Disclaimer: Still don't own LWD

Chapter Twenty-Six

I peeked through the window before I entered the coffee shop. It was one thing Derek saying he'd be there, but who knew if he'd actually keep to it? I didn't want to walk in and look around for him like some stood up date, or worse, see him with more girls, without any warning.

He was standing at the counter, and I felt a brief jealous lurch in my stomach to see the smiling barista girl at the register opposite him, but suppressed it in favour of pushing open the door.

As the door opened he turned to face me, the smile he'd been directing towards the girl serving him now on me and widening. Without realising it at first I grinned back and stepped forwards, not noticing the guy to my right as he moved in front of me. I collided with him, his drink splashing over us both and the cup crashing to the floor.

"I'm so sorry!" I held my hands up as he turned to face me.

He glared and shoved past me, causing me to lose my footing on the now wet floor.

I closed my eyes against the impact, falling hard on my arm and letting out a half gasp half sob in pain and shock. I bit my lip against the already fading throb in my arm and tried to push myself up.

"Case, you okay?"

I glanced up to where Derek was leaning down to help me up. "I'm fine." I snapped, mortified by my ever strong klutziness. I ignored his outstretched hand and placed my own on the ground to push again, sliding my foot under my body. I slipped a second time, this time held up by Derek's sudden grip on my arm.

He pulled me to stand and looked me over. Seemingly satisfied, he dragged me over to a chair and handed me a wad on paper serviettes. "One second, just gotta go get our drinks." He left the table to go back to the counter, roughly shoving into the side of the guy who I'd knocked into on the way. He shot a sarcastic apology over his shoulder as his victim flailed to stay upright.

My still flushed face betrayed me with a small smirk before I started mopping up the excess liquid and cream from my clothes, hair and skin. I sighed in frustration as I patted at the dark stain on my pale green shirt. That was never going to come out and I was going to need to go back to my dorm and change before class.

A cup of coffee landed on the table in front of me while I was still contemplating my ruined clothes. "Stupid jerk shoulda looked where he was going." Derek muttered as he took his seat.

"It was my fault, really. Klutzilla strikes again." I tried for a self-mocking smile and ended up with a slightly tearful wince.

"So that makes it okay to push you over?" He looked ready to stand back up and have another go at the guy.

"He didn't push me over, I slipped." I corrected.

"After he shoved into you!" He looked at my red eyes. "You sure you're okay?"

I nodded. "I probably shouldn't stay long though, I need to change before class."

"You might wanna wait until they've cleaned up the floor; don't want you slipping over again." He teased. His tone was as it always was, but he still looked a little concerned.

I glanced away, my face going pink again over the allusion my epic clumsiness. "Yeah, I'd most likely break something this time." I said self-deprecatingly.

He laughed. "I still don't know how the Queen of the Klutzes is such an amazing dancer; common sense says you should be tripping and stumbling every other step."

My eyes darted up at the badly hidden compliment.

He allowed his smirk to relax a little into a smile. "Probably balances out somehow. Maybe you should trip over more often and boost your dancing up a notch that way."

I returned his smile. "You should know better than anyone that I trip over more than enough as it is. You have like a hundred videos of it, and that's not counting the spills, the bumping into things and the dropping things."

"And a few of all four." He pointed out. "My personal favourite is still you dropping cake on Vicki though."

I groaned, "Don't remind me of that, please."

"Why not? It all worked out, and if anyone deserved having a cake dropped on them it was her. She could've stood to have eaten it too; she was stupidly thin back then."

I giggled. "You must not have thought so at the time, you made out with her after all."

"Are you ever going to let that drop?! I was fifteen years old! Not to mention anything I could do to piss you off might as well have had naked play boy mansion girls holding pizza and sitting on a sports car plastered over it. I swear, if I'd have got as much pleasure from anything else as I got from winding you up, I could have been a master in it."

I raised an eyebrow. "And just what kind of pleasure was it you got from tormenting me?"

He winked. "That's a secret between me and my used tissues."

"Ew! Der-ek!"

He laughed. "You asked."

"I was expecting at least a slightly less disgusting answer!" I lied. I did know him after all.

"You should be flattered! I had a lot of material to work with in that area and you still topped them time after time." He leered.

"Me? What happened to it being pissing me off?" I tried to keep the slight squeak from my voice.

He looked away and I could have sworn he blushed. "You know what I meant!"

"We're talking about you pleasuring yourself, forgive me if I'm a little confused." I said in as matter of fact tone as I could manage.

"You're the one that brought it up." He mumbled as he picked up his coffee.

I smirked and put my own cup to my lips.

We finished our coffees in silence and Derek drove me back to my dorm to give me extra time to change.

As he turned to leave I called out to him. "Derek?"

He faced me again.

"Tomorrow?"

He smiled and nodded.

Our morning coffee became a routine over the next few days, along with the invariably dirty conversations, the competitions at embarrassing each other and the flirty undercurrent.

Which is why I was so annoyed when Cher decided to join me one morning.

I tried to convince her not to, but without implying my meetings with Derek were something they weren't, I couldn't give her a good reason not to come. I gave in with as much grace as I could as tried to decide whether I wanted Derek to sulk about her presence or not.

As we entered the coffee shop, I decided on not. As much as I would love him to show signs he liked our time alone, the look on Cher's face when she saw him inside desperately prayed that he wouldn't give her any more ammunition.

He looked up at us as we approached the table he was sat at. Cher had to pull up a third chair while I sat down and Derek's face was unreadable as she said hello and went to order her own coffee. Derek had already bought mine; he knew what to order and I was very rarely late enough for it to cool too much.

"We have the same class this morning and she wanted to swap notes and get a caffeine fix." I explained, not really sure why I was or if it was necessary.

He nodded his acknowledgement. "S'okay, Cher's cool. I like to encourage it when you make friends with people who don't suck."

I rolled my eyes. "None of my friends 'suck', Derek. Just because they either don't like you or do like school or poetry does not mean they suck."

"I am sorry, but anyone who doesn't like this," He waved a hand over his body, "sucks. School and poetry are just side effects of suckiness."

I ignored that comment in favour of sipping my coffee.

Cher was back in what seemed like double time with a drink piled so high with cream that I couldn't even tell if there really was liquid underneath it. When I raised my eyebrows she shrugged. "Soya cream; not as fattening so I figure I can have more of it."

Derek laughed while I shook my head with a grin.

Cher sat about eating (there was no way she could drink that much cream) her drink, eyes darting between us. "So, you do this often?"

I blushed and fumbled for an answer but Derek got there before I could. "Most mornings. Actually don't think we've missed one since we started last week."

Cher's grin and raised eyebrows made me want to punch her. "Every day for how long?"

"A little under a week." I cut in quickly, shooting her a death glare as a warning to shut up about it. "So you enjoy having your dad come to stay?"

Cher rolled her eyes. "I did, but he's still here." She paused to slurp coffee out of the small gap she'd created in the foam. "He's great, but seriously, there's only so many times I can listen to him argue the case for us moving back to LA and Josh taking up a corporate intern position in his firm. We made our choices, and he knows we're too stubborn to change our minds, so why keep on about it? He's proud of Josh for sticking by his convictions but for some reason that makes no difference. I mean, it's like he does it purposely to wind Josh up."

I smiled sympathetically. "At least you got to see him for a while. He'll be going home soon, right?"

"He should be, yeah, but he's already mentioned that he could probably get another week's leave from work." She ate another teaspoon of cream.

I nodded, feeling awkward and at a loss of anything to say between my usual dirty banter with Derek and the girly chat I usually had with Cher. "So, notes?" I pulled my bag onto my lap and pulled out my notes; passing them across to Cher as Derek gave me a look that said 'nerd'.

"Thanks." She started flipping through to find the right page (if she'd asked I would have explained my colour index, but she didn't so I let her figure it out herself) while stirring what cream she could into her drink.

"Oh," I broke the gap in conversation, gaining Derek's attention. "Mom told me not to bother going home this weekend; Marti has a teacher training day on monday, and they've got permission from the school for Liz and Ed to have a day off too, so they're coming here for the weekend."

"Cool, I can live without a five hour drive there and another back." He nodded, looking a little relieved.

"Coach still pushing you?" I said in annoyance. Now that I looked, Derek seemed exhausted.

He looked up in surprise. "It is his job, Case. It's tiring but I knew it would be when I signed up; it'll calm down a bit once we're all in shape."

"You're already in shape!" My face flushed as the words left my mouth, but Derek didn't seem to notice.

"As a team, Case, as a team. Us newbies need to get into the dynamics of the team; get to know the rest of the guys and get in synch. There's more new players this year than there have been for the last couple of years and we need to make up for it in practice. It's not the same as high school hockey; half of us are here on sports scholarships and we need to be good to stay in school." He explained, sounding more serious than I'd heard him sound about anything. "It was hard work to get here, but it's nothing compared to how hard I have to work to stay."

That shut me up. It wasn't exactly easy for me either, but I was a naturally academic person, I would have worked just as hard if I wasn't on any kind of scholarship, and I enjoyed the studying. For Derek it was different; he had to keep an eye on his GPA and his performance on the hockey pitch, without letting one fall in favour of the other. And he hated studying. It was the first time I'd realized just how hard it was for him here. "I could..." I hesitated, not knowing whether he would appreciate the offer. "I could help you with some of your work, you know, if you want?"

His eyes sparkled a little with a smile, but his mouth was occupied with his drink. He swallowed. "Yeah, that'd be great."

I smiled, meeting his eyes and already imagining late night study sessions with hot chocolate and sitting close together so we can both see the textbooks.

Cher closed the binder with a dull thump, waking me from my reverie. "Great. Thanks, there were a couple of things I missed when Lara-Jade splashed her water over my feet." She pulled a face in remembered annoyance. "I would offer you mine, but I think you pretty much covered everything I did."

I turned my now much diminished smile on her. "It's fine."

"Yeah, Case loves showing off her brains. Stems back from doing homework for the popular kids to make them like her." Derek smirked.

I scowled. "At least I know how to do my homework."

"Hey, I got into the same school you did." He pointed out.

I rolled my eyes. "Because of my help."

"Aww, are you admitting you did my homework so I'd like you?" He taunted.

"Are you admitting you got into Queen's because it's where I was going?" I shot back.

Derek actually looked flustered for a moment.

Cher laughed. "I'd say that's a yes."

"I didn't even know she was going to Queen's! We announced where we were going at the exact same time!" He defended, more than a little late.

"You knew it was on my short list though," I reminded him. "I even discussed it with you."

"It was the only place I got in!"

"Queen's, a highly regarded college of the caliber Casey would attend, was the only one out of presumably dozens of low brow colleges with less than half the good reputation, that would accept you?" Cher questioned. "Sounds a little off to me. You sure you didn't sabotage your other applications?" She observed his sulky pout. "Aww, Casey, I think you have an admirer."

Both me and Derek blushed at that.

"Cher, stop it." I warned.

She grinned at me mischievously, but let it drop. "So, Derek, how are things going for you?"

Derek took a moment to answer her, clearing his throat a little. "Good. Things are good."

"Uhuh." She nodded as if he'd given a much more in depth answer. "Been busy?"

He nodded back. "Yeah, between hockey practice and assignments I can only fit in one or two wild parties a week." His smirk was back up already, but the pink tinge in his cheeks hadn't yet faded.

She gave a knowing smile that was directed at both of us, and picked up her drink again.