Disclaimer: I do not own any of the characters, actors, plotlines, locations, props or anything else remotely related to High School Musical. Apart from the DVDs and posters of Zac Efron. Nor do I lay claim to be in possession of the genius required for the creation of such things.
A/N: Thank you so much for your amazing response. I can't say exactly how many chapters this might be, but I reckon that there will be at least one more…and perhaps an epilogue…I'm leaving it up to my muse!
On the first day Troy awoke with his head buzzing; not because of a hangover, but because of the indescribable guilt: guilt at having done something so uncharacteristic; guilt at having purposeful done something that would hurt Lana if she were ever to find out; and most of all, guilt at not regretting it. Light brought elucidation as it seeped through the curtains. If he had been unsure before of the future of his relationship, now he knew. Squeezing his eyes shut, Troy desperately tried to detect Gabriella's lingering taste on his palate; he was sure that he could still smell the faint fragrance of vanilla that he had come to associate with her. And then he remembered. He remembered the look on her face, the startled eyes, and the intolerable guilt. He remembered how quickly she had fled from him. He remembered the desperation that he had felt as he searched for her back in the house, knowing that she had almost certainly gone home, and feeling sick to the stomach at the possibility that she had walked home alone. He had tried to call her, her phone unsurprisingly ringing out. That had been before he realized that he had absolutely no idea what to say to her; to calm her and make her understand that this wasn't her fault. Only then, as he had drifted asleep did another preoccupation assail him: he had to tell Lana. Nine hours of undisturbed, partly blissful, partly stomach turning sleep later, Troy still had no idea what he was going to do.
He had to break up with Lana. He longed to be with Gabriella. Did he have to tell Lana? The term "cheating" sounded so cruel, so thoughtless, and so malicious; characteristics that Troy would never have associated with himself up until that point. He may have been thoughtless, but he hadn't been uncaring. He definitely hadn't gone to the party with any intention of kissing Gabriella, it was just that the more time they spent together the harder it had become for him to suppress the overwhelming urge to taste her, to be with her. Telling Lana would have been an admission of his failings; of his malevolence. He had no idea of knowing how she would react, and it scared him to think how angry and upset she would be; not to mention what she would do if she found out that Gabriella was involved. It was at times like this that Troy wondered why he hadn't just broken things off with his girlfriend when he knew it wasn't going anywhere; a pondering that made him loathe himself even more when he landed on the reason. Troy liked being popular and he liked the perks. It didn't mean that he was a stereotypical, cold-hearted jock, but it did mean that he took advantage of his situation sometimes. He was a teenage boy, and he liked profiting from having a hot girlfriend draping herself over him. He wasn't proud of it, but he couldn't deny it either. So to have to turn around to his girlfriend and tell her that he had kissed somebody else constituted an unwelcome admission for Troy: was he really all that different from the jerks that he despised? It seemed not.
As the sun filtered through her blinds, Gabriella decided that light was most definitely bad. Darkness was comforting, in a strange almost paradoxical way: it encompassed, it shielded and it fostered denial. She clenched her eyes closed, attempting with all of her might to ward off the invading glare of sunlight and the inevitable onset of a new day. She was usually a positive person, every day held something new. Last night had changed a lot of things though. Gabriella prided herself on her strong character and on her sound values. Treat others as you would expect them to treat you. For the first seventeen years of her life this had paid off; she was surrounded by loving friends and family, and she could honestly say that she had never done anything to purposefully hurt anybody. Last night had changed that. As her and Troy's lips had pressed against each other, Gabriella hadn't thought about his girlfriend. And when she had remembered her, it had taken her longer than she liked to admit to pull away. So as the sun streamed through the windows, Gabriella silently prayed that it wouldn't. Because the impending daylight carried with it unwanted truths.
If guilt wasn't enough to cause her to wrap herself in the remaining vestiges of darkness, there was another unpleasant emotion clawing at her: longing. Or was it greed? No matter how appalled she was with what she had done, Gabriella could not shake the memory of how right it had felt to be kissing Troy Bolton. Every time that her eyes drifted closed it was taking longer to bleach from her retinas the image of his deliciously intense eyes as he had leaned into her. Gabriella could no longer deny the fact that she wanted Troy; she coveted him, she wanted to have something that didn't belong to her. Making her way to the kitchen, Gabriella ignored the curious glance of her mother as she delved into the freezer and pulled out a tub of Ben and Jerry's. Grabbing a spoon, she slumped down at the kitchen island and dug in. Her mother watched concerned as she ate. And ate. And ate.
And so there was morning. And then there was evening – the first day.
/
On the second day, Troy didn't wake. He hadn't slept. He ignored the incessant buzzing of his phone, a quick glance at the screen telling him that it was his girlfriend. He couldn't talk to her yet.
Gabriella frowned as her eyes fluttered open and she realised that she wasn't in her bedroom. Sleep's hazy fog rising, it dawned on her that she must have fallen asleep on the sofa. She noted the empty tub of ice-cream lying on the floor, and was thankful for the blanket that was tucked around her body. The door creaked open and her mother smiled at her, concern lacing her features.
"Do you want to talk?"
"Not yet..." Gabriella's reply was soft. Could she talk? The last vestiges of sleep slipping from her body, Gabriella sighed as the battle of conflictig emotions once again struck up within her conscience.
And so there was morning. And then there was evening – the second day.
/
On the third day, Troy was snatched from his slumber by the taunting blaring of his alarm clock. He changed slowly, deliberately, trying to put off the journey to school as long as possible.
Gabriella pulled on her favourite over-sized hoodie, scraping her hair back into a bun before wincing at her appearance in the mirror. Maybe she would fade into the background. If only she could get through this day then everything would be okay.
She pushed the floating bits of cereal around her bowl as she pondered the trials that the day would bring, only pausing in her actions when she heard the gently probing voice of her mother.
"Are you ready to talk?"
"I don't think so."
Exactly ten minutes apart Troy Bolton and Gabriella Montez walked through the front doors of East High School. Troy sat in his desk at the front of homeroom staring intently at the door: Gabriella was never late. As the seconds ticked by his nervousness grew. He glanced guiltily at the girl sat next to him, too engrossed in her conversation to notice his unusual demeanor. Her attention was only stirred when Gabriella rushed into the room, seconds before the bell went.
"Oh, look, the geek nearly didn't make it on time…"
He couldn't chastise her.
Gabriella kept her gaze fixed on the floor as she navigated her way to the back of the classroom, still wishing that she was safely tucked under her duvet, protected by darkness. Yet, she had a plan, and she was going to stick to it. There would be no trips to her locker that day. There would be no eating in the canteen. She had spent the weekend itemizing every possibility of running into Troy during the school day before meticulously reshuffling her habits to ensure that they would not cross paths. And so she hurried out of homeroom as soon as Ms. Darbus clapped the register shut. Unavoidable encounter managed to the best of her ability, Gabriella sped on.
Troy, on the other hand, hadn't meticulously formulated a method of avoiding his girlfriend. It turned out that fate had taken care of that task for him. Apart from her lightly reprimanding him for ignoring her phone calls the previous day, to which that Troy had rather pathetically replied that he couldn't find his phone, Lana had been unusually absent from his side; society duties meaning that she was busy all day.
She smiled as she passed him in the corridor at the change-over between sixth and seventh period. "Smile, babe…"
Troy's breath caught in his throat. He needed to say something. "I…er…"he stepped closer to her. "We need to…" talk. He didn't get chance to utter the all important word as Lana's friend grabbed her hand and dragged her laughing down the hallway.
"See you tomorrow, babe…" Troy watched her departing back miserably.
And so there was morning, and there was evening – the third day.
/
On the fourth day, Troy woke up without the aid of his alarm clock, the knowledge of what he would be doing that day preventing him from wallowing in the drowsy state that housed him between the hours of five and ten most mornings.
Troy arrived at school earlier than he normally would have, heading straight to his girlfriend's locker and startling her with the serious expression on his face. "Are you okay, Troy?" she questioned, the obvious concern making his task even harder. His eyes drooped closed as she brushed a kiss against his lips, rubbing his cheek gently, soothingly. He tried to forget. He desperately tried to pretend that the events of Friday night hadn't happened and that he didn't need to say anything. He attempted to convince himself that this was what he wanted. But her lips were just the slightest bit too moist. She smelled of strawberries and not vanilla. She wasn't Gabriella, and as hard as he tried to tell himself that it didn't matter; it did.
"Can we talk?" He hoped that the variation on an overworked phrase would be less harsh.
He led her away from the gradually filling corridor, a guiding arm on her back.
Seated on a bench of the roof-top garden, he began to talk – with one major admission. He told her that he didn't think it was working, that they weren't seeing each other as much, and that he didn't know whether he would have time when the exams started. He lied. Lana cried. They were over; but it didn't make Troy feel any better.
Gabriella didn't go to school late that morning, her mother insisting on giving her a lift when she went to work; presumably unsure whether her daughter would actually go in to school without supervision. Gabriella coped, though, because she knew that Troy got the late bus on Tuesdays.
So when she walked down the main hallway and saw him leaning against Lana's locker, her stomach constricted: not simply because her carefully thought out plan of attack had been compromised, but because he was kissing his girlfriend. She watched as Lana pulled back and stroked his face; she watched as his eyes remained closed; she watched as he led her down the corridor away from her with a gentle hand on her back. Guilt transformed into envy; and envy into hurt. Gabriella hurried towards the toilets and locked herself in a cubicle.
When the bell signaling homeroom rang and Gabriella still hadn't taken her seat, Troy knew that she wouldn't. She didn't make it to homeroom, using the time to recapitulate her plan of avoidance in her head. It was executed perfectly.
And so there was morning, and there was evening – the fourth day.
/
On the fifth day, Troy woke up feeling hopeful; but no less guilty. He knew that Gabriella was avoiding him and had felt as if he had been going insane the previous days every time that he caught a glimpse of chocolate brown curls. Today was Wednesday, though: English day as he had come to label it as his feelings for Gabriella had developed. He was determined that he would speak to her, to attempt to make things right.
Gabriella normally looked forward to periods five and six on a Wednesday: she loved English, and she got to spend time with Troy. This particular Wednesday, however, these facts compromised her evasion strategy somewhat. Gabriella was going to be spending an hour in the same room, three desks across from him. It was going to be torture; and Gabriella simply didn't know how she was going to plan for it.
Her fingers tapped nervously against the breakfast bar as she read over her biology homework, her mother shooting her another curious glance.
"Are you sure that you don't want to talk?"
"I don't think I know how…"
At half past eleven Gabriella opened her file and began slowly searching through it, page by page, until she found the sheets that she would need for that lesson. She didn't look up when she heard the rabble of basketball players make their way into the room. She didn't look up when somebody called Troy's name and he distractedly answered.
She had planned and desperately relied on managing to leave the classroom first at the end of the lesson. Mrs. Johnson, however, thwarted her plan.
"Gabriella, could you stay behind for a minute?" the kindly woman's voice rung out at the end of the lesson; and Gabriella's heart sunk. Only then did she chance a look Troy, who was staring intently, almost hopefully at her.
Troy waited outside the door, telling his friends that he would meet them outside, and tried not to eavesdrop as their teacher inquired whether everything was okay with Gabriella, obviously unused to her star pupil not uttering a word throughout an entire lesson.
Assuring her that she was fine, just tired, Gabriella gingerly made her way over to the door, not sure how she would feel if Troy was loitering and waiting for her. What scared her most was how she would feel if he hadn't waited for her. She didn't have to find out. Pulling open the door, Gabriella came face to face with the boy that had been plaguing her thoughts the since late Friday night. An unfamiliar stinging gnawed at the corners of her eyes, and Gabriella squeezed them shut in an attempt to fight off tears.
"Gabi, please, can we go and talk?"
She opened her eyes, already glossy and red, trying to shake her head.
"Please…"
Suddenly devoid of the capacity to disagree, Gabriella mutedly followed him as he ushered them into the classroom that their teacher had just vacated.
The pair sat silently on desks facing each other, neither knowing how to start the conversation.
"Lana and I broke up…" Troy abruptly blurted out, desperate to break up the awkward silence that was new to them.
Their eyes met. "Does she know?" As soon as she murmured the words, Gabriella dropped her gaze back to the floor and picked at the fabric of her skirt.
Troy had the decency to look ashamed as he spoke. "No…I…"
"That makes sense – I wondered why she hadn't tried to kill me…"
Silence.
More silence.
It was suffocating.
"I don't want it to be like this between us…" Troy whispered.
"I don't know how to change it…"
"Can we just…" the rest of the sentence lingered in the air.
"Forget?" Gabriella sniffed as the response left her lips, not daring to look up at Troy and see the agreement that would no doubt be playing on his face.
"Do you want to?"
Slowly, Gabriella raised her head, studying him intently; startled by the fusion of uncertainty and longing lacing his features. "I don't think that there's a choice…"
"Is that what you want?"
"It doesn't matter…"
"Yes it does…I like you, Gabi…I don't regret what happened on Friday – I just wish that it had happened some other way."
"It didn't though, did it?" Gabriella's eyes hardened. "I don't do things like that. I barely go to parties but I most definitely don't kiss other girls' boyfriends. That's all I can think about."
"Gabi, I don't do things like that either. I feel horrible. It isn't your fault."
"Don't patronize me, Troy. I'm a big girl, and I know what I did."
"God, Gabriella, I don't know what to do to make things right between us…" She shrugged. "Can you at least say something?"
"I don't know what to say, Troy."
"Can we try and go back to normal? Please?"
Gabriella nodded slowly before picking up her bag and walking out of the room.
When her mother arrived home that evening, she was unexpectedly met by her daughter sitting on the couch.
"I need to talk, mummy…"
So she talked. And cried. And everything seemed just that little bit better when she went to bed that night.
And so there was morning, and there was evening – the fifth day.
/
On the sixth day, Troy woke up feeling optimistic. Things weren't perfect, but they were better. He wanted Gabi back, and he was determined to do anything to achieve it.
Gabriella wasn't sure how she felt when she woke up. She supposed that it was a mixture of relief and persisting worry. Even the few days that she hadn't been speaking to Troy felt too long, but she didn't know whether she could go back to how they had been in the knowledge of what they could have.
When Troy arrived into homeroom that morning, he was almost shocked to see that Gabriella was already sitting in her place at the back of the classroom, talking animatedly to Taylor. Their eyes met across the room when Gabriella heard Zeke call his name. He smiled. She smiled.
At lunchtime Gabriella frowned when she opened her locker and a piece of paper fluttered out of it and on to the ground. She smiled as she read it:
'Hey. There's something waiting for you on the second shelf of the potting shed in the rooftop garden. Sorry again about everything. Troy x
P.s. You look beautiful.
Gabriella couldn't control the smile that spread across her face as she reread the note. More excitedly than she would let herself believe, she made her way to the garden, smiling at what awaited her: a copy of 'Atonement' and a box of chocolates. She smiled whimsically as she remembered telling Troy that there was nothing better than a lazy afternoon curled up on the sofa with a new book and a box of chocolates.
Gabriella literally walked into Troy later that day, fate obviously having decided that they needed a nudge. Her skin burned at the steadying touch of his hand upon her waist. She looked up at him, surprised, before blushing at the searching look that he was giving her.
"Thank you," she whispered up at him, disappointed when he moved his hand from her waist and stepped back.
"You're welcome. How are you feeling?"
"Better. You?"
"Better."
Troy walked Gabriella to her locker, even though he knew it would make him late for his next class.
Things weren't fixed, but they were on the mend.
Gabriella's mother almost did a double take when she walked into the living room that evening and saw a smile on her daughter's face.
"Good book?" she questioned, noting the item in Gabriella's hand and the engrossed expression on her face.
"Yeah." Gabriella's reply said more than that one word betrayed.
And so there was morning, and there was evening – the sixth day.
/
On the seventh day, Troy woke up and smiled.
On the seventh day, Gabriella woke up and smiled.
In homeroom, he shot her furtive glances that she responded to with a blush and a shy smile.
The strange sensation at the pit of their stomachs as they made their way, separately, to chemistry was not disquiet, nor was it self-loathing or shame. It was excitement.
As Troy slid into his usual spot next to Gabriella, he knew that the day was going to go well. They didn't get much opportunity to talk during the lesson, their teacher finding it, rather inconveniently, more useful to give a lecture on the reactions of various chemicals than to actually let them see for themselves. Emboldened, by what Troy was going to call the Friday feeling from now on, he placed his hand over Gabriella's on her knee, smiling at the momentarily shocked expression on her face and gulping as she turned her hand over and allowed them to link fingers.
When the bell rang, they reluctantly relinquished the contact, but walked especially slowly to her locker, testing the waters with easy, uncomplicated conversation.
"Are you sure you're okay?" Troy probed.
"I actually think I am."
"Can I walk you home tonight?"
Gabriella gulped as she looked up into his startlingly blue eyes. There was only one response that she could give.
Exactly four hours and twenty seven minutes later, Troy and Gabriella were ambling down the road, skirting around serious conversation by filling each other in on what had happened to them during the week, without mentioning the reason why they didn't already know.
As they approached her house, Troy slowed his pace before coming to a stop just shy of her drive. "Gabi," he urged, causing the petite girl to also stop. "I really want you to be my girlfriend."
Gabriella blushed, her heart bursting into a million tiny pieces as he voiced the words that she had been so desperate to hear for so long. Yet she sighed. No matter how much she wanted it, things couldn't just magically happen. "I…" she started, relieved when she noted the understanding tingeing Troy's eyes as she hesitated. "We can't right now. It's too soon."
Hands in his pockets, Troy exhaled softly. "I know. I want to do things properly. And I'm sorry for that…"
"Can we just…take it slowly? Be friends again for a while…"
He nodded. "I'd really like that."
A tentative hand on the small of her back, Troy walked Gabriella to her door, kissing her on the cheek as they said goodbye.
Troy turned to walk away as she opened her front door, his head snapping back around as she called his name. "Could I maybe call you, later?"
A cheesier grin had never been seen on Troy Bolton's face.
Troy Bolton and Gabriella Montez both went to sleep with smiles on their faces that evening.
And so there was morning, and there was evening – the seventh day.
A/N: Wow, that's the longest thing that I have ever written. And it was so therapeutic! Review!
