I don't know if it's this story, or just my mental state this year (probably the latter), but I seem unable to stick with it. And unfortunately, my schedules gives me less free time this semester. Terribly sorry to keep doing this long absence thing. But I really do have an outline, and I will do my best to keep cranking out chapters. Feel free to yell if I'm taking too long, which I'm apparently bound to do.
Disclaimer: 'Tis what I'tis.
This was not going to be a pleasant evening. Standing and moving toward the door where he could hear the shift of the lock, Derek briefly wondered how almost a week and a half had managed to pass. He had almost wished the work week would continue, much as he hated the structure of it, but Saturday had arrived and it refused to let him off the hook.
The doorknob finally turned and Derek grinned at the sight of Kendra, turned away from him and attempting to stuff the key back into her purse, pushing open the door with her hip. Finally managing to contain the offending item, she brushed the hair out of her eyes and graced him with a smile, absently closing the door and looking him up and down.
"Well don't you look good tonight," she intoned pleasantly, walking toward him and pushing herself to her toes in order to kiss him. Derek pulled her in as he kissed her back before allowing her to settle back onto her heels.
"You're not too bad, yourself," he muttered appreciatively as he glanced down at her. He had no idea how this had managed to evolve into a semi-formal affair, but his resentment of the fact was tempered by the fact that Kendra looked fantastic in her little black dress. Slightly tempered, at least.
"New earrings," she announced, swishing her head so they sparkled as they moved.
He nodded his approval, though he really didn't care much about the earrings, and used the opportunity to kiss her again.
"Nice," he smiled as he pulled away. Kendra returned the grin as she grabbed his arm and led him toward the door.
"Come on," she told him with a playful roll of her eyes. "We don't want to be late."
"Kendra, it's just dinner with my family. You've eaten over there a thousand times."
"Yes," she told him with obvious accommodations for his male mentality, "but this is different."
"How?" he asked her pointedly, but she merely shook her head and pulled him out the door.
They did, in fact, manage to arrive at least three minutes before seven, which not only seemed to convince Kendra that the evening would go well, but also quite shocked Nora. She opened the door with a surprised glance at her watch before ushering them into the obviously freshly cleaned living room.
Derek couldn't help a small snort at the air of pretension around the evening. Family dinners were supposed to be loud and casual, but of course this one promised to be awkward. The fact that Kendra was his fiancée now by no means gave Nora the right to try to make this a formal occasion. And why did she have to invite Jenny he added with a mental sigh. At least Kendra's cousin wasn't there yet.
"Derek!" his dad greeted heartily as he emerged from the kitchen, passing his wife, who had apparently been expecting them later and needed to finish up some things. Derek grinned. None of the kids were downstairs yet either; it was kind of fun catching them off guard. "So you've decided finally to grace our humble abode. What's it been, months, years?"
Derek rolled his eyes and brushed off the question with a grin. "How's it going, Dad?"
"Oh, you know. Busy day."
"Cleaning?" Derek asked rhetorically.
His dad grinned and shrugged. "That was mostly the kids, but Nora wouldn't let me off completely." He said it with a sense of false self-pity, but his smile made it clear he didn't mind too much. "And how are you, Kendra? It really has been forever since we've seen you."
"Oh, I'm fabulous, George," Kendra replied, grinning. Derek glanced down and grinned as well. One of the best things about Kendra was her enthusiasm; he never had to guess what she was thinking.
George nodded, but his reply was interrupted by a sudden bout of noise from the upper hallway.
With the way Edwin thundered easily down the stairs, Lizzie following slightly more gracefully after, Derek never would have guessed his little brother would soon be graduating from University. Of course, Derek himself hadn't grown up overmuch either, so he really couldn't talk, but he still shook a rueful head at his little brother.
"Bro," Edwin greeted, coming to a stop in front of Derek. "How's it going?"
"Hey, Derek," Lizzie greeted easily, coming to a stop next to Edwin.
"Hey guys," he greeted, bumping Edwin in the shoulder with one hand while bestowing a brief one-armed hug on Lizzie.
"Kendra," Edwin nodded acknowledgement as Lizzie smiled a greeting at her. Kendra returned the gesture, then glanced up as the sound of heels graced the stairs.
"Marti, look at you!" Kendra enthused with just a hint of a squeal. Marti descended with a bemused grin in a pale pink knee length dress and matching heels. Edwin and Lizzie laughed; while Kendra usually adored Marti, she hadn't made it a secret that she didn't agree with her bold fashion choices. "You look so grown up!" Derek's fiancée continued. Then, in a conspiratory manner, she added, "Did you meet a boy?"
Derek rolled his eyes. Much as he disliked the idea, even if Marti had met a boy Kendra should know better than that. Like his sister would change for anyone.
"No," Marti replied with the barest hint of exasperation. "Just trying something new," she explained, obviously preferring to leave it at that.
"I thought this was just for the week?" Derek grinned as Marti smiled with a hint of mischief. That was never good, but Derek couldn't help but laugh in response.
"I thought I could use a bit more practice. You know, I don't have a classic personality." Her eyes darted toward the kitchen as she flourished the words, and Derek couldn't help but raise a brow suspiciously.
Narrowing his eyes at his sister, Derek wondered how to voice the question so Marti might actually answer it. His opportunity was snatched away by the ringing of the doorbell, and a whole new set of greetings as Jenny hugged Kendra, introduced herself to Lizzie, Edwin and George, casually greeted Derek and exchanged a secretive smile with Marti. Derek had to admit that his encounters with Jenny had improved over the week, but he couldn't shake the suspicion that she was still up to something.
Soon they had all settled onto the various pieces furniture in the front room. The fact that everyone was in semi-casual attire lent a certain oddness to the setting, but so far the awkwardness Derek had predicted stayed fairly suppressed. It would be, at least, an evening away from wedding planning, Derek mused. Though, he amended, he was sure they would talk about it enough to drive him insane. But as Nora quartered herself in the kitchen, the topic had yet to come up when footsteps behind him told Derek that she was coming to announced dinner.
"Time for dinner," came the soft yet slightly strained voice of, not his stepmother, but his stepsister.
Derek whipped his head around as the rest of the room's occupants started standing.
"Oh. Casey. Uh," Derek fumbled slightly in surprise before managing a fairly normal, "Hey."
"Hello, Derek," Casey returned, wiping clean hands on her fairly clean apron and smiling slightly stiffly.
"Casey!" Kendra broke in enthusiastically, breaking the awkward tension that Derek doubted she had picked up on. "I didn't know you were coming tonight!"
As Casey turned to Kendra, her stance seemed to become more natural. "I've just been helping Mom in the kitchen," she explained as Nora emerged from the kitchen, as if to punctuate her words.
"Of course Casey's here," she said warmly as she set a giant bowl in the middle of the table. "She's family, too."
Of course, Derek couldn't help but add to himself with a hint of irony.
With a shake of her head, Nora moved back to the kitchen to finish transferring the meal to the table.
"I'd better help her," Casey told them, heading after her mother as the rest of the family moved across the room to sit at the table. Derek sat at his usual spot across from Casey's and repeated his earlier sentiments with a sigh. This was not going to be a fun evening.
"I can't believe I haven't taken you to see it yet," Kendra was saying, glancing around the living room at a fairly interested Nora, a bored Lizzie, a doubtful Marti and a politely nodding Casey. Dinner had finished long before, and everyone had adjourned to the front room to catch up. "It's so pretty when it's decorated. Jenny and I went to see a wedding there a few days ago, and I just loved it," she punctuated the statement with an emphatic hand gesture, and Derek tried his best to look interested despite the fact that she wasn't paying him any mind. Jenny, however, glanced over and stifled a knowing laugh at the look on his face, to which he rolled his eyes and glanced over at his dad and Edwin. They appeared slightly worse off; his Dad, though long gone, was nodding every few seconds while Edwin looked like he was contemplating suicide.
"And we're having white roses with yellow accents," Kendra continued on in ignorance of the less than enthusiastic crowd. "But I haven't quite decided on the entire color scheme yet."
Glancing sideways at her sister and youngest stepbrother, who seemed to be considering a covert distraction of some kind, Casey kindly interjected, "Blue's a good color for you. What about sapphire?"
Kendra beamed at the input, but both women's gazes flickered briefly to Derek when he snorted quietly.
"Something wrong, Der?" Kendra asked graciously. She was obviously in her zone and not ready to let anything affect her.
"Of course, not, Kendra," he told her with a forced smile, fighting a desire to say more.
"Okay," she accepted with only a hint of dubiousness, smiling faintly at him. Casey hastily turned back to Kendra and opened her mouth to continue with the forced compliments.
Derek could feel his old irritations rising, and before he could stop himself he had muttered, "But seriously, dark blue in a wedding?"
"It's called sapphire, Derek," Casey told him without turning, false politeness interlaced with her tone. "It's a rich and beautiful color that would look wonderful in small quantities and give the insinuation of color to the room."
Derek rolled his eyes, but before he could rebut Kendra turned to him with a slightly pleased smile, obviously choosing to ignore the underlying tones of the exchange.
"We don't have to use sapphire, Derek. Casey was just making a suggestion. I was really thinking more of a very soft pink. It would look good with the yellow and white, wouldn't it?" She was watching him expectantly, obviously wanting an answer now that he had involved himself in the conversation.
"I don't know, Kendra," he sighed distractedly, releasing his festering resentment into the air before turning his full attention to his fiancée. "Whatever you want is fine, really."
"Are you sure?" she asked, mouth tightening slightly but tone still light. "I mean, if you have an opinion about this, maybe we should go over some of the other details and make sure you're okay with them. I mean, it is your wedding, too."
Derek shrugged, and Kendra stared at him for a moment before returning to her conversation with Casey, who seemed bent on ignoring her stepbrother's interruption completely. Kendra, however, didn't seem able to fully invest herself in the conversation again. Every few minutes, she would glance over at her fiancée, who was slouching further and further into his chair. After ten minutes of this, Kendra stopped listening to Nora, who had involved herself in the discussion as well, and turned purposefully toward her fiancée.
"Look. Derek." Kendra was obviously frustrated, and what was probably a well-meaning chastisement was quickly becoming an argument starter. "I know that planning a wedding isn't exactly one of your interests. But could you pretend to care about what I have to say for just one night?"
He glanced up, his mind startled from its wanderings, and registered her sentence with a hint of anger. It wasn't like he didn't care about Kendra, he was just sick of the wedding. She should already know that, he rationalized to himself as he proceeded to tell her as much in what he hoped weren't biting tones.
"'Sick of the wedding?'" she repeated in scandalized tones, as McDonald-Venturis began to pick up on the brewing fight and shift about uneasily. Derek knew how Kendra was interpreting that sentence, but his irritation wouldn't allow him to correct her. He didn't really know why he felt so angry right then, but if he were honest with himself it had very little to do with Kendra and quite a bit to do with another occupant of the room.
"Yes," he said shortly instead, as Kendra simply gaped.
"So, you guys have a bathroom around here?" Jenny asked in a surprisingly subtle attempt to diffuse the tension in the room.
"It's upstairs," Nora told her, but the rest of the room ignored her directions as they watched the young couple with barely hidden interest. Jenny muttered a quick, "Thanks," before slipping from her chair and heading up the stairs with only a few surreptitious glances behind her. No one would have been surprised to see her stop at the top of the stairway and duck her head back toward the living room.
"Then why are we getting married?" Kendra asked irrationally, throwing a furious look at Derek.
"I don't know," he said, throwing his hand up in frustration. It wasn't true, but he was so sick of the evening he just needed an outlet. A distraction.
Kendra looked at him, hurt flashing across her face before she bit her lip and stiffened her features into a scowl.
"If that's what you want, then whatever," she said, standing with forced indifference and crossing her arms tightly over her chest. "I don't see why I thought it would work anyway. You always do this, Derek. You act like everything is fine and just quit when it gets hard." Derek felt guilt flash through him, and by the look on her face he could tell she was thinking of all their breakups to date. Most of them were his fault, and they had been immature, in part. Still, what right did she have to blame him for everything? He always had his reasons, whether she was privy to them or not. He glared at her, but it was half-hearted.
"Fine," Kendra ground out. "Whatever." She averted her gaze for the first time from Derek's face and seemed to note that they had an audience. And that it was Derek's family. She appeared to contemplate her options for a moment, then jerked her head decisively. With an exaggerated huff, Kendra turned on her heel and stalked out the front door.
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Okay, I hope you like it. I though it was a bad chapter, which is mainly why it's taken so long, but I've made some changes and hopefully made it better. And more interesting. So. Yeah. And I hope the characterizations are still okay, but I may have gotten out of the rhythm of things. Let me know what you think. I'm not promising the next chapter now, so hopefully that will speed me onward.
