As/n: This IS a co-authored story. CoCo (that'd be me…heh.) stupidly forgot to remove the author's note!!!! Thanks for the reviews, keep reviewing. We appreciate it! By the way, this is in the future but not like there's time travel and stuff. It's exactly like today except that it's years in the future.
Chapter 2
Troy and his friends decided to go to dinner and talk for a while after they went to the park. Luckily, Gabriella didn't come up once in the conversation. Time flew by quickly for the old friends but when Heather fell asleep in her chicken fingers, everyone decided it was time to go home.
Driving home after dinner, Owen was fast asleep. It was well near ten o'clock when Troy and he got home and, to Owen, running around for two hours, eating graham crackers and apple juice, and coloring with sidewalk chalk was tiring, plus… it was way past his bedtime.
Looking upon Owen sleeping face, Troy's mind wandered…
HSM HSM HSM HSM
Gabriella was waiting for Troy after school. It was 3:37 and he still hadn't shown up. Suddenly, she remembered Troy was the basketball star, he had practice and he wouldn't dare miss it.
Then, she realized, Troy hadn't been going to practice a lot lately, just to see her. Her heart fluttered as she thought of his face, peering around a corner to see if she had come to meet him. She had instantly fallen in love with his eyes and his huge heart. Being the star of a basketball team didn't mean he was a cruel-hearted person. On the contrary, Troy was one of the sweetest boys she had ever met.
Troy's head popped around the corner followed by a torso wearing a warm-up jersey and the rest of Troy's body.
"Hey, sorry for the wait. I had to wait for my dad to leave before I left the gym. So where to today?" Troy asked, grabbing Gabriella's backpack off the ground and slinging it over his shoulder.
"I was thinking maybe my house. You know, so my mom can meet you," Gabriella said quietly. She had been planning this for a while now. Ms. Montez wanted to meet Troy for a long time but she wasn't sure how to tell this to Troy.
"Oh, um… okay, wow… I-uh…wow." That was all Troy could say. He hadn't expected this. He just wanted to walk around the park, maybe go get some ice cream but meeting his girlfriend's mom…that was different.
"I'm not dressed though," Troy said as he looked at his basketball outfit. "Maybe we should, stop by the mall or something… just so I could, you know, look proper."
"Yeah, okay. My mom isn't expecting us for another hour or so, so I guess that's okay," Gabriella led Troy to her small, red Nova. "It's not much, but it was all Mom and I could afford."
She blushed very deeply at this statement. Her mom didn't make much money but every time they moved to a new place, her mom was promised more money but never received it. Troy's family, on the other hand, was very wealthy. Well, not very wealthy but they had enough money to buy Troy a Land Rover and basically anything he wanted. Not that he wanted much. Gabriella remembered Troy telling her once that all he wanted was his own life, his own job, and a wife and children.
"No problem," Troy said, throwing her backpack into the backseat.
"Let's stop by Crestwood Mall. They have a great sale on purses right now," Gabriella said, almost forgetting that Troy could care less about purses but she always felt she could be herself around him. He just made her feel that way. Like she could just float away, lost in his eyes, and never turn back.
"Okay. Maybe they have one in pink," Troy teased in a girly voice, mouth in a very wide grin.
Gabriella laughed and started the car. I lov- No. She wasn't going to even think that. She had only known Troy for a month or so… it was too early. But she still couldn't help but to add those four little letters at the end. It was just so hard not to love Troy Bolton. He was a gentleman, a nice guy, and not too mention, he wasn't half-bad looking. Okay, he was gorgeous, the hottest guy Gabriella had ever dated. She loved the way Troy's sandy brown hair flopped over his sparkling blue eyes, the way he pushed his sleeves up whenever he went anywhere because his arms would get too hot, she loved the freckle next to his right eye, she loved everything about him.
Gabriella Montez tried to deny it… but, she was in love with Troy Bolton.
Troy and Gabriella walked past a small trinket store. Gabriella looked longingly inside, when finally Troy said, "Gabriella, you want to go in there? Let's go check it out."
Walking inside, Gabriella's eyes scanned the shelves until she found what she was looking for. A small silver metal hung off a matching chain. Written on the silver oval, in a fancy text, was a tiny letter G.
"Just so you'll never forget me," Gabriella said, purchasing it and hanging it around Troy's neck.
Troy ran his fingers over it. He would always cherish it.
"I'll never forget you, Gabriella," Troy said, planting a soft kiss on her lips.
After many fruitless attempts to find Troy an outfit they finally decided on a blue button down shirt and a pair of jeans. It was cheap, too. But Troy didn't even care about the costs, or even how stupid he looked in the high heels aisle with Gabriella. He just wanted to be with her, always. He knew he was risking his Captaincy on the basketball team and even a spot on the team to see Gabriella but he just had to. He loved the way her curly brown hair bounced and how it shined in the sunlight. He loved watching the happiness dance in her eyes as they walked around together; he loved holding her soft, warm hand. But he knew what he was doing was wrong. He was skipping practice and skiving off on homework just to be with Gabriella.
Troy Bolton wouldn't deny it… he had fallen head over heels for Gabriella Montez.
As the days went on, Gabriella and Troy risked everything to see each other, even for a couple of minutes. Troy's team got angrier and angrier every time he didn't show up for practice not to mention how furious his father was for not even caring about the team anymore. Ms. Montez had, just like Gabriella, fallen in love with Troy, but in a different way. She loved how he was kind and polite and that he really did care about Gabriella, but she was also getting very angry. Gabriella had been spending more time with Troy than studying and was doing very poorly on her tests. Then, she got a call form Taylor McKessie wondering way Gabriella was missing all of the Scholastic Decathlon practices. Things were not going so well for Troy and Gabriella but they didn't care. All they needed was each other.
Gabriella's life was the best it had been in a long time until the one fateful day when she walked past her kitchen and happened to hear her mother's phone conversation.
"Seattle?" Her mom said. "A few months? I'll think about it. I mean, Gabriella's just getting settled and she's very happy here. …Pay raise? Two hundred dollars? …It a very big possibility, sir. I need the money and I'll go to Seattle to get it but… I just need to be careful about Gabriella. I don't want to hurt her again."
Gabriella ran upstairs into her room, sobbing hysterically. Every time she and her mother got settled somewhere they had to move somewhere else, but now everything was different. She had Troy, the boy who had changed her life, her heart, her mind. She couldn't leave him, not when she was so madly in love.
And Gabriella admitted it. She was in love with Troy Bolton.
Troy Bolton's life was the best it had been in a long time. But one day, his friends had enough. They were sick of him leaving basketball practice and they were furious.
Chad was the only one brave enough to smart off to the captain, so one day, during free period Chad asked Troy to come to the empty English classroom to talk.
When he arrived in the room, Troy was immediately shoved roughly into a chair by his best friend.
"Dude, what's going…" Troy began, rubbing his head, which had been jerked back by this sudden blow.
"Troy, just shut up and listen to me," Chad said, a vein in his temple throbbing, "You've been skipping practice a lot lately. The team is working their butts off to get ready for the games, trying to get as good as you, but they haven't. But at least they're trying. You, on the other hand, haven't even been to a single practice in three weeks and we have a division game next week! You don't care anymore, Cap. And we need you."
Guilt burst through a dam in Troy's chest. He had let his team down, big time and that's not what a Captain does. But recently, Troy had been thought something about life. It wasn't all about basketball. It was about whom you love and care for.
"So, that's the only thing you have to say, Troy? Nothing? Well, you've been giving us a lot of nothing lately and we want something from you. We want some effort out of our captain. Is that too much to ask?" Chad was screaming now. Clearly, he had put a lot of thought into this.
"Chad, you don't get it," Troy said, standing up and staring him right in the eyes. "Basketball doesn't matter anymore. I have someone I love and I'm not giving her up for some stupid sport! I never wanted to start basketball but my dad insisted I would eventually like it. Chad, I didn't want to do something I was eventually going to like! I wanted to do something that I love to do and I didn't have to try as hard I could to like it. I wanted a normal life, away from the popularity of being a 'Basketball guy'. Chad, I want to be normal."
Chad's face relaxed for a moment, but then his body tensed up again. "This is about her, isn't it? Gabriella?"
Troy looked down at the floor.
"Troy, you can't let the team down for a girl. What do you even know about this girl, Troy? Nothing!"
"Sometimes nothing is enough…" Troy answered.
Chad shoved Troy one more time before walking out of the room, a film of tears on his eyes.
And Troy Bolton had just lost his best friend.
HSM HSM HSM HSM
Troy carried Owen into their small two-bedroom apartment. Throwing the car keys on the wooden coffee table, Troy looked at the pictures lined up on the mantle above the fireplace.
One showed a picture of a younger Troy, Gabriella, and Owen, all smiling, their hands holding onto each other's.
A big picture of Gabriella was in the center of the mantle with a wilting rose at the bottom of the frame. Troy's eyes filled with tears again but he brushed them away and stared at the next picture.
This one caused all of the tears in Troy's eyes to drip out, all running off his cheeks and onto Owen's green fleece jacket.
It was of a baby girl, about three moths old, smiling up from her crib. She was lying on pink blanket, reading Caroline in a curly cursive text.
On the bottom of the picture frame were the words:
Caroline Jacquelyn Bolton
September 19, 2013
December 22, 2013
Troy carried his son into his bedroom, laying him gently under the blue flannel sheets on his bed. Kissing him on the cheek, Troy wiped a tear off of his face and, sniffling, walked into his room next door.
Troy pulled on his pajamas and slipped into bed. He pulled a necklace off of his neck and laid it on the bedside table. Troy almost instantly fell asleep.
Looking upon the bedside table, you would see a silver necklace. Barley legible in the pale moonlight was the letter G craved carefully into the metal.
