Entitled: This Whole Thing’s a Lie
Fandom: Life with Derek
Length: 2,800 words
Disclaimer: I do not own Life with Derek and etc.
Notes: I hate it when people cling to me. Almost as much as I hate stupid romantic-comedies. I have a quest, by the way. I’ll tell you later. (June 22, 2009)

So, let’s start back at the decaf.

Let’s start back at Patrick.

Let’s start back before there was a Derek or a Casey, back when it was just Sally in high school, pretty and made for pageants, except for the little layer of softness around her. That’s important.

Let’s start at the moment when Patrick turns to her a week before her junior prom and mentions that he can’t make it. A week before. She has her dress hung up in her closet, the stockings and hair ribbons draped over the hanger.

He doesn’t know this, of course. “Sorry,” he says, “But it’s not like I’d asked you, you know.”

“Yeah, but,” she can’t really articulate this, this feeling, “But you’re my—my boyfriend, you know. I guess I just thought that—”

She trails off, feeling pathetic, a little sick of this dependence, and straightens her shoulders. “You know, it’s fine,” she smiles, and in the same tone, adds, “I’ll just go with someone else.”

She walks away then, with her hips rocking sideways almost aggressively.

It isn’t long after that, she learns how to lie.

She gets social niceties. She gets forgiving people when you don’t want to, telling people they look great when they don’t, taking the easy way out.

But she doesn’t want to.

She doesn’t want to do the easy thing and get back together with Patrick. She doesn’t want to forgive her father, and she doesn’t—

It’s not her.

It really isn’t.

Everyone’s a liar. She proves it again and again, starts talking about the most ludicrous things she can think of like it’s common knowledge and looks at her correspondent in a sort of expectant, demanding way, like they clearly must know this, and anyone who doesn’t is just stupid.

Ninety percent of the time, they just nod. And then she knows. Just like that, the perfect lie detector.

She’s still on decaf when she graduates, wiping down tables at Smelly Nelly’s. Twelve years of schooling for this. She doesn’t know why she keeps drinking the coffee either—it’s not like it’s waking her up. It’s not like it does anything at all, really, other than tasting bitter.

Patrick goes to college. Patrick comes by every other week and sits in the third booth and stares at her, right between her shoulder blades, while she rubs down the table in circles on circles, thinking that she must be better than this. It’s not like she’s stupid. It’s not like—she isn’t a bad person, really, although sometimes her stomach twinges at the thought, it’s just—she’s more honest.

Honest with herself, at least, because people don’t want to hear it. She’s seen that too, when she pulls the plug on the lying game and watches their faces flush and duck in shame. So she doesn’t anymore—it’s kinder that way.

His name is Derek. He’s holding a mop and looking at the floor, his eyebrows raised and grimacing painfully, so pointedly expressive that she smiles a little.

Which is okay, you know, because he’s sixteen and she’s really only gone for older guys, so it’s just—you know, it would be nice if they could keep things pleasant.

“Well, actually,” he tells one of the customers, mop lax in his hands, “I can’t. It actually is really painful. I mean, I got into this car accident a few years ago, and they had to reconstruct my left hand. It’s not that bad, since I’m right-handed, but I can’t really grip things as a result…and keeping with the hockey team is out of the question,” he smiles bravely. She’s stopped wiping down the counter. She feels a little bit as though she might cry.

She waits until the customer leaves and catches him by the elbow as they’re passing between tables. “Hey,” she says, and this part is not a lie, “I’m sorry about your hand. My dad—”

“My hand?” Derek repeats, raising one eyebrow. He grins then, sudden and devious, and says, “Oh, that. No, I just didn’t want help him unload his stupid car. I’m a waiter, not a bag boy,” he rolls his eyes and walks away, catch her eye before he turns the corner and sniggering a bit.

Do not gape, Sally reminds herself, and measures her steps.

She isn’t really sure if she likes him or not. It takes her a full week to recognize the fluttery tension he evoked as fear. Because she’s never met anyone who could lie so easily and so well—who did it just for fun, instead of just dodging out of telling the truth.

While they’re putting chairs up on the tables, she starts talking, “So, anyway, I’m worried about my friend. He’s fighting over in Nigeria, and I haven’t heard from him in a few days.”

There’s a loud, metallic sound as Derek meanders through the room, tossing up chairs carelessly. He gives her a weird look. “Nigeria?”

“Yes,” she says immediately, giving him an impatient look, “You know, the country we’ve been at war with for the past…three years, I think? Haven’t you seen the protesters?” As she’s speaking, her words have been growing progressively slower, like an irritated drama coach throwing out prompts. Derek puts up the last chair, and takes his time navigating around the tables, his arms cross, a cocky, condescending smile curled across his face.

“Uh-huh,” he drawls, and only stops when he’s standing way, way to close to her, “Did you know that you tend to look really, really earnest when you’re lying?”

She swallows. He’s so close she can see the shadow of every eyelash, the dark eyes, his slanted smile, the—

“You’re very observant,” she says when she steps back, her heart beating very fast and dizzy, sun-spots blacking out her vision, “I didn’t know you were watching me so much.”

And just like that, he blinks, “I wasn’t,” he says, with an off-putting smirk. She wonders if it’s intentional, or his lying-tick. “You’re just easy to read.”

He walks out then, leaving her standing in the middle of the room, one hand resting on the table, watching his back. And it all starts to sink in much too fast, that he might be just-sixteen but he’s still a boy, he’s still taller than her, and she might have two years on him but from the way he smiles she can tell—he knows exactly what he’s doing.

And then she just feels—ashamed. He’s practically a kid, and she’s not—she’s not stupid and she’s not interested and he isn’t allowed to make her flirt back.

She realizes abruptly that she has no idea where he fell on her test, only that he was an even better player than she was.

It just sort of—

She hadn’t really meant to do it, not really. It was just that base instinct to seek out the best and the brightest, to be as charming and sweet as she could, to smile in all the right places.

So at first, it’s just little things. It’s how he’ll hang back after his shift’s up and tease her, how maybe he’ll tug on her hair when her back’s turned, maybe touch her shoulder, pushing her over to a quieter part of the room, voice pitched in that slightly mocking tone—that infuriating drawl that was half infuriating, half alluring, like she wanted to be in on the joke.

But when he asks her out, she still says no automatically. And the weird thing is, he doesn’t look hurt or angry—just sort of shocked. Like he can’t imagine why.

They do the break, the awkward glances, the flirting game. And again and again and again.

He asks her out. She says no.

Her stomach drops. Because then he just looks mad. He looks at her like she’s awful, like she’s done all of this on purpose with the specific purpose of hurting him and there’s this part of her that wants to cry and run, and this other part that just wants to slap him—to tell him that this isn’t fair, she hadn’t started it.

She wants to tell him to leave her alone.

But she just can’t.

She just can’t.

Maybe it’s cruel. Maybe it’s petty and selfish and awful, but she is young even if she does understand, and sometimes it feels lovely, just to know that she is wanted. Even if he’s just a boy. Even if he’s just sixteen. Even if his lips part in just that way and she can’t read him at all, he’s so smooth, he just slips through. Even if all she has to do is ask. All she has to do is call him.

Just say yes.

She keeps on saying no. She denies, and denies, but the thing that really scares her—the thing that makes her sit up in the middle of the night, crying out, her hands open and horrible and empty, she is empty, she is alone, she is weak and she is afraid that someday he might not come back.

She feels sick.

So she just says yes.

It isn’t even all that hard. It’s just—casual. Tentative. His face doesn’t light up and he doesn’t pull out a ring and somehow she isn’t sure if this makes it easier or harder.

But it is easy. All of it is. She does like Derek, even if he scares her a bit, (and she still doesn’t know why) and being with him was sort of like being the It girl. It was like some cosmic seal of approval—if Derek liked you, then everybody should like you. Or else.

So it was only a matter of time, really, until Casey came in. And really, she should have seen it coming.

This was the weird thing, though. She could see a lot of herself in Derek, and she could see a lot of herself in Casey. But she couldn’t piece the two of them together at all.

She is ready for having a family again.

She is ready for filling up all the empty spaces with Lizzie and Marti and Edwin and Casey, until there is never a second of silence and she can’t hear herself criticize, can finally start to relax.

She spends a lot of time at Derek’s house. With Derek.

She feels happy, when she’s there. She feels safe, wanted.

Marti listens to every story with breathless reverence, and clings to her leg so she’ll have to drag the little girl across the room. Lizzie and Edwin move over so she can sit with them on the couch, where she and Lizzie make jokes at Edwin’s expense, and Edwin is acutely aware of the females on either side, and so does not especially mind. She listens to George and Nora whine about their children in a way that is really just love.

The thing she’s worried about, whenever she sees Casey coming down the stairs or through the door, is that the other girl hates her. It’s almost like she’s taken her place.

And if Casey weren’t seeing Max—if she were as family oriented as she had been just months ago—things wouldn’t have been so smooth.

But as it is they get ice cream and talk about their boyfriends, (but mostly just Derek) and laugh and cry through soppy movies and suddenly, Casey’s her best friend.

She starts smiling more.

It’s during one of these visits to Derek’s house that she starts to realize something.

She knows that Derek likes her. It’s in that way he always reaches out and touches her shoulder when they’re talking, or maybe the small of her back if they’re walking somewhere. But he doesn’t really hold her hand, or hug her, and it seems like the only time they ever kiss is out of sight and dirty, breath hot on her neck, hands hot on her hips, pushing and pulling her, forwards and away.

But they don’t ever talk about it.

Maybe she’s just insecure.

But then she sees him do the same thing to Casey. The shoulder-touch-thing, the unconscious need shared by those of an affectionate nature, to reassure themselves that the person they’re speaking with isn’t beyond reach.

So maybe she’s just being paranoid, but it makes her think. Maybe they’re doing it too. Maybe he kisses her in the same way, rushed and guilty, with his eyes closed. Maybe she isn’t really special to him at all.

Maybe, and the thought makes her flinch, she’s just a replacement.

He wouldn’t do that. Derek wouldn’t do that. He isn’t that sort of guy—unless. Unless it was all done unconsciously, just the way the rest of his family had accepted her so quickly. She wasn’t Casey. But she could be.

And he still won’t say, “I love you.”

He meets her in person. That’s how she knows it’s over. That, and he doesn’t have any bags.

He just closes his eyes and she remembers again, that he is only a boy. He keeps his eyes closed. She wonders if he opens them—if she’ll be able to see weakness. Cracks. The impenetrable in fragments, shaking. She wants to know. She wants to know.

She doesn’t want to just be this—this distraction.

“I’m sorry,” he says, looking at his feet. He isn’t all that tall. He takes a breath, and says it quickly, “I can’t go with you.”

She listens to her heart, beating. Breaking.

“Why?” she demands. Her voice shakes. She doesn’t try to stop it. He doesn’t look at her. His voice is very small.

“I can’t leave them behind.”

And this, she doesn’t need to test for lies. Because this is who he is, this is one of those moments of total honesty, and she knows this, even more than the times he had almost said, I love you, that this was his barest, most naked truth.

But she could still do it. She looks at him, at his hesitance, at the way he bites his lip, the way he won’t—can’t—look at her. She licks her lips. She just has to say yes, and he’ll come.

She puts her arms around his neck, and for the first time in a long while, knows that she is older, and knows that he is too young, and she is too young, and she has already taken so much.

“Oh, Derek,” she sighs, and tries not to cry on his shirt.

She says no.

This is when she knows that she loves him.

She isn’t scared anymore.