A/N: This was originally posted back in May to my AO3 account as part of Duck Prints Press's May Trope Mayhem 2022. The prompt was 5 + 1 fic. The specific prompt came from creativepromptsforwriting on tumblr.
1.
"I know it's stupid, but it just gets to me, you know?"
Yeah, Gabriella did know. She and Troy—just some random boy she met at a ski lodge on vacation—had talked on the phone every night for the past two weeks. When they'd first exchanged numbers and he'd said he would call her, a little part of her had gotten excited. She'd never captured a guy's attention before, not that she knew of, at least. She liked to tell herself it was because she was never at any school long enough for anyone to notice her, but she knew deep down it was probably because she was the stupid nerd girl that found calculus exciting and took AP classes for fun. So for Troy to even notice her, for him to ask for her number, that had been a huge deal. Even though she'd known she'd never see him again, that fleeting moment had been enough.
At least, she'd thought it had been. When he didn't call her the first week of the new year, she'd told herself it didn't bother her, but it had. Had there been something about her that had made him second-guess himself? He hadn't needed to lie to her—if he hadn't been interested, he shouldn't have said he'd call.
So, when he had finally called after a week and awkwardly admitted that he'd been working up the courage to call, it had made her stomach flip.
Since that first call, they'd been calling back and forth each night, talking about anything and everything. He was from Albuquerque—a whole half a country away. (She'd known from the beginning that there was no chance they would actually date or anything, but she'd still been just a little crushed to hear that.) He was a basketball player—a really good one, apparently, not that Gabriella knew anything about the sport. His dad pushed him too hard, but he meant well.
That was actually what he'd been talking about when Gabriella started zoning out, she realized. "Huh? Yeah," she told him sleepily.
Troy chuckled softly on the other end of the call. "I should let you go," he said softly. "You've got that test tomorrow. I don't wanna keep you up."
"No," she murmured. She rolled over to her side and pressed the phone between her cheek and her pillow. "Keep talking. I'm listening."
"You sure?"
"Mm-hmm. I'm sorry your dad's pushing you like that."
Troy sighed. "Yeah, well… It's like, I know he means well. It was always cool following in his footsteps and all when I was a kid—I wouldn't even be on the team if it wasn't for him—but now he keeps talking about going to U of A—that's the college here—and it's just, like…"
Gabriella's eyes fell shut before he could finish his sentence.
2.
"It's so stupid. Who's afraid of thunderstorms, anyways?" Gabriella said into the phone. Her legs were tucked under her on the floor, her head pressed against the cool window of their high-rise building. "Sorry for keeping you up."
"Hey, what are friends for?" he reassured her. There was a hint of tiredness in his voice, and Gabriella felt even more guilty remembering his comment earlier that he hadn't been sleeping well the past few nights. The one night he'd managed to fall asleep at a decent hour, and she just had to call and wake him because of a stupid thunderstorm while her mother was away.
"The storm's letting up," she said. The rain was still coming down in buckets, but at least the thunder and lightning seemed to have stopped. "Thanks for talking. You should be getting back to bed—it's already three and you have to get up early tomorrow."
"It's only one here. Don't worry about it."
"Oh yeah, I always forget about the time zones. I—" She cut herself off with a shriek as lightning flashed across the sky. "Sorry," she said, heart pounding in her chest.
Troy chuckled softly, and it quickly turned to a yawn. "Storm not quite over?"
She whimpered instead of answering.
"Hey, hey, hey. It's okay. Tell me about that chemistry test tomorrow."
Gabriella smiled to herself. She couldn't remember the last time someone actually asked her to talk chemistry. Leave it to Troy to know the perfect way to distract her. Of course, it'd be just her luck that the one person that cared enough to keep her mind off things was thousands of miles away.
She took a deep breath before launching into her spiel. "We're going over acids and bases. There's a review section on the pH scale, but that's super easy. We just have to remember that pH is the negative log of the molar hydrogen ion concentration and it'll pretty much be a breeze. I'm pretty sure he'll also have us go over how to…" She paused to listen to the sound coming through her phone. "Troy?" she asked quietly. Nothing. He was snoring away contentedly.
Her stomach did that flip again when she pictured his face smushed up against a pillow, getting himself some much needed sleep. He'd used every ounce of energy he had to try and keep her company—he deserved the rest.
"Goodnight, Wildcat."
3.
"You're not going? Isn't the dance tomorrow?"
"What's the point in going, Troy?"
Troy yawned into the phone. It was only ten o'clock for him, but he'd said he'd had a long day helping with his school's pep rally. Gabriella didn't know if most schools had pre-prom pep rallies—the school her mom had enrolled her in this year did nothing of the sort, but that wasn't saying much.
"Gabriella, it's your junior prom. Or whatever you guys call it up there. You only get to go once."
Gabriella sighed and rolled onto her stomach. "They call it a spring formal, and it's stupid. I don't get why Mom had me attend private school this year. As if my high school experience wasn't bad enough," she muttered.
"But still," Troy said, "don't you wanna go hang out with your friends?"
Gabriella rolled her eyes. "What friends, Troy? None of the girls talk to me there, and it's a Christian school. It's all about, like, formal dancing and stuff. These other kids have been taking actual dance lessons since freshman year—I don't know how to dance! And they pair all the girls up with the guys and… Yeah, no. I'll be much happier just staying home and baking cookies." When he didn't respond right away, she turned the question around on him. "What about you? You're going to your prom, right?" She bit her lip. "Do you have a date?"
Troy gave a tired groan in response. "I'm going. I don't have a date, though."
Gabriella felt her face heat up. "No? Why? Too shy to ask anyone?" she half-joked. It shouldn't make her happy that he didn't have a date. It had nothing to do with her.
"No one here I wanted to ask," he told her.
"No?" She paused. She tried to make her voice sound casual. "No one there? So… does that mean there's someone else? Like, not there?"
He didn't respond for a moment, and Gabriella immediately regretted asking. Why did she have to ask that? He would have told her if there was some girl he liked. They talked about pretty much anything and everything. He mentioned taking a girl on a date a couple months back, so it wasn't an off-limits topic. She probably sounded stupid for asking, and now she'd created an awkward silence between them.
And then she heard his response—a soft, steady snore on the other end of the call. She chuckled silently at herself—what an idiot. He wasn't annoyed or embarrassed or any other stupid thing. Of course he'd fall asleep on her right when she was getting the tiniest sliver of courage to fish around if he had any feelings for her.
It was probably silly—he probably would have said something by now. He sounded so confident on the phone. He told her just about everything that went on in his life, things he didn't even tell his best friend. But when they'd met those few months ago at New Years', she would have sworn that they'd felt something for each other. Maybe it was just all in her head.
She didn't hang up the phone on him, instead falling asleep to the gentle rhythm of his snoring.
4.
"I don't know how this works," Gabriella said. An eager smile fought to stay on her face as her eyes drooped shut.
Troy chuckled. "I don't either. But that's… okay, right?" he asked. She could hear his own smile through the phone.
"Yeah." Gabriella wasn't entirely convinced she wasn't dreaming. She was tired enough to be. She felt like she may just fall asleep mid-sentence—it was past two in the morning, after all. But Troy had called her almost five hours ago now, and after they'd both rambled on about their days, he'd gotten uncharacteristically quiet and tongue-tied and asked her if she was interested in him. It took everything in her not to combust from the pure excitement. After another three hours of talking, they'd established themselves "officially" as boyfriend and girlfriend, gone on and on about their massive crushes on each other—they both thought they were embarrassingly obvious about it—and obnoxiously flirted back and forth until they started yawning more than talking.
Even now, neither one of them seemed to want to end the call. Gabriella just didn't want the night to end. She didn't care that tomorrow was the start of final exams—she'd pass them all even with no sleep—she just wanted to keep talking.
"I mean, what is long-distance dating, anyways?" Troy asked. "I feel like it's just talking to each other and stuff. We've practically been dating this whole time and didn't even realize it, haven't we?" he asked with a chuckle.
Gabriella chuckled too. "Yeah, except now I can tell you that I like the sound of your voice. And that I thought you were really cute when we first met."
"I'm glad I wasn't the only one—I just… I've wanted to ask you out since we met, you know? That's why I didn't call you at first. I was, like, so nervous. You seemed like you were so out of my league, and I didn't…"
No matter how hard she tried to keep her eyes open, Gabriella finally drifted off around two-thirty, smiling peacefully at the sound of Troy's voice.
5.
"We haven't seen each other in over half a year," Gabriella said excitedly. "It's going to be so amazing to see you again."
"Mm-hmm," Troy responded. "I'm gonna take you on a date."
He yawned, and Gabriella felt the teensiest bit bad. She'd woken up at the early hour of six o'clock to get ready for her volunteer program at the library, and her mom had dropped the news on her that her employer was transferring her to their Albuquerque branch. Once she'd made sure she'd understood her mother correctly, that there were no strings attached, she immediately called Troy to tell him she'd be moving down there and attending school with him come autumn.
Unfortunately, she'd forgotten that time zones were a thing and had woken him up at four-thirty in the morning on his day off. Once he grasped what she was saying, though, he seemed to perk up, and they started making end of summer plans.
"Where would we go for a date?" she asked him.
"Mm… I mean, I guess I don't know what kinda date you like. It's never come up before," he said with a chuckle. "I could take you to dinner. Or there's a really good putt-putt place about twenty minutes from here. Whatever you want, babe," he said groggily.
"I've never been on a date before," she told him, though it wasn't new information to him. She'd mentioned it before.
He hummed in acknowledgment. "I'm glad I get to be the first."
He yawned again, and Gabriella figured she should probably let him go. It was only five in the morning for him, after all. She had to be getting to the library anyway. "Get some sleep, Wildcat," she said softly. She smiled when she didn't get a response, save for his deep, steady breathing. Just a couple weeks and she'd get to see his sweet face in person again. "'Night, Troy."
+1.
"I love you," Gabriella said from her place on Troy's chest.
He looked down at her and smiled. "I love you, too."
"Coming from someone who has never been on a date before, I think this is the best first date ever." She felt Troy's fingers running through her hair and fought to keep her eyes open.
"Yeah, well, I'd like to take all the credit, but I think it was mostly luck that there happened to be a meteor shower tonight."
Gabriella glanced up at the open sky above them from the bed of Troy's truck. He'd decked his truck out in an excessive number of pillows and blankets to cushion the hard metal and had driven them just out of city limits to watch the shooting stars. They'd spent the whole evening talking and laughing and doing a great deal of kissing—they had quite a few months to catch up on.
It was nearing eleven o'clock—for both of them this time—the first time since they'd met that they were in the same time zone. She normally wouldn't be so tired at this hour, but they'd had an early flight and had spent all morning and afternoon unpacking. That coupled with the jetlag were serving to make Gabriella quite sleepy, but all she wanted to do was stay up and talk with her boyfriend.
She felt like he was reading her mind when he told her, "Just sleep, Ella. I can carry you to the front seat and drive you home." He kissed her forehead, and her eyes drooped a little further. "You'll see me the next day—" He kissed her again. "—and the next day—" And again. "—and the next day." And again.
That was enough reassurance for her to peacefully nod off, wrapped up in Troy's arms.