Chapter Five: Hot for Teacher

No more than a few days after Derek and Casey had returned to school to start their second semester, Derek was called into his hockey coach's office. A part of Derek was hoping that Coach Carillo was about to tell him that he'd been bumped up to a starting position, that Derek had impressed him enough that his coach was actually going to bump a senior from his position and let a lowly freshman take it. But Derek knew there wasn't a chance of that happening. There were so few games left in the season, including playoffs, that unnecessarily messing with the lineup now would be a stupid thing to do.

No, Derek had no disillusions about this meeting. He felt the butterflies in his stomach grow the closer he stepped to the office. He raised his hand to knock, but Coach Carillo happened to look out the window and see Derek standing there mid-knock and waved him in.

"Hey, you uh, wanted to see me?" asked Derek, slightly confused as to why Coach Carillo had called the meeting.

"Take a seat," he said, gesturing to the chair on the other side of the desk. Coach Carillo waited until Derek was seated before speaking again. When his coach opened his mouth this time, he sounded a lot less cordial. "Are you trying to get yourself kicked off the team, Venturi?"

"What? No, of course not," sputtered Derek. He'd had no clue what this meeting was supposed to be about, but Coach Carillo asking him if he was trying to get himself thrown off the team had never even entered his mind. The hockey team was the only reason that Derek was at university in the first place. He couldn't remember doing anything to jeopardize his place on the team. He didn't go out partying till all hours of the night before practice and he certainly never drank on those nights either.

"Your grades are telling me otherwise," Coach Carillo replied, sounding disappointed. He set a letter down on the table in front of Derek. In the top left corner, he recognized the university's logo and written just below that were the words "Registrar's Office." Derek already knew what the letter said without having to read it, mainly because he'd received an identical one about a week earlier informing him of the fact that he was on academic probation due to his poor first semester grades. It also informed him that if he wasn't able to bring his grades up during the second half of the year, he would not be allowed to continue school and he would lose his hockey scholarship. He hadn't initially been worried about the letter. It was one of those things that he brushed off to deal with later. Apparently now was later.

"You know the university policy. All athletes playing for the university need to maintain a C+ average. If you can't bring your grades up, I can't let you play for this team next year. And this team will need you. I want you on my team next year. You're talented and have great leadership potential. I've seen you working with the other guys to help improve their game. You play for the good of the team, not just for yourself. And that's the kind of players I want next year. But you gotta get your grades up."

Derek had no idea that Coach Carillo thought so highly of him. Sure, he worked with some of the weaker players but he hadn't been doing that to earn points from the coach. He knew these guys were going to be out there on the ice with him eventually and he didn't want them out there embarrassing him or costing the team any games.

Derek really didn't know how to respond next. He could insist that he'd tried hard throughout his first semester, but that wasn't really true. He hadn't really started studying until after he'd bombed most of his midterms. That had been a shock to his system. Like someone had poured ice water all over him. He hadn't been able to talk any of his professors into giving him a retake exam. After that, he'd started going to the library more often and actually tried to finish his homework on time. And he'd actually started consistently attending his classes. But none of that seemed like the right thing to say to his coach at this time. Instead, he just settled for promising to do better.

"I don't care what you do to get your grades up as long as it's legal and ethical. Fill your schedule with math courses if you think that'll help." Coach Carillo suggested, math being the only class that Derek had gotten an A in the previous semester. "Take advantage of the university's tutoring program."

Well, Derek already had loaded up his schedule with math and science courses. Math had been the only class that came easily to him. It was the only one that didn't require him to put in lots of hours working on homework and projects. Everything had a formula and once you learned that, the problems were a snap. He'd started doing his math homework first every night because it was the easiest to get out of the way. As for campus tutoring, he'd quickly found out that working with four different tutors was going to be impossible. There was no way he could keep four weekly appointments in addition to playing or practicing hockey and actually going to class. In addition to the time crunch, the school seemed to be in desperate need of tutors since they had, at most, two students tutoring each class, which was nowhere near enough to cover the demand for tutoring with a campus their size. And almost all of the availability in the tutors' schedules fell during his hockey practices. The university's tutoring program was definitely out. There was only one other option that he could come up with. One he definitely was not looking forward to.

He'd spent the next couple of days trying to figure out a different solution to his problem, one that he wouldn't only consider using as a last resort. Unfortunately, the only solution he'd managed to come up with by the end of the week was the glaringly obvious one he'd had all along. He needed a genius to tutor him. A genius with a flexible schedule that wouldn't force him to walk all the way to the library for tutoring.

He needed to ask Casey for help.

When Derek was certain there were no other options, he steeled himself for the conversation that he was about to have (which would, no doubt, involve begging and pleading and eventually bribery).

He raised a fist to knock on Casey's door and came face to face with Casey's obnoxious roommate Tiffany, instead. A cloud of body spray, perfume, and hair products practically suffocated him the second the door opened. Derek was unable to fight back a cough as the noxious fumes seeped into his lungs.

"Can you like, do that somewhere else?" Tiffany snapped. "That's so totally gross."

Derek didn't bother to respond to that. He didn't want to spend any more time near this girl than was absolutely necessary. "Is Casey here?" he asked, even though he was almost certain that she'd have invented a convenient excuse to get out of there the second Tiffany came home. He couldn't blame her.

"Nope," she replied, slamming the door in Derek's face. Normally, he'd have been pissed someone slammed a door in his face, but in Tiffany's case, he was just glad to be done with her. Besides, he had a pretty good idea of where Casey was. There were only a handful of places she went to get away from Tiffany. The sign on Tanya's door said she was at class so Casey hadn't gone there and it was too cold to walk to the library unless absolutely necessary. He was willing to bet she'd grabbed a stack of books and gone to the study lounge at the end of their hallway.

When he walked in, he was rewarded with the sight of Casey studying at the table in the corner, her books spread out in front of her. She was scribbling furiously in a notebook, pausing only to highlight parts of a book.

"Thought I'd find you here," Derek said to announce his presence, not worrying about the volume of his voice since Casey was the only one in there.

"Really?" asked Casey as Derek sat down at her table.

"Well, Tiffany answered your door and I was nearly choked to death by a cloud of hairspray," he explained.

It was fairly common knowledge that Casey got the hell out of her room when Tiffany was getting ready to go out for the night, which was basically every night. The girl refused to get ready in the bathroom or with the door open because she was afraid that someone would walk by and steal her look for the night before she could make her big entrance (which, of course, was generally ignored by most people since they couldn't stand her).

"Has anyone ever told you what a bitch your roommate is?" quipped Derek.

"Never," said Casey in mock seriousness. "What do you want? I know you didn't come here to complain about my roommate."

"Tell me you don't always enjoy a good roommate bashing," said Derek, feigning hurt that Casey had assumed the only reason he'd come to see her was because he wanted something, no matter how accurate that assumption was this time.

Despite the fact that Casey was almost always up for a few minutes of roommate bashing, she wasn't buying into Derek's act. "You have five seconds to tell me what it is that you want or I tell Tiffany that you have a crush on her," Casey threatened and was pleased to see all the color drain from Derek's face at the possibility.

"I need your help," admitted Derek quickly. He didn't doubt that Casey would follow through with her threat. "I need to bring my grades up or I'm off the team."

"So you want me to tutor you?"

"Basically, yeah."

"What's in it for me?"

"Besides the warm fuzzy feeling of helping out your stepbrother?"

"Besides that, yeah." Casey crossed her arms and leaned back, ready to bargain. "I've got my own grades to worry about, you know? And tutoring you has gotta be a full-time job."

"I'll help you with your math class," offered Derek, ignoring her jab at him. Now was not the time to be antagonizing Casey. That was the surest way to get her to refuse.

"Really?" asked Casey dubiously. It seemed a little ironic that Derek was offering to tutor her in exchange for her tutoring him.

"It was the only class I got an A in last semester," he reminded her. That was true, and Casey had never been the best at math. "And you've got the same class this semester with the same professor," he added in a last-ditch attempt to persuade her.

"Alright, you've got a deal," agreed Casey after a moment's contemplation. As much as she hated to admit it, she needed Derek's help to get an A in math. There was no way she'd be able to do it on her own and she wasn't about to turn down her shot at straight A's this semester, even if it meant accepting help from Derek. "I've got Tuesday and Thursday nights free. Take it or leave it."


Derek had to admit that Casey was a phenomenal tutor. He'd been able to sail through most of his midterms with her help, earning nothing below a B-, at least a letter grade and a half higher than his midterms the semester before. He hadn't even minded setting aside his Tuesday and Thursday nights every week. At first, he'd thought that spending so much time with Casey would be pure torture and he had been convinced he wouldn't last more than a few weeks with her as his tutor before he wanted to gouge his eyes out and drop out of school anyway just to get away from her. At least if the first three years of their parents' marriage had been any indication.

But that hadn't been the case at all. Derek found he actually liked being tutored by Casey. She somehow made it fun. Halfway through their first session, they were both laughing so hard they could barely catch their breath. Soon after that, Derek actually began to look forward to tutoring. Through their sessions, he had also learned that he and Casey had a lot more in common than either of them ever would have thought.

The first few times that Derek had shown up for a tutoring session, Casey had been listening to one of her "girlie playlists" (otherwise known as Broadway soundtracks and pop music, according to Derek) that she'd quickly turned off when Derek walked in. So when Derek showed up sometime during their third or fourth week of tutoring, that's what he'd been expecting again. What he heard, on the other hand, was one of his favorite bands coming from her speakers.

"You're listening to Stone Temple Pilots?" He asked her, too surprised to say anything more intelligent.

"I'll turn it off in a second. Just let me get this printed first." She said as she clicked a few buttons on her computer screen.

"You can leave it on. It's a good song." He moved to turn the volume up a bit. Actually, "Creep" was one of his favorite songs by the Stone Temple Pilots, but it felt weird admitting that to Casey.

It took them a lot longer to get into tutoring that night. Instead, they'd started talking and figured out that they were both fans of bands like Green Day, Soundgarden, and Alice In Chains (the latter truly impressing Casey because most of her other friends looked at her blankly when she first mentioned them). As it turned out, they were both also fans of Law & Order: SVU, which led to Casey complaining that because of Tiffany she usually wound up missing it and had to watch online. Before he really realized what he was saying, Derek was inviting Casey to come over to his room to watch it whenever she wanted—something she took advantage of quite frequently after that.

Derek had also been ecstatic to learn that the vindictiveness that Casey had shown him in high school was now directed at Tiffany. If living with Tiffany was as hellish as it had been living with him (and Derek suspected it was), Derek didn't blame Casey one bit. Looking back at all the stunts he'd pulled with her, he was honestly surprised that Casey hadn't killed him.

One evening, they'd arrived back in Casey's room for one of their tutoring sessions just in time to hear the answering machine kick in with Tiffany's shrill voice on the other end.

"Casey, I lost my cell phone somewhere in the room and I need it. Find it for me." And without even a please or a thank you, Tiffany hung up the phone.

"Ungrateful little bitch, isn't she?" commented Derek dryly. "I don't know how you put up with her."

"Oh, I've found ways of dealing with her," said Casey calmly, setting her backpack down next to her desk. "She almost makes it too easy for me though," said Casey while deftly pulling a cell phone out of Tiffany's pile of dirty laundry, and holding it up for Derek to see.

"How'd you know it'd be there?" Derek was only half shocked that Casey was actually going to help her roommate. Casey was the type of do-gooder that would help anyone whenever they needed it, even if they hadn't asked for, or wanted, her help.

"I put it there last night when one of Tiffany's friends kept calling her at four in the morning. Of course she slept through it," said Casey, grinning a little bit. Derek was devious enough to see why Casey had hidden it in Tiffany's stuff instead of somewhere in her own things. It gave her plausible deniability. If Tiffany were to ever come across it once Casey had hidden it, Casey could just claim it had fallen out of a pocket and Derek figured that Tiffany would be none the wiser (especially since it didn't really take much to pull one over on her).

"Nice." Derek nodded his approval.

"I'm not done yet." Casey flipped open the phone and started pressing some buttons."

"What now?" asked Derek.

"Just making sure her alarm's set for tomorrow," shrugged Casey innocently.

"How early is the princess gonna wake up tomorrow?"

"Around noon," replied Casey, knowing that Tiffany would find that an ungodly hour to wake up at. "That way, if for some reason she does manage to make it out of bed before then, it'll at least interrupt the class she's supposed to be at." Casey calmly set the phone next to Tiffany's computer with Derek nodding his approval once again.

"Keep that up and people may actually start to believe us when we tell them we grew up in the same house," laughed Derek, truly impressed with Casey's coping methods.

Though neither of them wanted to admit it to the other, they were both starting to enjoy the other's company. Sometime throughout the course of their tutoring sessions, they'd started hanging out together just because they wanted to. Derek had even managed to convince Casey to come to his hockey games that semester, including all of the championship playoff games. Unfortunately, the team was eliminated from the playoffs early on, but the final game was one of the best games Derek had ever played, scoring the team's only two goals of the game. And both times he'd scored, his eyes had immediately found Casey in the stands cheering him on.


Re-uploaded with minor updates November 2022.