would have immediately increased the distance between them.

They all bought whatever they wanted before sitting down at a table. Casey was just laughing at something that Edwin had said about Derek's lack of hygiene and Derek was swatting him on his head when Marti piped up.

"Look, Sam and Emily," she said, pointing them out.

Casey and Derek immediately looked up to see their respective best friends walking into the food court holding hands, in a way that could only be characterized as romantic. Casey and Derek looked at each other, stunned. It looked like they were not the only ones with a secret relationship. Sam and Emily were apparently having one too. The only difference was while Casey and Derek's was pretend, Sam and Emily's seemed frighteningly real.

Why were their best friends hiding it from them, why wouldn't they tell them? Those were just few of the questions running through Casey and Derek's minds as they looked at each other, trying but failing to process this whole new development.

Edited as of April 19th, 2010.