Disclaimer: I do not own Disney or High School Musical, or anything affiliated with either one.
Chad watched with amusement as his best friend worried.
Troy straightened out his sleek black tuxedo nervously, steadying an anxious breath. He refolded the white collar of the neatly ironed shirt underneath, tucking in the softly colored flower in his breast pocket again. He squinted his luminous orbs in the small side mirror, noticing how they seemed to have a certain special sparkle that particular night. His floppy chestnut hair rested flatly on his head, some stray strands coming down to curtain his eyes. He restlessly brushed the thin tresses aside, checking his pearly whites in the mirror and puffing carbon dioxide onto his reflection, fogging the glass. He fretfully tested his breath for any offending odor; it seemed to smell fine. The basketball captain quickly popped in a breath mint from his pocket anyway. He frenziedly retied his dress shoes, making sure the laces were tight enough, pulling up his socks. He ensured his pant zipper was pulled up all the way—it was. He unbuttoned the tux and then rebuttoned it. He verified that his father's silver cuff links were on correctly. He sucked in a deep, haggard breath, biting down hard on the insides of his cheeks.
"Calm down, dude," Chad slapped him confidently on the back, suppressing a mocking snicker. "Chillax. You'll be fine. It's just Gabriella. It's just the prom."
"Exactly," Troy mumbled distractedly, taking a last minute to tidy his hair, which was still recovering from its shower, once more in the side view mirror. "It's senior prom. The night that every girl lives for. The event that needs to be flawless or else. And I don't want to think about what that 'or else' plays out to be. I'm not going down that road, Chad."
Chad was already down it.
"But you're lucky," Chad added casually, kicking off his shoes heedlessly in the car. Troy reclined his head tiredly in the driver's seat of the truck, gazing up impassively at the fathomless blanket of blithe blue that cloaked Albuquerque, speckled with tiny metallic sprinkles. He was going to miss that wonderful New Mexico sky more than he had imagined. He sighed despairingly, panicky and weary. "At least Gabriella doesn't think that way." Chad's face twisted in complaint, slouching miserably in the tattered leather seat of Troy's roofless truck, his own stare venturing up to the breathtaking night sky. "Mine does."
"Yeah…well, Taylor's another story," Troy replied tensely, not even really thinking about Chad's domineering, outrageously aggressive girlfriend. He leveled out the tuxedo shakily again, his eyes still glued to the heavens. "Right?"
"Whatever, man…. Hey, where did you buy that tux?" Chad digressed lamely. He frowned as he glimpsed his own pathetic rag of a suit. It was a disgraceful gray shade and extremely wrinkled, loose threads dangling shabbily at its uneven hems. It produced an unpleasant stench that suggested it had been sitting in a mothballed attic for quite some time. "It's pretty fucking cool…classy and formal, yet still cool…."
"Gabriella got it for me," Troy explained curtly, returning his full attention back to his teammate, his cheeks flushing crimson.
Chad pointed at his rapidly reddening face and laughed loudly. "Oh Lord," the basketball fanatic muttered between shameless chuckles. "Oh good God…"
"Stop it," Troy snapped flimsily, sighing and thoroughly rubbing his face. "I don't see why it's that funny." Troy coughed into his stiff fist. "Alright, we should get a move on before the girls call us screaming and yank our hair out." Chad rolled his eyes as he wiggled his feet back into his shoes, wrenching up his socks in the darkness as he did so.
Troy revved the rusty truck to a start, maneuvering the old vehicle out of its parking space and steering it down the empty, deserted parking lot one-handedly, his body slouched sluggishly against the car door. He sighed again, his free hand mussing up his hair nervously and kneading the back of his neck.
"Honestly, Captain," Chad began seriously, his face straight. His familiar black eyes were friendly and kindhearted, proving to Troy that he was not going to jest. "Are you okay?" Troy did not connect their eyes, his own orbs staring unemotionally out of the window and into the naked night. The ruby class ring on his finger glinted in the enchanting moonlight as his hand loosely gripped the wheel, driving ever so languidly.
"Are you joking me? No, I am not fucking okay." Troy heatedly pulled over into a different parking space, slamming his hand on the wheel furiously. The horn screeched vociferously in complaint, destroying the peculiar serenity of the landscape that had brought the two there in the first place. It had once been a place where their parents used to take them on the weekends. No one really came there; to most, there was nothing special about that ruddy patch of pounded asphalt and the dreary wood and lake it overlooked. Sure, the exclusive view was pleasant—but to Troy and Chad, it symbolized so much more.
It was peaceful.
A kind of calmness everyone needed in his or her life, from one source or another.
This was their source, and it never failed them. They went there to think—to clear their brains of fearful thoughts about college and exams and parties. They went there to remember what really mattered in life—not just to think, then; to think straight.
On prom night, it seemed like the best place to be.
Troy glanced at the miniature digital clock he had hopelessly taped up beside the steering wheel—the tired, fluorescent blue numbers flicked 7:22. They were supposed to be at Taylor's at 7:30, and her house was twenty minutes away. Troy groaned.
"Dude," Chad started quietly, shaking his shoulder. "Tell me what's up."
"I don't want to talk about it, Chad." Troy faced the window, his back to his friend.
"C'mon," Chad tried to persuade him. "We've known each other since preschool. We tell each other everything. Tell me. What's up?"
Troy put his face in his hands.
"Is it college?" Chad guessed in a low, careful voice.
Troy nodded and rubbed his eyes with his elbow. "Yeah. Yeah, it is. It's just that Gabriella and I aren't going to be even in the same state, you know? And though we've only been dating for a month…" His throat burned as he swallowed, and tears pricked his eyes. He embarrassedly turned away from Chad again. "I don't want to be apart from her. I don't think I can bear it."
"You know you never get the girl after high school, dude," Chad sighed. "It's just the way it goes. It's time to move on."
"I don't want to move on," Troy whispered somberly into his wrist, feeling a hot tear sting his cheek.
Chad sighed wearily again. "Troy, you're a great guy. You do the best you can in everything, and you fight for what is right. You always find a way to straighten things out. You're everyone's friend, and help to everyone. You are an ambitious guy who can do anything you put your mind to. You know what you want, and instead of sitting on your ass and dreaming, you run out there and get it. You can fix anything you want to fix, change anything you want to change. But this…this is something that you can't change." Chad paused and heaved in a sigh. "I'm sorry, man."
"There's nothing to be sorry for."
7:29.
"Let's get a move on now, Mr. Afrotastic." Troy rumbled the battered truck to a start again. "Lord, we're gonna get our asses whipped," Troy garbled under his breath.
"Oh shit…. If there's really a God up there, he would make a volcano erupt under 10 Willow Drive at precisely this moment…"
It wasn't Gabriella who minded if their dates were tardy. It was Taylor, of course.
The dark-skinned beauty was standing outside with a freshly manicured hand rooted firmly on the curve of her hip, her brown eyes narrowed on the exhausted vehicle as it growled to a stop in the McKessie's driveway. Her prom dress was very festive, but a little too bold for Troy's taste; dyed an intense, loud orange, the material thin with a long skirt that billowed in the wind. Her shoes were also the same shade of startling orange and were glittered in every place imaginable, the heels higher than Troy had ever seen in his life. The makeup was excessively heavy on her fiery, irritated features.
"Oh no…oh no…Bolton, I told you this was not going to be pretty…. Turn around! Fuck, turn around, Bolton!"
Troy sniggered as he lurched to an abrupt halt in the McKessie's paved, roundabout driveway, purposely ignoring his best friend's hysterical protests. Troy pushed open his car door, impatiently shutting it and hastily scampering up the steps of the familiar house.
"TROY ALEXANDER BOLTON, YOU ARE A—"
But Troy swiftly brushed past a fuming Taylor without a word and skidded through the wide open door behind her, dodging up the ostentatious staircase placed in the foyer and darting down the long stretch of hallway at the top. He spotted that the last door was propped open, a grin imprinted on his face when he found the love of his life joyously humming to herself. She was applying the finishing touches to her makeup in the huge mirror Taylor had in her bedroom, murmuring the memorized lyrics to herself absentmindedly. She did not notice Troy watching admiringly at the door.
"All I wanna do is be with you…be with you…" she sang softly under her breath, fixing up the dark tendrils that were pinned up and piled on top of her hair. "There's nothin' we can't do…just wanna be with you…"
"Only you…" Troy belted out.
"No matter where life takes us, nothing can break us apart…" Gabriella continued to croon in her gentle, silky voice absentmindedly, her nimble fingers at work on her hair.
"You know it's tr—"
"—TROY!" Gabriella jolted up in shock, anxiously smoothing out her dress as she finally noticed the intruder. "Um, Troy!" Her exotic eyes glimmered effervescently as they settled on his elegant profile.
"That's me," Troy beamed exuberantly at her as he stepped towards her petite form, encircling an arm around her waist and pulling her close, their hips touching. Gabriella felt her breath be snatched away, her heart thumping madly in her chest. "I missed you," Troy whispered tenderly with a chaste kiss to her jaw, leaving his lips pressed confidently at that spot. Gabriella's stomach dropped at the contact, shivers racing up and down her spine, her big brown eyes instinctively drooping.
"Troy," Gabriella murmured warmly against his neck. "It's just been a day."
"Exactly. Twenty-four excruciating hours. One thousand four hundred forty-four agonizing minutes. Eighty-six thousand four-hundred unbearable seconds." His nose brushed against her cheek. "Now I don't know about you, but that's a lot."
Gabriella sighed and rested her head against her boyfriend's chest comfortably. She would never feel the same ease with anyone else. She was just going to have to face it. Troy buried his nose in Gabriella's curls, trying not to sneeze when he sniffed something odd.
"What's that…smell?"
"It's just this new spray Tay let me use," Gabriella explained, her thumb lazily designing patterns on his right temple. Gabriella grinned broadly at him and sloppily smushed her velvety lips against Troy's for a brief moment, then promptly moving to sit back down in front of the mirror again. There was an appalling assortment of cosmetics thrown haphazardly about the table in front of the mirror, making Troy dizzy. "You're lucky I had to take off my lipstick before."
He swore he could hear some shrill hollers in the distant background, generated by a voice of which greatly resembled Taylor's, but he didn't care about that. Right then, his mind was only occupied with Gabriella.
Troy lingered by the back of her chair, placing his hands on her bare shoulders dotingly. Gabriella shuddered with delight when his thumbs began tracing circles on her blades, so gentle and so careful.
"Why did you have to take it off?" he asked curiously, his hands beginning to massage her shoulders more vigorously and extracting an erotic, irrepressible moan from Gabriella.
"Didn't work with my dress. The color looked different once I put it on."
Troy took a moment to really study her dress.
It was a cross between a brilliant silver and a feathery, pastel blue—there seemed to be many different fabrics overlapping to create this beautiful, delicate tinge. The top was a tight tube from her breasts to her waist, where it then blossomed into a huge, poofy hoop skirt that shimmered with tiny silver sparkles. But it wasn't tacky, and it didn't look like a costume; it just worked, and seemed to fit Gabriella's personality perfectly. Silver heels were strapped to her elfin feet, not too tall and not too short, and not too much sparkle on them. Little diamond earrings dangled from Gabriella's earlobes; a thin, silver chain adorned her neck, another diamond pendant hanging down at the middle. The taut top pushed up her breasts and exposed just the right amount of cleavage for Troy. He could not believe he was so lucky.
"Damn, do you look gorgeous," Troy mumbled breathlessly, entranced as he continued to knead her smooth shoulders. "Shit…"
Gabriella giggled softly. "Thank you, Wildcat," she muttered sexily with a smirk and smoky eyes, beginning to remove the bobby pins out of her brunette coils.
"No no no, don't!" Troy objected, squeezing her tiny hand and sweeping it to the side. "Why're you taking them out?"
Gabriella laughed aloud; that striking, melodic laugh Troy adored so much. "Calm down, Troy. I had to spray the underside of my hair so it wouldn't frizz, and so I had to pin it up so I could cover every area…you know how humid it is out tonight," Gabriella sighed dryly with a disgruntled glimpse outside Taylor's bedroom window.
Troy was nearly startled at how the sky had clouded over since he and Chad had been at the cliff. Now gloomy, weighted gray clouds and thick air masked the clear New Mexico stretch of sky he loved so much.
"You guys were at the cliff?" Gabriella inquired knowingly as she continued to remove the pins from her hair, placing them on the table.
"Huh?" Troy asked, bewildered. "Did I say that aloud?"
"Yes, sir," Gabriella smiled gaily at him. He could not believe how good of a mood she tended to be in now. "You guys go there so much. It's got to be gorgeous."
Troy shrugged indifferently, bending his body and curving his head from behind her to press a kiss to her cheek, closing his eyes. "Hmm…" he murmured against her flesh.
Gabriella reached up a hand and rubbed the back of his neck. "We should go now," Gabriella whispered. "You know, it's 8:24 and it started at 8:00…"
"Screw prom," Troy drawled lazily against the back of her neck, his lips touching her uncovered skin and making her insides bounce. "How about you and me, we stay here and have our own party…and I can kiss you…and you can kiss me…and so on…and we never have to go to stupid prom…"
"Nuh-uh," Gabriella smiled with a smirk edging at her lips, eliminating the last of the pins from her hair and standing up. She playfully tugged Troy by the hand towards the door with her. "Come on. It took Tay and I ages to discover this dress, and then it took me ages to persuade my mom to let me buy it because it was beyond expensive, and then it took the tailor ages to fix all the things that needed to be fixed and fit it to my size, and then it took us ages to discover pretty shoes that matched and fit well, and then it took me ages to correctly put the dress and heels on earlier, and then it took me ages to do my hair, and then it took ages to put on my makeup. So if you can't already tell from what I've just told you, we're going."
"Will it take ages for you to finally give me a kiss?" Troy puckered his lips suggestively, batting his eyelashes sarcastically.
"Never, baby."
Gabriella leaned in and attached their lips in one last soft, sensual kiss.
"I want more of that later," Troy whispered in her ear, his hand traveling down to grip her ass. Gabriella rolled her eyes and guided Troy out of the room, down to where Taylor and Chad were still arguing lividly in the foyer. They both peered up at Troy and Gabriella as they made their way down the majestic staircase and neared the quarrelling pair.
Chad glanced briefly at his watch. "Roughly half an hour. That's definitely enough for one good quickie, ain't it?"
"Shut up, Chad," Taylor defended fearlessly for her best friend.
Troy and Gabriella had not had sex since that day. They were not hesitant, intimidated, or scared; they just had never really got around to it. According to all their friends (and the remainder of their nosy school), they always seemed hornier than anyone—so it would be a real surprise if they said they had not done the deed in a month. In fact, they hadn't said that—they just let everyone make their false assumptions. Everyone could keep their noses out.
"Come on," Gabriella urged, her voice deteriorating into an irritated whine at the end. "Stop arguing. Let's just go." She gently clamped Troy's forearm and he gracefully led her out the front door and down the front steps, wordlessly teasing her about the fantasy prom she had told him she had dreamed about as a kid. He gathered her long princess dress carefully after she sat in the truck, piling the huge bundles of fabric on her lap and at her feet. Gabriella giggled at this. Chad and Taylor had decided to take Taylor's car, because Troy's truck only accommodated two people, as did Taylor's. Well, currently. Taylor was already beginning to move out of her house, and so there were countless boxes stacked in the trunk and in the backseat and pretty much anywhere else she could stuff them.
"It's going to rain," Gabriella sighed desolately with a measly look at the overcast sky. "It's going to pour."
Troy's free hand impulsively latched onto her knee, journeying up to the inner part of her thigh over the glossy textile of her dress and caressing it gently. Gabriella felt her heart spring up the second his fingertips touched her. "Don't think so pessimistically," Troy whispered quietly as he stared out at the still, empty road, feeling like a total hypocrite as he said so. His tongue tasted bitter.
Gabriella was silent. She glimpsed over her shoulder at Taylor's car, which had been right at their tail, watching as Taylor and Chad were held back at a red light.
"Taylor and Chad have been held back by a red light."
"They'll find their way." Troy smiled softly at Gabriella. "Eventually."
"So Berkeley," Gabriella began after a short, peaceful pause of quiet. "Looking forward to it?"
Troy sighed, swallowing with difficulty. "Define 'looking forward to it.'"
"Troy," Gabriella said sternly.
"Gabriella," Troy copied in the same firm voice.
"I just want you to tell me the truth." Gabriella shifted her body so she faced Troy completely, but Troy's orbs remained set on the drowsy nighttime street.
"I am telling you the truth," Troy insisted rigidly.
"It doesn't seem so. I can tell you're not okay with it. When are you going to give up the act, Troy? When it's too late and I'm already off at Harvard?" Gabriella's tone was considerably icier.
Troy sighed again, ignoring his girlfriend's complaints as he pulled into the bare parking lot of a work office that had already closed for the day.
"Look," Troy began, adjusting himself in the seat sideways so he faced Gabriella. "Gabriella. You've talked about going to Harvard your entire life. So why is it any different now? Your mom is ecstatic that you're going. I couldn't be any prouder of you. I mean, a perfect score on the SATs? That's one in a million. No, more. And you just can't let something like Harvard go." His hands ran through his hair nervously again, that habit certainly something that would never cease.
"Troy." She relished saying his name. "I love you. The last month has been by far the best of my life. I've felt this happiness…this blitheness that you don't find everyday. In fact, it's incredibly hard to come by. And I don't want to lose this contentedness—"
"What are you getting to, Gabi?" Troy interrupted sharply.
Gabriella sighed, "I'm just saying that maybe you should stop thinking about other people and just…please Troy. Tell me the truth. I demand it. You're only making it harder for the both of us."
Their fingers absentmindedly intertwined in between them, each other's warmth soothing in their dispute.
"No, okay? I'm not happy with the fact that we're going to be separated. Why? Are you?" Troy snapped impatiently. He automatically felt guilty for snapping so harshly at Gabriella, who had recoiled slightly in her seat, her beautiful face contorted in a mixture of concern, offense, and desolateness. Troy sighed hollowly, guilt burdening him more severely, engulfing her in his arms and pulling her and her big fluffy dress across the controls and onto his lap. He dug his nose into the warm crook of her neck, squeezing her tightly in his embrace and not ever wanting to let her go.
"I love you," Gabriella murmured gravely into his chest. "I love you and I never want you to forget that or forget me and everything we went through and everything we did and we have done. That's all I'm asking, Troy." Her voice diminished to a whisper. "Please don't forget me."
Troy pressed a hand lovingly to the back of her head. "You're crazy," he mumbled with a kiss to her neck that made her sizzle with intimacy.
"Crazy in love," Gabriella muttered back, her fingers distractedly following the creases of his open palm, which she had laid flat on her stomach.
They closed their eyes, thinking how they could stay there in that position forever.
"Screw prom," Gabriella whispered. "Screw the whole damn world."
Troy's hand gravitated up to her back, his fingertips trailing up and down her spine gently.
"That's my girl."
A/N: This story is extremely grave and mature. It's heavy-duty; definitely a lot to take, so if you think you can't handle stories that deal with suicide, I am warning you now that this one does.
Thank you so much for the reviews :)
This is not the last chapter.
