-1A/N: My word. The chapters good, the ending not so much, but the next chapter is…different. I've tried to work some artistic themes into this story, so you might notice this one is a lot about change, and how Troy doesn't exactly adapt well to it.

Review PLEASE, they make me so happy.

Gabriella looked up again. Troy stared. He wasn't stupid, he'd listened in Health Class. He knew she had taken something, he was clueless as to what, but even he could tell something was up. He was expecting giddy giggling, staggering around, a violent fit or something. Troy's eyes followed Gabriella as she stood up, swaying very slightly, made her way to the CD player, normal as anything, and turn on something that sounded vaguely like club music. Not the sleazy music that played at Gabriella's club, produced to entice men, this was something slightly softer, to dance close and slowly with your boyfriend to.

"Dance with me." She said, demanding but still somehow gentle and alluring.

"What?" He was taken aback. It was just so...normal.

"Dance. With. Me," She grinned, pointing at her own chest. She leant over the couch and pulled him up, fingers grasping something cold and smooth. Turning his hand over, she saw a small 'E', sitting atop a paw print.

"You kept your class ring?" She asked, placing his hands on her hip and swaying softly to the music.

"Yeah. I don't know. It just...sentimentality and all that." She grinned. She knew she was being completely patronising, but to see herself, almost another person to how her had been in high school, and then Troy, so innocent and sheltered that he cared enough to keep track of his class ring. Gabriella pawned hers a long time ago.

"You're cute, you know Troy. Someone should box you and sell you by the dozen." It sounded cuter when said by the voice in her head.

"I'm going to choose to take that as a compliment."

For several minutes they stood there in an extremely comfortable silence, moving to the music. She dropped her head to lay gently on his shoulder, letting him see past her newly straightened hair. She'd never done anything with her hair in high school. Troy couldn't remember it perfectly, almost straight at the top, and dropping into loose curls the longer it got. Then she cut it short and it framed her face like it was made especially for her. Troy could still remember everything about Gabriella. The way she walked, the place where her flat stoumach turned into a curvaceous hip, the way she protested Troy when his hand snaked towards her panties because she wanted to save herself for marriage. Glancing at the coffee table, he examined it with his eyes. There was several random items there, a purse, a small teddy bear with it's stuffing spilling out of its chest, a sno-globe from India. A candle. Two small plastic bags. A bottle of some kind of alcohol. A needle. The music slowed and ground to a stop. Contained in his own thoughts, he didn't even notice. She pulled away and kissed him on the chin, looking at him from under her eyelashes. She leant over the back of the couch, butt in the air, grabbed a beat up packet of cigarettes off the table and walked to the balcony. Pulling a joint, complete this time, out of it, she leant on the ledge and lit it.

"You've been doing this for a while now, I guess??" He asked gingerly.

"Well Done, Sherlock. How'd you work that out?" She said, chuckling to herself.

"I just thought when you took that...whatever you took before. I thought...something else would happen.

"That's what you get when you think too much. Look, you're obviously still stuck on High School Gabriella. Back then, it would have. Nowadays, this just makes me, you know, all together, normal."

He walked out and sat with her.

"Want a drag?" She offered him the joint, staring out at the bright blues and deep oranges of the New Mexico landscape. He laughed gingerly.

"No. I don't think so."

"Come on Troy, take a walk on the wild side." He looked at her. She was giving him alluring look. Troy wasn't sure what she was trying to allure him to: herself or the joint. "Join your book-loving, scientific decathlon winning, valedictorian ex-girlfriend for a smoke." She was grinning to herself. He leant over and took the joint out of her dark-painted fingernails.

"Peer pressure ends at High School my ass."

As a high school basketball player, during his junior and senior years he had avoided pot at parties like the plague. Typical, the one drag he had of a friends joint ended in three months of grounding and suspension from basketball for half a season. . Once again, he'd gotten completely misinformed about drugs. He had been under the impression that he'd go completely insane, and here he was, sat on Gabriella's sofa with her on his lap, munching away at a bowl of microwave popcorn. He was brought out of his hazy little bubble by strong vibrations sending tremors down his thigh. A blaring instrumental of a song called 'Push it to the limit' that came free with his phone rang out. Focusing his eyes, he read the name on the Caller ID. Chad.

"Hey, dude."

"Hey Troy. What you doing?"

"I'm..uh.." There was loud ruffling and muffled yells as Gabriella twisted in his lap and shoved a mouthful of popcorn in his mouth without warning, grinning like something demented and laughing like a maniac.

"Troy?"

"Oh, yeah, Chad. Me? Doing nothing? And you?" He said, grinning more to to himself than anybody else.

"Dude, are you O.K??" Chad asked.

"Yeah. I am more than okay."

He snapped his phone. Gabriella had turned completely and was straddling his lap, hands around his shoulders.

"So are you going to make a move on me, or will I have to do all the work again?" She was staring at him, as if expecting him to come out with some cheesy chat up line. Instead, he lunged straight for her lips. It was like a firework was going off in the back of both their heads. Three years of pent up feelings and sexual frustration embodying themselves in a kiss, so passionate it almost hurt. She pulled back.

"Well, subtlety never was really you're strong point, was it now, Wildcat,"

He smirked. No-one has called him Wildcat in long time. He was a Red Hawk nowadays. He told Gabriella as much, too.

"You'll always be Wildcat to me. Or of course the classic 'Troy-the-basketball-boy'."

"And Gabriella the Braniac."

"Which I'm putting to use. Obviously." She said, giggling and rolling of the sofa, landing on the floor laughing.

"I happen like your job, Miss WildCat," He said, rolling onto the floor on top of Gabriella and grinning cheekily down her. She looked up at him. Since when was he a perv. "So am I going to get a private show, or what?"

She pushed him gently from on top of her and standing up. She took Troy's hand and led him over to her double bed, flicking the lights off as she went.

"It would have been fairer to give me a little warning about this, you know." Troy complained from the bed, sitting up on his elbows, the covers rolling down to show his exposed his chest. They were soft and silky, more expensive than something Gabriella would have been able to afford. Her father had had them sent to her, along the pass code to her Trust Fund. Sometimes she tried to convince herself they thought she was just making her way with a conventional job. Most of the time, she knew that they knew she'd as good as drained her Trust Fund and was working at a sleazy club just to make ends meet.

"Oh, shut it." She smiled. "You'll be over the worst of it by noon, I swear."

She was buzzing around the tiny kitchenette, trying to make grilled cheese with the microwave, and doing her make at the same time.

"You going to work?" Troy asked, the headache taking most of his brain activity. It took him a while to realise that very few strippers turned up to work at 11am. "Sorry. Headache,".

"Whatever Troy. I need to go and get some stuff done," she choked, gullet half full of cheese, "Feel free to stay here if you know, you like?" He swung out of the bed and felt around for his pant under the bed.

"Nah, I have to get to practise. 10 minutes ago." he said, glancing the clock on the cheap CD player and jumping out of the tall bed. He grabbed his shirt up off the floor and ran for the door. Gabriella joined him, looking flustered and tense. They both jogged down the four flights of stairs to the street. Pausing momentarily, she looked up at Troy, smiling.

"I've missed you Troy."

"I've missed you too Gabby."

And awkward silence.

"Why don't you come see me at work tonight. I'll give you a real show."

With that she spun on her heels and ran down the street, boots tapping a steady rhythm as she turn her body and waved goodbye to Troy.

"Gabriella. Our Gabriella, little Gabby?" Chad asked in amazement, bouncing the ball between his feet. Troy finished lacing his sneakers and joined him on the court.

"Trust me. Nowadays, she's anything but." Chad looked at him in confusion. "What do you mean, did she, you know..." He make swelling noises and accompanying them with hand gestures.

"NO, not what I meant. She's just...nothing like how she used to be."

"She changed Troy, everyone changed," He said fairly, sinking the ball swiftly though the hoop mid sentence. Troy mumbled in agreement. Pulling his shirt back on and picking his back off the floor, he jogged away. He needed to get a shower.

He was going to see Gabriella again.