A/N: Thanks for all the lovely reviews of last chapter! I've reached 60! Woot! Glad that the history between Troy and Gabriella lived up to expectations. Thanks especially to YaDoDOBird, who wrote such a wonderful and inspiring message!

To clear things up: this will be a Troyella fic, but it will also be a Charlie/Anabela story too. This is not incest at all – Charlie and Anabela have different parents, but I do understand how you guys could think it'd be a little weird. I am going to address this weirdness later on in the story, but my main aim of this story was to show how history could repeat itself for Troy and Anabela's children. And history will repeat itself, in a slightly different way. I hope that this doesn't stop anyone from reading or reviewing – trust me, it will all figure itself out in the end.

This is a shorter chapter than usual – after the length of last chapter I needed a little filler. However, there's lots of lovely Charlie/Anabela fluff in the next chapter, so bear with me! Please review!

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Previously:

There were so many things Troy wanted to ask. (Why did you leave? Why did we never figure it out? Could we have figured it out? What have you been doing in the twenty years since I last heard from you?) Ever since he had seen her at Taylor and Chad's place, he could not get her and their past out of his mind. And now she was here, with those same dark eyes watching him in that same, curious way. He wanted her to stay with him. He needed her to stay with him. He needed to get their past out in the open, once and for all. And so he blurted out the first thing that came to mind.

'Would you like to have a coffee with me?'

-

Now on to…

Chapter Eleven

A Hard Day's Night

-

It had been easy to hate her. Before today, he was able to keep his thoughts solely on how she had left him: broken-hearted. He was able to forget about her because of his anger at the unfairness of their situation.

But all that had flown outside of the window when he had bumped into her today. How could he hate her? It was Gabriella. Even when he was at his most furious with her, dropping plates so he could feel the satisfaction of the crash, working himself until he literally collapsed, there was a space in his heart that could and would never stay angry with her. There had been too much love between them before she left.

To hear her talk about the past, the reason for why she left…

'I was so uncertain about it all,' Gabriella told him, not looking at him, choosing instead to look at her empty coffee mug. 'You and I…we were so serious about each other. And while I desperately wanted to keep what we had, I knew that we'd end up hating each other with the pressure of that distance.'

He had been telling himself that same argument ever since she left him, but it was only this afternoon, watching her so uncertain, still so caught up in the past, that he knew she was speaking the truth. And he had realised that somewhere, in between bumping into her and hearing all about her life, he had forgiven her.

How could he still be so attracted to her? It had been twenty years since he had seen her, and she was still the most beautiful woman he had ever laid eyes on. Kate had been pretty, with auburn hair and dark blue eyes, but she had never been as gorgeous as Troy had believed (and obviously from his current thoughts, still believed) Gabriella was.

He felt guilty, comparing Kate and Gabriella. He had loved Kate, and felt like he was betraying her memory, spending so much time thinking about his high school sweetheart. He knew it had been nine years since she had died (Chad reiterated this fact constantly), but he still felt a little fragile about it all. Kate had been the only woman he had loved more than Gabriella. She had been the first girl he had even paid attention to after Gabriella. And now, to treat her like this…

He groaned, pulling his pillow over his eyes. He was going to have a hard time getting to sleep tonight.

-

It was really too early to go to bed. But Gabriella couldn't pretend like nothing was wrong. She had made the dinner, listened as Anabela and Carmen talked as they ate, and then claimed a headache. Anabela had offered to wash up, and Gabriella managed to be in bed by nine pm.

She just couldn't get Troy out of her mind. Since bumping into him today and talking for a full hour and a half, she had not been able to forget about him or his tragic past. To have had to deal with his wife dying at such a young age, leaving a tiny son to take care of alone…

But that wasn't all that was bothering her. It was more the way they spoke about the past; she thought that he would have forgotten about what had happen. But he seemed to have dealt with it the same way she had – never really forgetting about that short time when they could call themselves a couple.

She had been surprised at how quickly her unease ebbed away as she and Troy spoke about the past. It was if, by letting it all out, they were healing the wounds that had grown so deep over the years. She could feel herself forgiving him, forgiving herself, and felt ready to start a new relationship with him, one where they could look back at what had happened and move on.

She shook her head. How could she be thinking so much about Troy, when there was so much going on in her life right now? She was trying to help her mother, make sure that Anabela was okay…

But he was still so gorgeous. That body, that smile, those eyes…He could still make her melt with a simple grin.

Gabriella groaned, pulling her pillow over her eyes. She was going to have a hard time getting to sleep tonight.

-

'Hi!'

'Oh, hey, Anabela.'

She frowned. Every time she called Ethan he seemed to get even more distant and peculiar. She knew she would never be able to truly know his feelings over the phone, and that made her upset.

'How are you?'

'Okay, I guess. You?'

'Okay too. What are you doing?'

'Homework. Which I should probably get back to.'

'Oh.' Anabela frowned. 'But I only just called you…'

He sighed. 'I know. I'm sorry.'

'Are you okay, Ethan?'

'Yes.'

She knew she had to be assertive. 'You don't sound it.'

She could tell just from his breathing he was angry. 'I'm just not sure if this is working, Anabela.'

She swallowed the lump in her throat. 'You don't mean that, Ethan. You really don't.'

'You don't have any say over what I mean, Anabela.' He seemed to sense her hurt from her prolonged pause. 'Anabela, I'm sorry.' He sighed again, this time a little impatiently. 'Look, I know that our relationship has been reduced to simple conversations over the phone, and I know that it's hard. But I can't really think or talk about it now, okay?'

She nodded, her voice quiet. 'Okay.'

'I have to go, Anabela. I'm sorry, but I just have a lot of stuff due in tomorrow and it's really only the beginning of school. I don't want to get behind or anything.'

'Sure.'

'I'll call you tomorrow. Bye.'

She was about to reply, but he had already hung up. Anabela couldn't help the tears that came into her eyes. Why was he being so weird? She wanted to badly to go back to Boston. Not just to see Ethan, so she could kiss him and hear his voice in real life, or so she could see her friends, but for her apartment and her old bed and her neighbourhood and the ice cream van on the end of her street that had been empty ever since she could remember…

The tears started to fall, and Anabela cried into her pillow, trying to muffle the sound. She didn't want anyone to come in and demand to know what the matter was.

She felt so confused. It was hard enough, watching her grandmother in such discomfort from the therapy she was receiving, becoming thinner and less like her old self. Gabriella had warned her that Carmen's hair would begin to fall out, and that there was a possibility that it grow back a different colour or hair type than she had currently. Anabela didn't even want to think about it, despite Carmen joking about how she was wishing it would grow back sleek and black, rather than frizzy and grey. But then to have Ethan, who she had believed she could rely on to help her through this, start to become distant…

And it wasn't only Ethan. Her girlfriends too seemed to be fading away into their lives without her. None of them had emailed recently, not even Amy, her closest friend in Boston. It seemed like they had forgotten about her, although she was trying in vain to keep in contact with them.

She didn't feel at home here. So many things were still foreign to her. This house was unfamiliar. She couldn't complain about school, or the people she was sitting with, but it wasn't like back at home.

Yet Boston wasn't home anymore. She hadn't been gone for very long, but already her ties were falling apart. How was she supposed to reconcile two completely different lives if she didn't have anyone helping her along, wanting to keep her in their lives?

She cried harder. She had known it was going to be complicated, moving away. But she has trusted in Ethan and her friend to keep her up to date with what they were doing. She had never expected them to act like this. Which made it all the more complex.

Anabela buried her face in her pillow, the tears still falling. She was going to have a hard time getting any sleep tonight.

-

Up next:

Liv clapped her hands in sudden excitement. 'Oh, my God, guys, you should totally put yourselves down for the Talent Show.'

Anabela's grin wiped itself from her face. 'What did you just say?'

'You should go for the Talent Show. You guys are so great together, your voices harmonize really well, you've got a song to sing now…it'd be great!'

'It'd be awful!' Anabela exclaimed. 'No way, no how!'