"Do you think he knows how gorgeous he is?" Corrina gushed as she took a seat at a picnic table in the center of the courtyard at John Adams High.

"Yeah, I think he knows all too well." Olivia commented, taking a bite of her turkey and cheese sandwich.

"Liv! You don't even know him and you are judging him!" Corrina was quick to jump to his defense.

"Oh please! You don't even know him and you think you are in 'love' with him!" Olivia laughed. As Corrina's best friend, she tried to be supportive, but sometimes it just got tiresome. "All I ever hear about is Dean this and Dean that! Just talk to him already!" Olivia attempted to encourage her friend.

"What would I say?" Corrina asked.

"Tell him that if he doesn't stop smoking he is going to lose a lung before he is thirty!" she joked, very openly grossed-out by his habit.

"Well, I think it's sexy!" she retorted, cocking her head to the side as she admired him.

"Good for you. I think it is a disgusting habit. He could dress like a girl and you would think it was sexy Correy." Liv teased and flashed her friend a smile.

"Hey! I am not that bad!" Correy attempted to defend herself, knowing that, in truth, she was that bad... if not worse.

"Yeah you are Correy, trust me," a voice from behind Corrina said with a chuckle.

"Hush Aaron." Corrina quickly dismissed the teasing of another of her close friends.

"Just talk to him already babe! How can you marry the guy without ever having talked to him?" Aaron reminded her that the fact that Dean was a total stranger and had never talked to Corrina in his life might hinder their relationship... if only slightly.

"And what in god’s name am I supposed to say to him? Hi, my name is Corrina and I am in love with you?" Aaron, Olivia, and a few other people who were sitting at the table burst into laughter.

"Oh, and THAT wouldn't scare him off," Aaron laughed, putting his arm around her shoulder, "listen, he's in your English class right?" Corrina nodded, wondering where this was leading, "So why don't you just go ask him if you have any English homework or something?" he suggested.

"Ohmygod! Aaron! That's it! You are brilliant!" Corrina exclaimed eagerly, kissing him on the cheek and jumping up from the table. In a surprisingly gutsy move, she then proceeded towards Dean and his posse who sat in the shade of a giant weeping willow tree.

"Damn Aaron, it must kill you to listen to that huh?" Tom, Aaron's best friend, asked, but Aaron only shrugged. Tom continued, "You must really like her if you are even helping her get close to someone like Dean."

"Man, I don't care who the hell she is with, don’t get me wrong, I certainly wouldn't mind if it was me. I just want her to be happy, and if Dean Loomis can make her happy, then I want her to be with him. After all she has been through, she deserves to be happy." Aaron said sadly, all-the-while, never taking his longing eyes off of Corrina as she approached the supposed 'love of her life.'

Corrina's steps slowed as she got closer to Dean, until she finally stood face-to-face with him.

"What the hell do you want?" Igby, Dean's sidekick, asked harshly.

"Don't worry, I'm not here to talk to you." Corrina quickly retorted.

"Well then, who ARE you here to talk to?" he asked.

"Dean." Corrina answered quickly, surprisingly, exuberating confidence.

"Why?" Dean asked, raising an eyebrow and sounding genuinely perplexed.

"Oh, uh. It's just-"   Confidence now nowhere to be found, Corrina was suddenly at a loss for words, "do we have any English homework?" she sputtered.

"I dunno," he said with a shoulder shrug, "I don't usually do my homework for that class, it’s all busywork."

"Oh, alright." Corrina said visibly disappointed. She wasn't planning on that answer, it certainly didn't leave much room for conversation, "Well, thanks anyways." she said, starting to turn around to walk away.

"Okay, you can get the hell away from us now." Igby rudely reminded her of her unwelcome presence. From the corner of her eye, she saw Dean fake punch him on his arm and laugh, his way of telling him that Igby had been rude, but entertaining.

"Yeah, yeah. I'm going. See ya later." Corrina said as she walked away. Dean did not respond, but exhaled slowly, a trail of smoke escaping through his pink lips, the only color to be found on him.  Dean, like most of his friends, didn’t have a ‘normal’ fashions sense.  He often wore black, and seeing that it was early spring his skin was pale.  His eyes were so light and smoky they could hardly be called colorful.  His lips however, were lush, pink, and totally kissable.  Corrina blushed as the thought crossed her mind.

She tried to walk back to the table casually, but found it difficult to contain her elation. She had talked to him! She had finally talked to him!

When she got back to the table, she gave her ‘oh-so-interested’ friends the play-by- play and managed to turn a 45-second dialogue into a 10-minute retelling.

"You are crazy, you know that right?" Olivia asked in disbelief, but smiling.

"Oh I know," Corrina responded with a sigh, "but that’s why you love me!"

--That Evening at Home--

"Correy, honey! Can you come downstairs for a minute?" Corrina's stepmother, Janice, called up the stairs, her voice echoing thought the tall ceilings of the foyer.

"Yeah, one second." Correy said with a sigh as she flipped off her television and got up. She trotted down the stairs and took a seat next to her father and stepmother on the couch in the family room. "What's up?" Corrina asked curiously, hoping it was nothing that would require too much conversation; she was due to meet Olivia at a local coffee shop in about 15 minutes.

"We just got our anniversary present from your grandparents."  Janice said with a smile.

"Okay?" Correy asked, wondering where her parents were going with this.

"They gave us a cruise package to the Caribbean. Seven nights and eight days," her father finished, "we fly to San Juan, Puerto Rico on Friday and we get back the next Saturday." Her father and step-mother had just celebrated their fifteenth anniversary. Corrina's biological mother had died during childbirth and her father had remarried when Corrina was only two years old. Corrina considered Janice to be her mother, but out of respect for her ‘real’ mom, she always refrained from calling Janice 'mom.'

"That should be fun," Corrina said, trying to appear excited and enthusiastic for her parents, but finding it difficult. Her parents often went out of town and on vacations, and she was always pawned off on one of her relatives. More than the fact that they didn't trust her, Corrina just seemed to have a long history of bad things happening to her. She seemed to have a habit of being in the wrong place at the wrong time and her parents wanted to avoid anything happening, "So, where am I going to stay while you are gone?" she asked, hoping they at least had the decency to send her to a fun relatives house this time.  She shuddered as she recalled staying with her Aunt Esther while her father and Janice traveled to Venice.  Esther had spent most of the trip insulting Corrina and calling her trashy because she wore a halter top to the beach saying, ‘no respectable girl would show so much skin.”

"Well, Janice and I were discussing it, and we feel that, if you want to, you can stay here while we are gone." her father said, smiling when he saw his daughter's excitement.

"Really?" Corrina asked in disbelief.

"Yes, really." her father smiled.

"Am I allowed to have Liv sleep over?" Correy asked excitedly.

"Of course FEMALE friends are allowed over." He said, placing emphasis on the word female.

"Thank you so much Dad! This is awesome! I don't have to stay with some 90-year-old relative this time!" she exclaimed and her father and Janice smiled.

"Remember Corrina, we are trusting you to be responsible. Don't let us down." Janice reminded.

"I know, don't worry. But I gotta go, I am meeting Liv at the coffee shop in like, ten minutes. Can I borrow your car Dad?" her father nodded and tossed the keys to his only child, whom he admittedly spoiled. "Thanks. See you guys later!" Corrina said turning on her heel and exiting though the attached, three-car garage.