Troy Bolton sighed lazily as he closed his front door while his parent's car retreated down the street.

Mr and Mrs Bolton had decided to treat themselves to a weekend at a new health spa/resort that had opened up recently, leaving Troy with the house to himself for the whole weekend. The resort was a few hours away and his parents had promised to phone him as they were leaving the resort, so he figured he could get away with pretty much anything and have the house cleaned up in time to not get caught.

So. The first thing that came to mind was, of course, PAR-TAY! But then, the next logical thought was 'why?'

After thinking about his predicament long and hard, Troy realised that he didn't really want a party. What he really wanted was just a quite, relaxing weekend with his girlfriend…and a chance to think things through.

Troy and Gabriella had been dating officially for almost six months now, in fact the following Wednesday was their six months anniversary. Troy was quite pleased with himself that he had remembered, where many other males, not naming names cough Chad cough would have forgotten. But there was something Gabi didn't know…for the past two months Troy had been dating another girl as well, Sophie, a cheerleader from West High.

Troy loved Gabi. He wanted to be with her forever and couldn't imagine spending the rest of his life without her, but when he was with Sophie…Sophie was just wonderful to spend time with, and they had so many things in common. He didn't love Sophie, and he wasn't afraid to admit it, but there was something about spending time with her that he couldn't resist. He wanted to tell Gabi, or do something to make it not feel so wrong to hang out with Sophie, but the only things he could think of would inevitably lead to break-up, which was something he didn't even want to contemplate. He would be lost without Gabriella, and really didn't want to do anything to hurt her, but he couldn't help it, could he?

His thoughts were interrupted as the phone rang. Answering it, he discovered that on the other end of the line was none other than Gabriella Montez, the girl of his dreams.

"Hey baby!" he said cheerfully into the receiver.

"Hi sweetheart. I was just calling to ask if you wanted to hang out for a bit?" she asked, her voice light and happy.

"I'd love to, but I can't. Sorry. I have stuff that I need to do at the moment, but if you want I can call you when I'm done and we can hang out then?" he said, feeling guilty. In truth he had arranged to hang out with Sophie for the afternoon, and she was going to be here in about five minutes.

"Oh. Okay. I thought we could catch a movie or something. Maybe tomorrow night then?" Troy was a little hurt by how dejected Gabi sounded, but he pushed it out of his mind.

"Uh…yeah. I'm really sorry about that, baby. But I promise we can do something extra special tomorrow night to make up for it, okay?"

"Sure, sounds like fun. It's a date, then?" she said, sounding slightly more upbeat, but definitely not happy.

"Yeah. Anyway, I've got to go. Love you!"

"Love you too!"

He hung the phone up just as a knock sounded at the door. Looking out the window he could see Sophie's bike on the lawn.

Opening the door again, Troy couldn't keep a grin from his face as his eyes fell upon Sophie's smiling face. In that second, all thoughts of Gabriella were banished from his mind.