Author's Note: Thank you so much to all the reviewers! I hope you all like this chapter!

Song for the chapter: Beyond Monday by The Glitch Mob

Beyond Monday

Amy found it shameful to admit how excited she was for the upcoming lacrosse match. At home, she counted the hours until she went to school. At school, she counted the hours until she went home. And just like that, the week flew by in a haze consisting only of Facebook chats and Calculus worksheets.

One thing she had noticed, though, was Stiles' peculiar attitude in Biology class – namely, his peculiar attitude around Erica.

At first, the girl in question didn't seem to know quite how to react. The conversations started like so:

"Hey Erica, how's it going?"

"Why are you talking to me?"

"I don't know, I talk to everyone."

"Not me. Not normally."

And that was that. Amy and Scott expressed their mutual confusion in one simple, identical look, with crossed eyebrows and pursed lips.

"What?" Stiles hissed. "I'm trying to be nice!"

The brunette bit back the urge to scoff. It was undeniable: their goofball friend was smitten. And she was to blame – she had been the one to put the idea into his head.

"Do you know anything about that?" Scott asked her in class on Friday morning. Stiles was once again chatting quietly to the busty Miss Reyes, a habit he had developed some four days prior.

"Mr. McCall, no talking in my class!" their teacher, Miss Hazeltine, reprimanded.

"Sorry," he grumbled.

"Yeah, it's my fault," Amy whispered back.

A wary glance from their bespectacled instructor assured them that they would have to continue this conversation at a later time if they were to avoid detention.

But all throughout class, Amy's mind was elsewhere. Erica Reyes wasn't a good girl. Not like Allison was, not like she was (Ha! Outwardly, anyway). Some said Erica was trying to rival Lydia for BHHS's queen-bee title. That remained to be seen, but one thing was certain: Erica had reinvented herself at the start of the year, and she had gained more than just Isaac Lahey's notice.

Amy's mentioning her to Stiles had been a flippant, last-stand attempt to get him to forget about Lydia. She hadn't meant for him to take her seriously. Girls like Erica ate boys like Stiles alive. Girls like Erica gave douchebags like Jimmy Greenberg hand-jobs behind the bleachers and boys like Stiles jerked off to Marvel Internet porn. (The thought of both these things made Amy's delicate mind scream NO. Although only the Jimmy Greenberg incident was a confirmed fact - as much as such gossip could be confirmed, anyway).

It wasn't a lie that Lydia had told her about Erica's crush on Stiles – but that was before. This was now. Things had changed.

The sight of Erica sitting on a lab bench, clad in a tight leather skit and a cleavage-bearing tank top, talking to Stiles was almost humorous. As Jackson might say, she was way too much woman for him to handle. Or so it seemed.

"You did that?" Scott whispered to Amy. He sounded more impressed than surprised.

"Well, no. But I told him that she had a crush on him."

"Does she?" The disbelief in his tone was so inadvertently insulting that Amy had to repress a bark of laughter.

"I don't know. She did."

"How long ago?"

"Like, last year. That's what Lydia told me, at least."

"Oh."

"Hey, it doesn't look that bad, actually." And it was the truth. Erica's hungry dark eyes roamed over Stiles' relaxed frame as she chewed a piece of bubblegum methodically. There was a certain spark.

And Amy did have to admit, Stiles had a je ne sais quoi thing going on.

"What do you think they're talking about?" he questioned.

"I have no clue." The bell drew Scott and Amy out of their National Geographic-esque observations.

Rewind. Scott and Amy are in the doorway, watching the pair from a distance that they think is safe. Stiles can see them perfectly well.

"So, you going to the game tonight?" he asks.

"Isn't everyone?" she purrs.

Stiles once read in a science journal that women with high-pitched voices were considered to be more attractive to the male species. He could say right then, with the utmost confidence, that such an assessment was grossly incorrect.

"I don't know, probably," he says because his mouth is dry and suddenly, for the first time in his life, he can't think of anything else to say.

Her pink tongue darts out for a millisecond as she shifts against the lab bench. The two motions in unison cause a sudden spike in Stiles' body temperature and he swears by the look in her eye – and he doesn't know how – that she can detect it.

"Do you think you'll play?" she baits. She expects him to be offended by the slight, but his sense of humor remains wholly intact.

"Probably not. Why start now, right?" he laughs nervously.

Now it's her turn to be at a loss for words; she's not used to talking to people who care about things other than making frontline. She wants to end the conversation before she has the chance to ruin the illusion of self-assurance. "Look, I'll see you 'round."

A catlike smirk is all she's willing to give him as she walks – no, struts – away, but god-knows he'll take it. The bell sounds and the exchange is over. He is left with an inexplicable sense of accomplishment, but doesn't yet know why.

Fast forward.

"Dude, what was that?"

"What? I was just talking to her. I do have other friends, y'know."

"Yeah, but Erica doesn't just talk."

Stiles didn't know quite how to respond to this, so he just shrugged. Truth be told, he didn't want to just talk; but for the moment, that didn't matter. He saw Lydia and Jackson making out against the lockers and swallowed his heartache. He had a right to distract himself, and fantasies of sultry redheads were soon replaced with fantasies of curly-haired blondes. It's then that he refers to her – mentally, at least – as a redhead for the first time. Redhead. Not strawberry-blonde. Because those details aren't important to him, not anymore. It's not fair that she gets to live her life as he sits by and suffers.

oxOxo

"Why do you look like you're about to have a nervous breakdown?" Allison deadpanned as they sat shoulder-to-shoulder on the bleachers.

"Derek Hale is supposed to be here," Amy replied with a fidget.

"You know, you keep referring to him by first and last name like he's a celebrity or something. It's kinda strange."

Amy thought about this for a moment, mainly because it was a very correct and very insightful comment. But her analytical skills were shot from her AP English discussion of The Sound and the Fury, so she asked, "What are you getting at?"

She was met with a guilty shrug. "Don't put the penis on a pedestal is all I'm saying…"

"Allison!" She sounded disturbingly like her mother, but she didn't care. The prim brunette almost never used such crude language and, naturally, Amy was positively overflowing with pride.

The players filtered onto the field like gladiators, the blinding lights making their gear shine like armor. Scott and Jackson, the co-captains, led the pack. Stiles appeared behind them and took his customary seat at the end of the bench. But this was all just a blur to Amy. A blur of faces she recognized, a blur of her friends' faces, but a blur nonetheless.

It was twenty seconds in when she spotted Derek. He was standing, not sitting (no, of course not sitting, Derek Hale didn't merely sit, like some common plebian), some ten feet away from her. That tricky and persistent anxiety, inseparable from teenage puppy love, cropped up, but Amy squelched it and shimmied off of the bleachers.

"Hey," she greeted as she approached his statuesque form.

A fleeting sidelong glance, and nothing more. "Hey."

"So, are you here to watch Isaac play?"

"Yeah."

She nodded and looked at her feet, completely unable to fill the lull in conversation. She scrambled for words and eventually scrounged together, "Sooo, about the other night…"

"I get it, you were drunk."

"Well, yeah, but I mean, I wanted to thank you…"

"Yeah, you made that pretty clear." Oh, and there it was! If you listened really, really hard, you could detect the faintest trace of playfulness in his tone. But it was gone in an instant.

Amy decided to go against her instinct to be embarrassed and instead just rolled with it. "Yeah... And you know, that offer still stands…"

And for the first time since the commencement of the conversation, Derek actually looked at her. With scruffy black eyebrows raised, because he hadn't anticipated such a forward response from the decidedly sober teenager.

Eventually: "Why don't you go pick on someone your own age, kid." The school was filled with attractive guys her own age. Why did she have to set her sights on him, of all people?

Amy scowled and replied, "I'm not a kid." LET ME PROVE IT TO YOU, her mind begged. "And I know how that sounds, but trust me, I'm not a kid – and if it makes any difference, Stiles was the one who sent that 'call me maybe' text, not me."

A smirk tried to lift the corners of his mouth, but was unsuccessful; his expression remained stony as ever. "What is it you want from me, exactly?"

There were so many dirty responses she could come up with that it was just too easy. She decided to take the vague approach: "I could think of a few things…"

Without missing a beat, he countered, "Did you just come down here to sexually harass me, or…?"

She gave him a toothy grin and said, "You know what will shut me up?"

"I don't want to know."

"Oh, but I'll tell you – "

"Really, I don't want to know."

"A date."

"A date?" The word seemed to disgust him, but Amy was undeterred.

"Yeah. Just one."

"Why would I agree to this?"

"Because if I can't win you over after just one date, I promise to leave you alone."

Derek scoffed. "You might not have realized this, but I'm not very easily won-over."

"I can be pretty persuasive."

"God, you just don't stop, do you? No wonder you and Stiles are friends…"

"One. Date."

Derek didn't know why he allowed the response to leave his lips, he really didn't. Perhaps it was just his morbid sense of curiosity, or perhaps it was because she looked like she might molest him in front of hundreds of people if he refused. "Fine," he grit out. "Tomorrow. Eight o'clock. Now run along and leave me alone."

Inside, she exploded. If she had been so inclined, she might have said she'd jizzed her pants. But she was the picture of maturity, obviously, so such lewd thoughts would never cross her mind.

Externally, she used ever shred of willpower she had to remain calm. "Cool. You won't regret it." And she was off in a flurry of batted lashes and brown hair. Derek had no idea what he had gotten himself into, but he had at least given himself a day to prepare.

"I'm going. On. A. DATE. With Derek – fucking – Hale," she announced to Allison and Lydia moments later. The sentence, due to her odd punctuation, came out choppy and borderline incoherent.

"You?" was all Lydia could manage.

"Don't sound so surprised," she answered wryly.

"Still using his full name, I see," Allison quipped. "When?"

"Tomorrow at eight."

"What are you doing?"

"I have no idea, but do you honestly think it matters?"

She finally got a laugh out of them and Allison replied, "Apparently not…"

"All I need is a room and a bed – no, you know what? Scratch that – a room…"

"Ooookay, TMI," Lydia cut her off. "But seriously, I honestly do hope you get laid. For all our sakes. There's way too much sexual frustration going on here."

And truer words had never been spoken.

Author's Note: Please review, guys! Let me know what you would like to see! Isaac will be coming up soon, don't worry! Thanks for reading :-)