Between You & Me
Disclaimer: I do not own HSM.
Chapter Seven
The day he found out she was leaving for Oregon was the day that Troy truly understood how fully he had fucked up. They hadn't spoken in the six days and fourteen hours since she had slammed the door on the vision of his naked body in bed with her sister and run. He had chased after her, pulling on his pants as he tried to stumble out of Sharpay's room, until he reached the driveway where her shaking, sobbing figure had backed away from him. She had screamed and yelled, pleading with him to explain himself. Begging him to tell her that the night before had been a mistake and it had been Sharpay he had wanted. She needed him to tell her that he had lied to her; that he had never loved her and therefore couldn't have betrayed her in such a way. He couldn't lie and she had turned towards the approaching vehicle and yanked open Chad's passenger side door. He hadn't followed her then, feeling the backlash of his actions as he saw who she turned to without him as an option.
Troy had watched the car back down the winding driveway, his mind trying to piece together what it all meant, but failing as Sharpay had called to him from the front door. She hadn't heard a word between him and the broken, fleeing figure. Instead, she smiled softly and beckoned for him with one pale hand. He followed; having every intention to talk it over with her. Explain that he didn't feel that way and it had been the moment, the need, his own stupid response to wanting to be wanted. It never came as he watched her bounce around the kitchen preparing a breakfast he couldn't eat in a house he couldn't stay in. The proximity to Sharpay was sickening as he saw what he had done. She didn't have her sister's strength or resilience. She would break if he told her the truth and therefore Troy held it locked on his tongue, at the back of his brain, as he waited for the right time to come when he could gently tell her it was never going to happen again.
Six days and fourteen hours passed without a word from Gabriella. Chad dropped her off and hauled a still present Troy into the study where yelling and accusations followed, but still, Gabriella refused to face him. She ignored his texts and let his calls go to voicemail. He refused to call the house phone and risk Sharpay picking up, so he was left waiting for her to come to him. The last week of May ended and finals began. She would enter a room with seconds to go before the examination was to start and leave well before Troy had the chance to finish and rush to intercept her in the hallway. She avoided the cafeteria and she refused to drive with him. But, he had thought, she would come around.
He found out just after their physics final; when he joined their friends by his locker and noticed her absence. Chad and Taylor had looked guilty while Sharpay looked mad. Repeating his question, Ryan stepped forward to tell him that she had left to have her car inspected by the mechanic before taking it on the road. It had hit Troy like a blow to the stomach, twisting his guts and sending ice down his spine. She was going to spend the summer with her father; a split second decision the night before that Mr. and Mrs. Evans argued against for hours before giving in. She hadn't seen her father in two years, with the exception of two days when he had been in town on business, and Troy knew that no matter what she had fed her parents, the trip was an escape. An excuse. A reason to leave him behind and try to forget what had happened in her house. The sanctuary that he had tainted.
Finding her hadn't been difficult. After dropping Sharpay, Ryan off at Kelsi's to piece together something Kelsi was working on, he had turned into the overpriced neighbourhood and punched in the keycode he had been given years ago. She was sitting on the swing in the gazebo, gently rocking as she examined a map of the highway system between Albuquerque and Portland where her father and stepmother lived. She flinched at the sound of his approaching footsteps but she never looked up as he sat beside her. The paper had been clenched tightly in her fingers, as if she needed something solid to hold her together, and she had ripped her hands away when he tried to take it from her.
The begging and pleading reversed and he was the one trying to convince her to stay. He was the one trying to keep her in one spot and demanding that she not do this to them and leave for the next three months. He needed her to tell him what to do. How to let Sharpay go without having her hate him. He wanted her close and within reach. He was being selfish, she told him. She had thrown away the map and stood, pacing across the grass where she knew he would follow. He had crushed her to him and she had pushed him away. He got it then. That he had royally fucked up beyond hope. But he was desperate and thought she had the answers. She didn't, never would, because he had thrown what she had known away.
He had left her there, standing by the fish pond with the koi fish they had named when they were younger biting at the flies, as he walked back to his truck and climbed inside. That night, he turned off his phone and ignored his mother's call to dinner. He curled up with the photoframe of him, her and Sharpay and tried to find the answers within the depths of their young eyes. Surely, there could be redemption. Surely, someone could tell him the answer. But all of them hurt and when the next two weeks passed without more than three words from Gabriella, Troy learned that the answer was what had been facing him the whole time.
Summer had dragged on and Troy found himself turning to Sharpay in Gabriella's absence. It wasn't as a distraction, or it was never meant to be, but she had the precious lifeline to her sister and he needed it like a heroin addict needed a dealer. Sharpay was the one who told him that she made it to Oregon alive, with the car in one piece. She was the one that told him that she sounded happy and was spending time with her older stepbrother and it was Sharpay that helped him pick out a birthday present for Gabriella and ship it to her temporary home. It was she who initiated a kiss just after Gabriella's departure that made Troy wonder if he was simply asking for too much. Maybe Gabriella's refusal had been a sign that she wasn't the one for him. Maybe it was supposed to be Sharpay.
But Sharpay lacked the fire he craved and passion he desired. She was perfect in every way, but she was not the one his blood bubbled for or his mouth ran dry in the presence of. She was perfect, but she wasn't what he needed. He barely touched her, and rarely were they alone, but somehow they became an unspoken couple. In the end, his brain overruling his heart, he decided that the silence from the girl in another state was the sign he needed to move on.
Who would have known that moving on would invite such a giant step back?
The classroom was quiet as the handful of students who had arrived early waited for their friends to saunter in and class to commence. Seated halfway down the row on the far side of the room, Troy pretended to review his notes from the previous day's class while watching the dark haired figure seated two desks in front of him. Casually flipping a page to make his act believable, he noted as her fingers flew over the keys of her BlackBerry, spelling out a text to the unknown recipient. It made him desperate to know who could keep her attention for so long.
His eyes trailed over her face, the soft smile and easily amused face that seemed relaxed in his presence for more than mere seconds, and the tumbling curls that fell over one shoulder. Her shoulders were covered in a thin green cardigan that left his eyes hungry for more. One jean clad leg was crossed over the other, her booted feet taping to a rhythm in her head that pounded through the headphones from her ipod. Troy's eyes wondered if she knew he was watching; if she was as aware of his gaze as he was of hers. Her fingers continued to beat out answers, pausing only to read responses before smiling slightly and responding.
He frowned at the uneasy feeling uncurling in his belly as he watched her. He had noticed how relaxed she was, unguarded and open. The happiness in the moment was written on her profile as he studied her and the queasiness in his gut grew. She had been that way with him; holding nothing back and sliding into sync with his thoughts like pieces of the same puzzle. She was in love with him, he knew that, no matter what her head was telling her heart to protect it. He still had no idea how he could have done what he did, but he knew the only way to fix it. He just had to grow some balls and do it.
So lost in thought, Troy forgot to keep up his charade of studying and blinking, found himself staring directly into Gabriella's eyes as her hands clutched the phone in mid-type. Seconds passed and the room seemed to hush although no one really found anything out of place, and Troy felt suspended as for a split moment, she forgot to put up walls and bared her soul to him. The pain and the inner struggle slapped him mentally as he fought to hang onto a moment of the real Gabriella and not the shell of what she usually gave him. He glimpsed longing and desire, fire and heat, longing and the forbidden. She was crumbling, he realized. Her grip on promises slipping as need over rode what was right.
"Hoops, Dude," Chad called, interrupting the moment as he appeared through the doorway and took his seat between the two.
"Hey," Troy responded, voice clipped as he hastily looked for Gabriella again.
She had been torn from the passing seconds upon Chad's arrival and ducked her head to continue her texting with the outside world. Chad caught the quick, unsure smile and shot Troy a look between warning and questioning. Shrugging, Troy went back to flipping his notebook pages, but he was aware of how Chad kept shooting looks between the two before the bell rang and his attention was grabbed by the teacher at the front of the room.
It wasn't until after class that Troy scooped up his books in one arm and hurried to follow Chad and Gabriella out of the room. Dropping back, he kept up while remaining far enough behind to let them think he couldn't hear their conversation. Chad had one arm looped around his basketball and the other held Gabriella's bag as she spun the combination on her locker and dumped some things inside.
"So did you figure everything out with him?" Chad asked and Troy, five lockers down and engrossed in his ipod, felt his hearing capabilities escalate with anticipation.
"Yeah, everything is set. Is it mean that I'm looking forward to it?" she asked in return, leaning against her locker and rubbing a tired hand over her face.
"No, you deserve a break. I take it they are all going, then? Didn't they think it was weird you wanted to stay behind?" Chad handed her back her things as he opened his own locker and withdrew the binder for his study session with Taylor during the current free period.
"I just told mom that there is a lot going on, and Vance agreed that it was unnecessary for me to go since I saw the school when I was there this summer." Gabriella turned her back to Troy as Chad slammed both their lockers and began walking down the hallway.
"Does-," Chad stopped as he glanced behind them and realized that Troy was only a few steps behind and had probably heard the entire conversation. Clearing his throat, he looked down to see that Gabriella had followed his line of sight and looked slightly surprised and unnerved by Troy's appearance. "I'm supposed to meet Tay, but I can-." He stopped when she shook her head.
"It's okay, you can go," she assured him, turning so that her whole body faced Troy as Chad awkwardly waited an extra minute before taking off. Biting into her lower lip, Gabriella waited for Troy to make the first move.
He wasn't sure what to say. It was obvious he had been eavesdropping, but it wasn't like it had revealed much information. All he knew was that Gabriella wasn't going somewhere that she had already been and that her family was. Or that's what he had concluded. The awkward part was that he knew it meant so much more than that by the look of unease on her face. She shifted her books to her hip and glanced around the empty hallway before meeting his eyes again.
"Your parents are going on vacation?" he asked stupidly, closing the gap slowly to keep strangers out of their business.
"Business trip to Portland," she answered quietly, repeatedly stretching her fingers against the strap of her bag. "Next week sometime."
"You're not going, though," he responded, confirming the suspicions that were looming in his mind and that she was adding evidence to by the fidgeting.
"I'm staying here. Dad wanted me to, but with school it's just too-," she tucked a strand of hair behind her ear, "Anyway, Phil said he would show Pay and Ryan around some of the campuses up there."
"She hasn't mentioned it yet," Troy mused, desperately trying to read Gabriella's face as her cheeks flushed. "That she was going or that she was interested."
"She only interested because I am," Gabriella snapped and instantly wanted to take it back as tears pricked her eyes. "I mean, she would never go if she was going by herself, but I mentioned it and she thought it might be worthwhile to check out." She shrugged self-consciously again. "Ryan just wants a week off of school."
The unspoken words and thoughts and realizations and possibilities flew between them. She would be alone. Sharpay would be miles away. Two separate thoughts and yet they met at the same point. They wouldn't have to be careful. No walls. No secrets. No eye signals or silent messages or minced words. Troy's heart soared as he caught the hidden dilemma in her eyes. She didn't want to tell him because that would be an invitation to break through, but she wanted him to know. They needed a chance to speak the truth. They needed to know what was there. They needed everything in the open. She needed him and he needed her.
"Let her tell you," Gabriella finally said, hitching the slipping strap of her bag higher in a hint to let it go for now. "It only got confirmed this morning. Phil text me."
"I'll wait," he told her, meaning for Sharpay to spring it on him.
"It's a long wait," she replied, meaning for the upcoming week to arrive and leave them alone.
"I promised to before, didn't I?" he reminded her, meaning he could wait forever if it meant redemption.
"You did, but you didn't mean it."
And although it wasn't the truth of his heart or his words, it was the truth of his actions.
