AN: I don't own Life with Derek. Read and review I love feedback!
Love, Ellie
Cake Testing: Four Months Until Wedding
"That one tastes the best" I said exasperatedly.
"You've said that about the last five cakes you tried." she responded rolling her eyes.
"No, that coconut cake was awful." I responded cheekily.
"I'm going to go with vanilla sheet cake and red velvet for the actual cake." she decided spontaneously. although it was probably less spontaneously and more because she can read me like a book. She made the order and I got our things ready to leave. she grabbed my arm and we began walking out the door.
"There's a Wedding Boutique down the way I wanted to stop and try on a couple of dresses." she stated expecting me to go along with her plan. which is why she was so surprised when I said
"No."
"No?" she responded incredulously.
"No. Casey I would take a bullet for you. I will go cake tasting and stationary shopping, hell I'll even help you register at Crate and Barrel. I will not watch you try on dresses. I can call Marti, Liz, Nora, or Emily and get at least one of them here in ten minutes. I'm putting my foot down, I'm not going to do this, I would officially have to hand over my Man Card. Jesus Case, it's not even my wedding." I almost begged.
"I don't get why you won't go. I mean it's girly but it's not THAT bad." She replied with a sigh.
Because seeing you in a wedding dress makes it real.
I wasn't exactly sure how to respond to her, I was way out of mt depth at this point. I needed advice from someone who wasn't my little sister. It was days like this that I missed Sam. Besides Casey, Sam had been the only one who understood and could deal with me. He always knew what to say and would put me in my place if I was doing something stupid. Agreeing to be her best man for example. It has been almost ten years and it still hits me just as hard as it did in college.
December 2010 Sophomore Year at Queens
I was watching a hockey game on the couch, and she was reading with her toes underneath my left thigh. Waiting patiently for Sam and Emily to arrive, they were coming to visit over winter break. Casey's phone began to ring on the other side of the room, so she put her book on the table and went to go answer it.
"Emily how far out are you and Sam?" She asked cheerfully.
I turned to look at Casey about to ask the same question when I saw her face and watched the phone slipping out of her hands. She looked like she had seen a ghost.
"Case? What's wrong?" She was starting to scare me with her silence. "Casey, what's going on?"
"Accident." She replied clipped.
I jumped up and picked up the phone that miraculously hadn't broken.
"Hello? This is Derek Venturi what's going on." After the words 'for your loss' I zoned out completely. Sam and Emily had slid on a patch of black ice and gone off the road. Sam died on impact and Emily was had broken both legs and her left arm. I was lost. My best friend, my brother, was gone.
I hung up the phone and put it on the kitchen table next to the two of them. I began walking down our narrow hallway to my room when she shoved my back. I turned towards her while she kept hitting me and began to yell.
"It's Your fault! If you didn't have work this week, we would've gone back home instead of them coming up to Kingston." She replied in a rage. She wasn't crying and it was eerie, just anger and violence. It was a new side to Casey that I wasn't sure I wanted to get to know.
I let her get in about ten more punches and shoves. But when she raised her hand to slap me, I caught her by the wrist. She attempted to slap me with her other hand, and I caught it as well. I pushed her against the wall and waited for her to calm down.
"Enough... enough." I said almost silently. In the years that we'd been fighting I'd never used my full strength against her, until that night. I pinned her arms to the wall on either side of her head and stared her in the eyes pleading for her to calm down. I lowered his head, so our foreheads touched, closed my eyes letting everything sink in, while a single tear fell down my left cheek.
And that's when Casey's dam broke and she began to sob. I let go of her wrists fully expecting her run to her room and cry into her pillow. What I wasn't expecting was her wrapping her arms around me and holding on for dear life. I put my left arm around her back and my right hand holding her head into my right shoulder.
We stood there for almost half an hour while she sobbed in my arms, and I held her with silent tears streaming down my face. As she began to pull away, I took her face in my hands and kissed her on the forehead. I took her hand pulled her towards the couch with me. I laid down on the couch pulled her on top of me fixed it so the blanked covered them both of us.
When I woke up in the morning she wasn't there, honestly, I wasn't expecting her to be.
That was the night that our friendship began. It was the first of many moments between us that after they happened, we never spoke about again. Something changed between us the night Sam died. It was as if we realized that we were in this together, the only bit of home we had. We weren't just stuck with each other anymore; we chose to be a part of each other's lives.
