Break My Heart

A Oneshot Fanfic (written at midnight) by Desireé Lemmon

Disclaimer: I'd be rich if I owned these rights. And rich people are not on their computers at eleven-thirty at night, typing up stories.

Setting: Future, Albuquerque

A/N: I had a spur of the moment writing blast—inspired by two characters in the best book ever called 'My Sister's Keeper.' I highly recommend it. -love- Desireé

In which we find

Two Strangers

who each think the other has a strikingly familiar face

Gabriella.

The bar is getting old, I can see from the dilapidation of any given aspect. I sit at one end, he at another. My drink, a fruity margarita rocks with salt, is barely touched, the ring of lip stick faint of the rim. Once in a while, I steal a glance from him, and I see his drink was also nearly full. It makes me smile, in an unfortunate, unreasonable way. My daydream is interrupted as the bartender, a grizzled man in his sixties with a stony and somewhat pale face, sweeps down the counter with a rag. "Can I get you anything else?" he asks, moving his arm in a circular motion with the cloth. "We're about ready to close up, with the holiday weekend and all."

Pushing my glass between my palms, I smile blankly. "Oh, no, thank you. I'm fine. Is it all right if I just stay a little longer? I don't think I'm exactly ready to face an empty house. Not yet."

His firm expression softens, and the bartender nods, pats my hand. "None of us are," he speaks sympathethically, as if he knows of the pain that pulses through my veins every day. "Take your time, hon."

I wonder what the man at the other end of the bar is thinking. I wonder if he is also thinking about what I am thinking, like we used to do in school. The timing is off, and as I steal an umpteenth glance, his head turns and our eyes lock. Damn it. I was hoping to never have to stare into those aquamarine pools of blue again. But he offers me a smile, and I do likewise. Eventually, I find it in me to turn back to my untouched drink, and speculate over why I bought something in the first place. It is then that I realize Troy Bolton is next to me, empty handed and sheepish. Like always, I think.

"You're different," are his first words. He observes me, and I let him gracefully. His hand moves up to gather my hair, so the ocean of black falls over one shoulder. "You're still beautiful, but different."

My lips curl up in an abashed smirk. "No, I've aged a lot," I sigh. His fingers gingerly swim along the curve of my arm, and a chill runs down my spine.

"You haven't," he reprimands me. "You're still beautiful."

The bartender eventually sees us off in one of those proud, triumphant fashions where he brandishes an old bottle of whiskey as we walk out. I look over my shoulder to see him smile at me, and I smile back. It feels good to smile again.

Outside, it's cold. But I am used to that, however Troy seems to have forgotten how icy Albuquerque's winters are. He shivers and pulls his jacket tighter. "I don't remember this town ever being so… Frigid," he finishes, and I shrug in the raw air.

"It's been like this for a very long time," I say, my voice so chilly it matches the weather. He wouldn't have known his lest I told him; I have been here for eleven years, faithfully waiting for something to happen. He had left as soon as we graduated, and I did have the choice to go with him. But I didn't, because I knew he wouldn't have wanted me to go. Troy was one of those people that needed freedom, because keeping him on a chain was like holding a bird down, flat against the floor. It was a waste of a perfectly good pair of wings.

"You good?" he asks, maybe because he feels the need.

"Define 'good,'" I respond, and he takes the hint.

We turn a corner. "I guess good means happy, and healthy," he says, and sniffs the arctic draft around us. "Good means content, and… Good means you were okay after I left."

He feels bad, which makes me feel bad. It is not his fault what happened to us; it is mine. Perhaps he could have been less ultimatum-ish—the pressure is enough to kill a girl. But even had he been gentle with a simple suggestion, I know I would have never been able to pack my bags along with him. Things just don't work out like that. "Good is irrelevant, then," I decide. "Good is subjective, good is narcissistic, good is…" And all of the sudden, I am crying into his arms, my fists hitting his chest over and over. Being the good person he is, he takes the blows patiently, although I can feel the surprise in his body. He didn't expect an abrupt nervous breakdown at eleven o'clock at night on the main boulevard of his hometown from a girl who had given him everything. I don't blame him.

My womanly malfunction finally readjusts and I take a step back, feeling the frozen tears on my cheeks with a circumspect touch. Troy watches me carefully. I sigh, and he holds out his arms for a hug. I gladly accept, whimpering into his jacket again before I realize he hadn't the slightest idea why I am so emotional. "It's a very long story," I answer the question hanging inside him, bleating with his heart as it pounds against my forehead.

"I have time," he says softly, but there is a hollowness in his throat that I'm afraid to recognize in myself. "I have all the time in the world for you, Gabriella."

Maybe, I think. But nonetheless, we arrive at my house, which is the empty building that can no longer be called a home for reasons I have pretended didn't exist for a very long time. When we get inside, I start the fire and put some tea on the stove, even though neither of us drinks it. "It's been almost six months since the ten year reunion," he observes, looking at the flames that lick the brick fireplace in the living room.

"I didn't go," I say. "Did you?" He shakes his head, and I nod comprehensively. "I doubt it was a big loss."

We sit on the couch in silence until the timer in the kitchen goes off and the teapot squeals. I get up and pour us each a mug, spilling some on my finger in the process. I curse under my breath and he, surprisingly, hears me. Upon my return, Troy asks if I'm okay. "If you're asking about the burn, then yeah," I answer, "But if you're asking about my life, then no."

The tea scalds my tongue, too, but I still drink it. Troy is a little less enthusiastic, and I tell him he doesn't have to worry about being polite. Grateful, he puts the mug on the coffee table and grimaces as he reclines back against the sofa. "So you're not okay," he confirms.

"No," I remark weakly, "Not in the least bit." He waits for an explanation. "If you go down the hallway over there, you'll see three bedrooms, all still decorated with racecar and Barbie wallpaper, and bookshelves taller than we are. I had kids, at one point. Annabel, and Jesse, and Tristan. They were good kids, but, um." My voice breaks, and I feel my eyes sting with tears. "It was raining hard one night, and Tristan was trying to get my attention. I turned for just a second…" Again, my words crack and I can't get the rest of the sentence out. "My husband, Peter, really loved Jesse a lot, and he loved Annabel and Tristan, too, but Jesse was the firstborn and Peter's pride and joy. So, after the kids were gone, Peter started working more often and I stopped working. It's like losing part of your body. You don't think about it ever, their existence is taken for granted. And suddenly, when they're gone, you can't eat or sleep or even try to pretend that life will get better, because you know it won't, no matter how many hugs you receive or regretful cards that come in the mail. You just know that nothing will ever be the same way again, and you know it's your fault." My tea ripples as tears fall into the mug, creating a rupture in the liquid before dissipating against the ceramic.

Troy.

To see this girl cry was like watching an old movie you had forgotten about, or listening a song you hadn't realized was still around: no matter how long it's been, you still know the scenes and the lyrics and everything else. As Gabriella pours her life story into my heart, I want to hug her, but that would be inappropriate. I mean, she just said it herself. She's married. She had kids, a family, a life at one point. She had everything I have now. "Brie," I try hoarsely.

"And they were such good kids," she laments faintly, while I wonder if she heard me say her name, "And after the funeral, I realized why I had been a morning person amongst all the moody people at the office. I realized why I didn't mind jury duty, or a parking ticket, or any of those pain-in-the-ass things that normally ruin a person's day. I had my kids to love. Not Peter, something happened after Jesse was born. But my kids were there. And I took that away from myself." She shivers, in spite of the heat coming from the fireplace.

"Brie, it's not your fault," I attempt, although I try to imagine what I would do if my wife was in a fatal car crash like that. I try to imagine hearing the loss of my little girl, Samantha, and how I would react. Nothing comes close to the reality it seems Gabriella has endured for all this time. "How long has it been?"

She inhales. "They died a few days before the reunion," she explains, "and that's why I didn't go. I couldn't face all these happy people with their good marriages and good families and good everything." She looks at me and rubs her jaw. "That's why I wanted to know the definition of 'good' when you asked me. Some people define 'good' as rich, beautiful, tall, and skinny. I define 'good' with other things, all of which I am not." She lets a few tears fall before wiping her face. "You're good, then?"

I blink, my eyes dragged away from the bare mantel above the fire. There must have been pictures there before. "I am," I say, my voice barely above a whisper. "She's nice. We have a daughter. They're back home, in Chicago, I'm just here for my mom's birthday." Stop talking, I command myself. It'll only make things worse.

Gabriella bluffs as she smiles, and takes a gulp of her tea again. "Tell her I wish her happy birthday," she says. "I run into her sometimes at the market, but it's been a while."

A half hour passes, and I am beginning to panic. Although I desperately wish to reconnect in spite of our touchy background statuses, I feel like all she can do is stare at the fireplace longingly, as if willing the embers to come to life in the form of the children she loved. In a way, I love them, too, even if I don't know them, nor do I know what they look like. Gabriella glances at me finally, and she crawls over to lie on my chest, her slender little frame fragile in my lap. "Go ahead," she breathes into my shirt. "Break my heart."

Permission. She's giving me permission. And while I know perfectly well the outcome will harm us both, the feelings before that ache are inaccessible otherwise. My hand reaches for her chin, and I lift her head so she faces me from an angle. Our lips meet, and I feel like a teenager again. She twists her body so she can hold my face as we, twenty-nine years of age and still growing up, start something that has an inevitably dire ending.

In this meantime, I lose my sense of perception for a moment, and it is as if the fireplace has multiplied, casting dangerous flames all around us like a burning building. "Brie," I say her name like it's a forbidden word in the English language. She looks at me, my body beneath hers, and I admire her physique after all these years. She seems like she has weathered a lot, which she has, and I take a moment to consider this. "Brie, you know this isn't… We can't…"

She shakes her head and I feel the hair for which I once had an addiction tickle my neck. "I know," she sighs, but she doesn't move from where she is. "But it's all I can do to keep from being a complete wreck over my past. I need a new reason to cry." We kiss again, and I comply happily, her taste invading my mouth.

My voice is barely above a whisper. "I can't love you, Gabriella. I'm sorry." This is a technical truth; this version of me could never love her. Not after Chicago, and Samantha, and eleven years. My teenage self is trying to fight back, trying to dig up its own grave and come to life again. I stop it.

"Don't be sorry," she says quietly. "You don't have to be sorry."

And even as this night is our only one, even as the fire keeps burning a few feet away, even as I realize I will have a wife and child to come home to and Gabriella will have a husband to come home to her, I don't forget the look she gives me before we fall asleep. The look of peace, which I have given her, albeit only a little while. Her eyes flutter closed, and I kiss her sweetly, trying to give her what she lost. Maybe it isn't my place to oblige happiness, but I can't help it as I wonder what a woman like her did to deserve something like death of loved ones.

After a minute or two, she is still awake, and she draws her finger along my stomach. "Jesse's middle name," she murmurs into my ear, "is Troy."

"Samantha's middle name is Gabriella," I mumble, our bodies moving to adjust along the carpet upon which we have lain for some hours. "Small world."

"Not small enough," she says. "But just small enough so I was cute some slack for once, and you were sent to me, like an angel." Her lips against my cheek, I can feel her smile. "The mother of three other angels cannot thank you enough for doing her one justice and indeed, breaking my heart."

A/N: It's a weird oneshot, I know. Depressing and weird. But Gabriella, I decided, needed someone to bring her out of depression for a new reason of misery. She has tried happiness, which doesn't work, so she knows another cause for sadness can maybe help her start over. Does that make sense? I hope. -love- Desireé