Casey entered the kitchen the next morning feeling light and – dare she admit – slightly giddy. Last night, watching hockey with Derek, had been great, despite her almost-colossal fall when the evening first started.

The previous night Casey had tried to tap into her inner Edwin and Lizzie and observe Derek while they watched the game. She hoped to finally gain some tangible evidence to the idea that Derek liked her as Emily had been hinting. But for the life of her, she could not admit to herself that Derek liked her any more than as a step-sister. Sure, there was that moment where they held hands for a few seconds and he even threw her some of his oh-so-charming smiles and such, but Casey was not fully convinced.

Derek liking Casey was a hard concept to grasp. If he liked her so much, then why did he treat her like dirt up until a few days ago? Casey felt like she was reading too much into Derek's actions. For all Casey knew, this is what nice!Derek was like, nothing else.

Her spirit dampened at that possibility. Because, although she didn't get concrete enough evidence to prove Derek liked her, she had come to the dreaded realization that she indeed liked Derek. A lot. She sighed knowing that this new admission was not going to be easy to hide.

Seemingly, one by one everyone started filing into the kitchen, each bidding Casey a good morning before they scattered around the kitchen, getting what they wanted for their own breakfast. Since she wasn't alone anymore, Casey tried to force herself away from her thoughts and began to pour orange juice into a cup.

Soon after, Derek entered the kitchen, rubbing his tired eyes. Casey's heart stumbled over its next beat.

"Morning, Case," he sleepily slurred to her. He squeezed her shoulder kindly in greeting as he passed her on his way to the cereal cabinet.

"M-morning," she barely sputtered out.

"Casey! Your drink!" Lizzie shouted.

Casey immediately looked down only to notice her drink flowing over the edge of her cup and all over the counter. She immediately jumped up and turned around to get something to clean up the mess. However, that action only resulted in Casey bumping into Nora, which caused Nora to drop carton of eggs on the floor. Edwin then proceeded to slip and fall on the raw eggs, crashing into George, whose coffee then spilled all over his suit.

Casey covered her mouth in shock, whispering an apologetic sorry for the disaster she had just unintentionally caused.

"Jeez, Casey," Edwin muttered from the kitchen floor. "Warn a guy if we're currently in production for the Klutzilla sequel!"

Casey's eyes widened at what Edwin had just said, making her blush profoundly. She could hear Derek roaring with laughter over in the corner, but she couldn't look his way in fear of embarrassing herself further.

"Sorry!" she apologized again, before fleeing the room, and then the house all together.

…

"Casey?" Emily warily called out to her best friend, who was currently sitting solemnly in front her locker with her knees bent up to her chest.

"Hey, Em," she greeted back weakly, grimacing.

"What happened?" Emily questioned, knowing something must have happened if she looked so depressed. "You look like someone took your day planner or something."

"Oh, it's so so so so so much worse than that," Casey replied. She then buried her hands in her face in shame.

Emily kneeled down next to her friend. "Casey," she said, trying to pry Casey's hands away from her face. "Why do you look so down?"

"I tripped last night, but then this morning it was the orange juice and the domino effect…" Casey mumbled against her hands miserably.

Emily scrunched her face up in puzzlement. "Casey, you not making any sense right now…"

"I like Derek!" Casey whimpered frantically.

"WHAT?!"

"I know," Casey bellowed, starting to get up from the floor. "I mean I-" But Casey was cut off by Emily's bright eyes and increasingly wide smile. "Why are you looking at me like that?"

Emily took Casey's hands and jumped up and down excitedly, squealing at octaves much higher than Casey assumed were normal. "FINALLY!" Emily then hollered, smiling like a Cheshire cat.

Now it was Casey's turn to be confused. "Finally?"

"Oh, come on, Casey," Emily relented. "From the moment you moved in, it's been 'Derek this' and 'Derek that'."

"I am venting" Casey insisted, interrupting Emily. "If you had someone teasing you and pranking you daily, you would vent to me too!"

"I probably would," Emily calmly admitted. "But Casey, at first, yeah, you were just venting, but then…"

"Then what?" Casey quietly pressed.

"Well," Emily started then paused, trying hard to find the best way to word what she was about to say. "You – You would just keep talking about him, even if he hadn't done anything bothersome at the time. Everything would somehow make its way back to Derek, despite how completely unrelated he was to what we were talking about. Then when he was actually really nice towards you…Casey…"

Casey groaned as she threw her face back into her hands. Had she really talked about Derek that much? But then she remembered her own self-imposed No-Derek-Talk rule with Max and the countless times she broke it, a day…

With that revelation, Casey groaned again.

"All I'm saying, Casey, is that you liking Derek doesn't surprise me," Emily spoke, breaking Casey from her thoughts. "But does finding out you like him really worth the freak-out you were just having?"

"I wasn't freaking out because I like Derek. I was freaking out because Klutzilla is apparently back because I like Derek, and I'm making my crush on him completely obvious!" Casey sighed, before continuing. "Last night I almost fell and threw his dinner in his face. And then this morning I spilled my orange juice because he walked in the room, and then one thing led to another and everything was falling all over the place in the kitchen. It was terrible."

Emily rubbed Casey's back, knowing she needed some comfort. "It'll be alright, Casey. I'm sure Derek thought nothing of it. Boys can be quite dense."

"Well he at least thought it was funny," Casey pointed out bitterly. "He was cracking up and the mortification felt like falling on Corey Plunkett's butt all over again, except this time it was worse because Derek's the actual guy I'm clumsy over. Sam at least never laughed at me…"

Casey groaned some more. "And now he probably knows I like him and he's either going to shun me from his life or tease me for the rest of my life."

"Casey, if he figured it out, I doubt he'd do either of those things. What have I been trying to tell you these past couple days?" Emily said.

Casey scoffed. "I don't know why you think Derek likes me," Casey told her friend. "He's just keeping his part of our agreement and being nice to me."

"Casey…" Emily began, but when she saw Casey's eyes suddenly magnify to the size of saucers she stopped. Turning around, Emily saw Derek walking down the hallway.

"I can't face him," Casey said frantically. "Not yet! I gotta go!" And before Emily could say or do anything to stop her, she began speed walking the opposite way down the hallways.

…

"Casey!" Casey heard being yelled behind her. She knew who it was, obviously, but this only made her quicken her pace as best as she could.

"Case," the voice said again, but closer. This time the person attached to the voice was able to get ahold of one of her shoulders and spin her around to face them.

"Hey," Derek shortly greeted as he was panting from the running he did to catch up to her.

Casey dipped her head down, still embarrassed from breakfast. "Hey," she replied quietly.

"Where you off to in such a hurry?" he questioned, "Didn't you hear me calling you?"

"Sorry," Casey simply said, not wanting to lie or tell the truth.

"You left so quickly this morning that you forgot your lunch," Derek pointed out, holding up a small paper bag. "And oh, man! You should have seen it! After you left, Edwin kept slipping and he had egg all in his hair! So comical. It was like watching a live-action cartoon!" he continued, laughing at the memory.

Casey eye's thinned. "Thanks for the lunch," she said tightly, not exactly enjoying Derek's laughter. She then snatched the paper bag and turned away to walk down the hall again. She needed to cool off. This could very well turn into a full-blown fight and Casey was not going to lose her bet with Emily.

"Whoa! Where you going? What's wrong?" Derek asked, following right behind her.

Casey spun around quickly to face Derek, who almost walked right into her, but luckily was able to stop himself from a collision. "You really want to know what's wrong?" Casey asked, her voice doubtful. It was weird to think Derek actually cared about her feelings towards something. Usually he was very detached from anything that wasn't hockey or boobs.

Derek raised his eyebrow. "I wouldn't ask if I didn't want to know," he replied, "Now, can you take a step down from the melodrama and tell me what's wrong?"

"You're laughing," she started, but abruptly stopped, "Can you just please not make fun of me about this morning's Klutzilla incident anymore? I'm mortified as it is."

"Case, I wasn't making fun of you, nor was I planning to. It was just an accident. A funny one," he said, smirking slightly, "but an accident."

Casey crossed her arms stubbornly. "You really weren't going to make fun of me?" she cautiously asked. She felt so childlike as he looked up at him from under her eyelashes.

"I really wasn't," Derek confirmed softly.

"And you weren't laughing at me?"

Derek laughed lightly. "Of course I was laughing at you, Princess. But not nearly as much as I was laughing at Edwin," he said truthfully, then chuckled some more. Casey sighed. Derek rolled his eyes at her theatrics.

"Case, I just can't turn off my laugh when I find something funny," he told her. "Admit it though, if I had caused that whole thing, you so would have been laughing at me."

Casey tried to smother the smile that was dying to spread across her face. Derek smirked, noticing it.

"Plus," Derek said, speaking up again, "friends can laugh at their friends. You have probably laughed at Emily and vice versa. I know I laugh at Ralph, like, all the time so…" he trailed off when he noticed shocked expression form on Casey's face. "What?"

"Friends? Are you saying we're…?" Casey wondered out loud.

"Uh," Derek let out, nervously rubbing the back of his neck. "I mean, I guess, kinda. We're not exactly ripping each other's throats out anymore and I never considered you family so…"

Casey couldn't help but finally let her smile break loose. If he saw her as a friend now, that meant she was progressing, right? "Friends," she said, her smile only growing wider as she tested out the word. "I guess that would best describe whatever this is," she explained, biting her lip nervously.

Derek smirked playfully towards her. "Well, okay, friend. I guess I should walk you to your homeroom. We can't have you late, now can we?"

"No, we cannot," Casey mocked seriously, trying to sustain giggles from erupting, as well as the butterflies.

A/N: Wow, I can't believe it's been since September since I last updated and I am truly sorry about that. I didn't even realize it had been that long. Also, this chapter was giving me the biggest difficulty, writer's block wise, and I rewrote this whole chapter a couple times just because I was never satisfied with it.

Hopefully you still enjoy the chapter and you all are still reading!

REVIEW REPLY:

Guest: I am still writing this story. Again, sorry it took so long for this chapter. So happy to hear you reread the story again and you think everything is in-character. I always worry about that. Thanks for reviewing!

DrawingMyHeartOut: Well, it's not the last last chapter, so I hope you see this and read this. Thanks for reviewing!

TheOnceAnonymous14: Glad you are enjoying the story so much. Thanks for reviewing too!

Hermanoteu: Glad you're learning a little bit of Hockey from this story. Lol. And Derek tried to get Edwin, but Edwin was just a little too fast last chapter. Lol. Thanks for reviewing!

UselessScottishTigerGirl556: Your review made me very happy. Thank you! :) Thanks for reviewing too!

Amyh52, yanira94, maroon 5 222, NarikotheShadow, JulietheGreat, wprincessannw, Baku babe, jazminnrosee, VeVe2491, CatzzCK, Dark-Supernatural-Angel, othfan67, lynnette15, and Jack Frost lover cadi93 also thanks for reviewing!