"Don't lie to me, Nicole Harmon," she said , her tone mockingly stern.
"I'm not lying," I told her.
She rolled her eyes. "You better be. It's obvious he likes you. I've never seen Derek play the puppy dog to anyone, surely not to Kayla."
"He doesn't play my puppy dog," I argued.
"For Derek he does. He would've never gotten Kayla a drink, even if he would've been up there."
I had a few choice responses to that, but since Kayla was Steph's best friend I held my tongue. "It's just a friend thing, Steph," I insisted. "It's like how we bought our earrings together so we got a better deal. It wasn't a difficult thing to do, but not something you would really do with someone who isn't a friend. Derek and I are friends. I think we're actually becoming pretty good friends, but... just friends."
"And are you satisfied with this?" she asked skeptically, watching my expression.
I smiled and nodded. "Oh yeah, I love it."
She smiled at me oddly, and it looked like she was going to say something else, but then Derek came back, taking his seat beside me and sliding a can in front of me.
"Oh, thank you," I said, opening up my can and glancing at him.
Once in a while, although I would never admit it to Stephanie, the stray thought did enter my mind that Derek was suddenly an awfully friendly friend. But as soon as the thought would surface, I would push it right back down.
If I wasn't careful, I would be as silly as Stephanie, thinking that Derek and I were actually dating.
Chapter Nine-
Things between me and Derek were finally nice.
There were no more bad moods; he didn't even attempt to hate me anymore, and he seemed to be over having to stand up for me to his family.
All in all, our relationship seemed to be at an all-time high. I spent most of my days with Derek. If I wasn't at work or at school, I was usually at his house, which ended up working out, because Mike was working about 50 hours a week, and he was rarely home anyway. The blonde woman that I had found out was Derek's stepmother was never actually home for more than ten minutes, so we didn't have to worry about her either.
For the most part, we had the place to ourselves.
I did go home one day when Alex happened to be there, and he looked up, feigning surprise, and said, "You still live here?"
I merely smiled and rolled my eyes, continuing down the hall.
The only problem I had with spending so much time at Derek's was that I would often want to look at one of my books, and they wouldn't be there. Derek didn't actually own books, so there was no chance that he might have it. His stepmother had a few books in the living room, but they were all diet books. Inevitably, I ended up bringing my own books over and usually forgetting them there, so even Derek's house felt more like home.
One night after our homework was finished and there were no more episodes of The King of Queens for us to watch, Derek mentioned something about the movie Scarface. I had never seen the movie, and when I told him as much, he responded with wide-eyed shock.
"You've never seen Scarface?" he asked in disbelief.
I shook my head. "Nope. The only thing I know about it... isn't Al Pacino in it? And there was a line about, 'Say hello to my little friend.'"
"Wow," he said. "I feel bad for you. Scarface is one of the best movies ever made."
"Well, why don't we rent it sometime?" I suggested. "I'll watch it with you. Maybe I'll like it."
He shook his head. "We don't have to rent it. We own that movie. Go get it, we'll watch it now."
"Is it in the living room?" I asking, climbing off his bed.
"No, my dad has it in his bedroom," he said, gesturing across the hall. "Go on in there, I don't think he's home yet. It's in the shelving unit to the right of the bed when you walk in the door."
I hesitated at the door, glancing back at him. "Um, I'm not sure that I should be going into your dad's room."
He rolled his eyes at me. "Just go. If you're not back in 20 minutes, I'll send a search party."