Snakeskin and Monograms-
Zeke met Sharpay freshman year, and she was nothing like anything he had aver seen. First day; stiletto heels, dress-code defying skirt, bubblegum lipstick and shaped eyebrows when most of the girls in their homeroom were just beginning to experiment with lip-gloss, and that look on her face that told you she was going to cause some havoc. At first his reaction was to follow the rest of the class by being uniformly terrified of her. After all, she was five feet three inches of pure sex and Tylenol-pink snakeskin, and that kind of thing can be a bit intimidating to the only guy in the school considering family sciences as an elective. The first day he passed by her locker, a wonderland of hot pink metallic and floral colors, sequins and bedazzled initials, pictures of her family with her brother cropped out. She rifled through it, blonde hair falling over the shoulders of her rosy blouse, for more eye shadow. She spotted him as he gawked, and smiled her havoc smile.
"Yes Peon?" He immediately closed his previously slack jaw, turned about face and speed-walked down the hallway until the class bell rang and he remembered he had math.
It was only around Midterms that he began to fall in love with her. It was when Ms. Darbus rearranged the class seating to interfere with the complex note-passing system that had quickly been developed by students uninterested in Romeo and Juliet, and he ended up next to her. Sharpay Evans. Ice queen in a violet shawl and Dolce and Gabbana sunglasses. He tried not to look directly at her, as if avoiding an eclipse. Instead he looked as hard as possible at his desk, previously Chad's desk. He had doodled basketballs all over it. Zeke decided to count and re-count them for the rest of High school so that he could avoid making eye contact with Sharpay.
There were forty five basketballs. In a little over a week he had established and confirmed that number five hundred and seven times. On a particular Tuesday he was beginning to get seriously bored with it and, as teenage boys are apt to do, he glanced over at the pretty girl to his right. Well, not directly at her, because you have to look at an eclipse through a pinpoint in a cardboard box, more at her notebook. He had always assumed she took notes in drama class because, well, she wanted to be a star. He had forgotten that she probably thought she had more star quality in her fake fingernails than Ms. Darbus did in her entire body. But she was still writing in her notebook. 'Be perfect!' the top of the page proclaimed, and bellow that was 'Have a perfect boyfriend' repeated a few times, then 'Have a perfect job' until the middle of the page and finally 'Be perfect!' until the bottom, where she was still feverishly scribbling in pink glitter pen. Zeke decided to go back to the basketballs, feeling as if he had just stepped onto a swinging bridge in the dark. After that day, try as he might, he just couldn't cook without wondering if she would enjoy his food or not. And he couldn't ice cookies without writing her initials onto just a few of them and leaving them outside her locker. At the end of the day the plate he left them on would be empty, but she never mentioned the cookies. She never mentioned the pink initials, the curving monogram 'SE' he took such care to shape.
Five years after graduation she walked back into his life as if she had never left. Straight into the restaurant where he worked, sashaying as if the stalkerazzi was at her heels, so recognizably arrogant in her tinted sunglasses and knee high snakeskin boots that he nearly put whipped cream on someone's order of lasagna when he spotted her. She sat at a table, not bothering to be seated, not bothering with reservations. She snapped her fingers impatiently, and a waitress came over to her table.
"Get me Baylor." She demanded.
"Baylor?" The waitress inquired nervously.
"Your pastry chef. Idiot."
Zeke had about ten minutes to straighten his smock, dust powdered sugar off of his pants and practice not looking lovesick with his reflection on the back of a frying pan before Sharpay had finished explaining how extensively important she was and how the waitress better get Zeke for her within five minutes if she wanted to work in this country ever again. When he arrived at her table, Sharpay smiled. Not her havoc smile, not her bratty smirk, not her entitled sneer, but a sort of worn in looking smile you get from living life like a beauty pageant.
"I'm really in the mood for sugar cookies with my initials on them." She arched her eyebrows.
"Whatever you want Ms. Evans." He smiled back at her. She allowed herself a chuckle and crossed one leg over the other, her pink snakeskin boots scrunching at the movement.