Hellllooooo! It's been years since I posted a new story, but I got a review this week about one of my stories that I didn't even remember, so I logged in to FanFiction to jog my memory and I realized how much I missed this community. So I decided to write a one-shot on the fly!

I hope all of you have been fantastic. If you've been reading my stories from the beginning, let me know if you're fulfilling your dreams and where you are in your life now and where you were when you started reading! And if you're a new reader, I'm happy to hear from you too! I'm proud to say I've graduated college and am looking for a literary agent to become a published author. Ten years ago, High School Musical truly and undeniably changed my life, and it has influenced me ever since. I never would have imagined my hopes and dreams would have formed because of it.

The Promise of the World

Gabriella Montez stood in the frozen food section of the grocery store, a basket weighed down by the essentials: bread, milk, and eggs. It was five o'clock, so the aisle was crowded by people coming straight from work, and the overhead music played a song she hadn't heard since high school. As she looked at the frozen dinner options, she zoned out, her vision blurring as she stood still, the basket tilting her sideways, her work pants wrinkled at the knees. Her day had been another unsatisfying day sitting at a front desk, answering phone calls for people who had more going for them than an underpaid job as a receptionist.

On the far end of the aisle, a mother with two kids barreled around the corner, and she talked too loudly as she scorned her children for dragging their feet on the ground as they clung to the side of the cart, dangling from it. Her hair was a mess and her cheeks were red with embarrassment, but even so Gabriella felt jealous. She'd give anything to have a reason for more than a basket's worth of groceries.

Gabriella picked two boxes of frozen dinners without caring which ones she got and let the heavy, cold door slam shut before walking down the aisle. She rearranged the half-gallon of milk so that it was next to the cold dinners. Her hair fell in front of her face as she peered down at her selections, so when she got to the end and was about to turn the corner to make her way to the registers, she hadn't seen the person in front of her, who she ran into, slamming her basket into his stomach.

He let out a short groan, instinctively grabbing her arms to steady her as she fell backward. The bag of chips he had had tucked under his arm dropped with a crunch at his feet.

"I'm so sorry!" Gabriella said, smoothing her hair back so that she could finally see whom she had basically assaulted in the frozen food section.

"It's okay, it's okay. I wasn't paying attention," he started, but as their eyes met, the polite smile he had formed on his face dropped slowly.

Gabriella felt the panic rise up in her chest, seeing Troy Bolton standing in front of her. The last time she saw him she had been nineteen, promising him she'd see him again. At twenty-nine, even she remembered the lie. She opened her mouth to say something, but nothing came out and the basket she held seemed to get heavier.

"Gabi?" he said, in a whisper, like he was saying it to convince himself of her presence. "Hi."

"Troy," Gabriella finally said, swallowing. "I wasn't paying attention. I'm sorry."

"For what?" he said, glancing down at the chips without picking them up. He laughed shortly at his own question, maybe trying to eliminate the harshness from the question.

"I was just leaving," Gabriella said, sidestepping and moving forward.

"Wait," Troy said, turning. She stopped and faced him again, this time noticing the work clothes he wore, how his red tie was loosened and the sleeves of his dress shirt were unbuttoned and shoved up to his elbows. "How are you?"

She forced down the panicked feeling she had and it was replaced with dread. The same kind she felt every time someone she knew when she was successful and seemingly perfect asked about the person she had become. Talking about her lack of accomplishments now always made her sick.

"Fine," she said, nodding. Lying. "How are you?"

"Fine," he said, in the same tone she had used. Once upon a time she had known him well enough to know if he was lying, but now, after ten years, she wasn't sure. Maybe he was fine. Good for him.

"I should go before the milk gets warm," Gabriella said, noticing how he smiled briefly at her excuse.

"Sure," he said, nodding slowly. "Okay."

Gabriella turned and made a run for it, not caring as people glared at her, annoyed that she was pushing past them. Her heart pounded in her chest and she had to press her hand against it, steadying herself. The line for the self-checkout didn't move fast enough, and when she finally got to register six, Troy was at eight, a man ringing up just one case of beer between them.

She did her best not to throw her food into the plastic bags, hanging from a rack to her left. The beeping of the scanners around her rang in her ears and the man separating them moved on, clearing the view of her. Troy looked up just as Gabriella's machine was saying in a very polite voice to pick her method of payment. He shrugged, like he knew what she was thinking as he tugged off his receipt. She was pulling her bags from the station when he walked by, and since they had finished at the same time, they couldn't avoid walking next to each other, their small number of bags hanging from their hands.

"I'm sorry," Gabriella said again, as they kept an awkwardly large space between them, glancing at each other on their way out.

Troy didn't say anything as they then realized they were parked in the same row of cars and continued walking together. He stopped when she popped open her trunk.

"There's a basketball game at East High tonight," he said, squinting as the afternoon sun sank in the sky. "Would you like to go? See the old stomping grounds?"

He scratched the back of his neck, the way that had always made Gabriella consumed with a feeling of absolute love for him, like that's all he needed to do to be attractive to her for the rest of her life. She turned and set the groceries in the trunk to push their memories away from her.

"I don't think that's a good idea," she said, shutting the trunk gently. She rested her hands on it, avoiding his eye contact as she kept her back to him.

"Please," he said, the sound of the plastic bag he had the only thing that filled the silence between them for a second. "We should talk."

It was the last thing in the world she wanted to do, but somehow she knew that she owed him one conversation, even ten years too late.

"Okay," she said softly, nodding. "I'll meet you there."

Troy was waiting for her by the gym doors and she took deep breaths as she walked across her high school parking lot to him. He no longer had his tie around his neck and the top two buttons were undone on his dress shirt, revealing a white t-shirt underneath. His hair was still kept shaggy and it moved slightly in the breeze of the night.

"Shall we?" he said.

Gabriella followed as he went inside and the moment they came in contact with people, Troy was bombarded with greetings.

"Hi, Mr. Bolton," a blonde girl in a volleyball uniform said as she passed, waving casually.

"Troy, hello," an older man with glasses and a brown blazer who stood at the ticket table said. Troy smiled politely at all of them, nodding his hellos.

"Mr. Bolton, I have a problem," a boy said, rushing up to them as they passed the ticket table and went down the hallway. He followed as they approached the gym doors. "I'm feeling kind of sick and I'm not sure I'll have the paper done by tomorrow."

"Brian, what are you doing here then?" Troy said, laughing.

"I wasn't feeling sick until just now," the boy said, panicked almost.

"Sorry, dude," Troy said, shaking his head. "The paper is still due tomorrow. Plus, you shouldn't have waited until the night before to do it, should you have?"

The boy groaned in response, leaving them alone, and Gabriella watched him head down the hallway, toward the doors to leave.

"You're a teacher here?" Gabriella asked, surprised. "I thought you said you hadn't been back."

"I didn't say that, technically," he said as they walked into the gym. The game had already started and the sound of shoes squeaking against the waxed floor was louder than the voices of the audience watching. "Just thought you'd like to come back and see this place."

Gabriella felt annoyed as Troy took a few steps up the bleachers and sat four rows up, leaving a space for Gabriella on the aisle seat.

"It's not my top choice for ways to spend the night," Gabriella said.

She saw the way his jaw clenched at this comment, his smooth cheek tensing at the motion and she decided to keep her opinions to herself as long as she could.

"I didn't realize you ever wanted to be a teacher. What happened to being in the NBA?" Gabriella asked. The ref on the court called a home team foul and the crowd bristled with anger.

Troy patted his knee.

"I blew my knee out in college," Troy said, rubbing it. "My career didn't turn out the way I had hoped."

"Tell me about it," Gabriella said, before she could stop herself.

"Why? You're not a lawyer?"

She shook her head.

"I'm a receptionist for one," she said, pushing her hair behind her ears to give herself something to do. "I had to drop out of college."

Troy's head flew back like she had just punched him and his eyes were instantly filled with concern. His forehead creased as he looked at her.

"How is that even possible?" he asked.

Gabriella didn't answer as the West High Knights took a penalty shot and made it. The East High players on the bench cupped their faces in their hands and Gabriella wondered if more things than the two of them had changed: maybe East High wasn't any good at basketball anymore.

"I moved to London to take care of my mom," Gabriella said. "She got sick."

The look of concern on Troy's face only grew.

"Is she okay?" he asked, and Gabriella drew in a breath, letting it out in short puffs as her eyes glazed over, the breezy gym air not helping the tears in her eyes fade away.

"She passed away a few years ago," Gabriella said, shrugging when his face fell. "There was nothing I could do."

Troy stared at her and she felt her eyes on him even when she looked away, swallowing the lump in her throat.

"Gabi," he said, her name on his breath soft. "I would have…"

She looked at him, tracing his face with her eyes. He had more freckles on his cheeks and there were tiny, almost invisible wrinkles at the corner of his eyes. She wondered how she looked up close to him. If he could see the bags under her eyes or the dry spots she couldn't moisturize enough to make them disappear on her forehead.

"I don't know," he said, sighing. "I would have come."

She nodded, but said nothing for a few minutes, watching the game play out in front of her. The team really wasn't as good as when Troy played on it.

"This place promises you the world," Gabriella said, her voice soft. "They say we can do anything and be anyone, and then we get out into the world and it's so much harder than everyone makes it out to be. Life can never be what you expected."

"I know," Troy said. He reached over and pressed his hand on her back and goose bumps rose on her arms. Almost as quickly, he pulled away, like he realized he shouldn't have done that.

"I should go, Troy," she said, squeezing his arm quickly. "I'm not sure this is a good idea to dredge up the past."

"Past forgotten," Troy said, holding his hands up as if surrendering. "We don't have to talk about it."

Gabriella shook her head and on the sidelines, just as the buzzer was ending the second quarter, she saw Chad Danforth with a clipboard under his arm, the afro he had in high school trimmed down to a much shorter one.

"Is that Chad?" Gabriella asked, pointing.

"In the flesh," Troy said, nodding. "Basketball didn't exactly work out for him either."

"Did he get injured too?"

Troy smiled and shook his head.

"He married Taylor instead," he said.

"No," Gabriella said, surprised. "Do you think she'd be here?"

"Probably not," Troy said. "Since we started loosing she stays home. Plus, the twins are colicky."

"Colicky? Twins? Taylor and Chad?"

Gabriella felt even sicker than she had running into Troy in the grocery store. She had lost touch with Taylor when she broke up with Troy, finding it too difficult to have a conversation with her that didn't end up about the boy she loved.

"I know, it's crazy," Troy said. "I'm the godfather."

"You would be," Gabriella said, rubbing her forehead. The room started to spin slightly and she knew she couldn't stay any longer. "I'm leaving."

The look that flashed over Troy's face made her sad, since it was so similar to the one she had seen when she broke up with him. When she had realized she made a mistake choosing a college close to him, and decided to go to the Ivy Leagues instead, like she had originally planned.

She leaned over, cupping his cheek in her hand and kissed the side of his head, lingering there momentarily. When she pulled back, she saw a student a bleacher row above them, gaping at the image of her teacher being kissed. Troy ran a finger over his chin, looking at his feet and he stayed that way as she got up and left.

She was almost to her car, finding her way in the darkness of the night and feeling the cool air on her skin, when she heard Troy calling after her. He was a few cars away from her when she turned around, and he was out of breath, staying back so he wouldn't scare her away by getting to close.

"I don't get it," Troy said, lifting his arms up in a shrug and letting them fall back against his side with a smack. "We could have been together, Gabi. We could have made it work."

"We couldn't have," she said.

"The only thing that bothers me about my life not going as planned is the part where you and I don't end up together. It was always supposed to end that way."

Gabriella's chest shook as she tried not to cry at the sight of him standing in the gym parking lot, asking her to explain herself the way he had the night she left.

"Why did you leave ten years ago?" Troy asked, his question pleading.

"I was afraid to have the world," she said, a tear rolling down her cheek. "I was afraid of being disappointed once I had it."

"And now," Troy said, gesturing between them. "How do you feel now?"

"I feel…" She wiped the tear from her cheek, clearing her throat. She pictured the mom in the grocery store, lugging her kids with her, and of Taylor and Chad getting married. "Disappointed."

Troy took a few steps toward her and stopped once he was an arms length away.

"Then come inside," he said, pointing behind him. "Let's watch the Wildcats lose together. Let's be in the life we ended up with."

Gabriella hesitated, but when Troy reached his hand out, she took it, feeling the energy pass between them. He looked down at her, squeezing her hand. When they took a step forward together, that feeling of dread she had had for so many years disappeared and a feeling she hadn't felt in so long took over and that was the undeniable sensation of hope for what was to come.

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Much love,

unknownbyhim22