A/N- Okay. -big breath- I am really sorry for this being really late. I have been writing this chapter, inch by inch, in the past week and have been slow so it's really insane. But, um, maybe, the events here will be satisfying? -love- Desireé
P.S. You know who I love? Katie, that little yellow bug thing in Horton Hears a Who. She makes me laugh. :D
Chapter Nineteen, Same Page
Well you are the one, the one that lies close to me
Whispers, "Hello, I miss you quite terribly"
I fell in love, in love with you suddenly
Now there's no place else I could be, but here in your arms
-'Here (In Your Arms)', Hellogoodbye
By late afternoon, Harris had walked outside to lie on the snow-covered lawn and settle into the ground like a piece of nature meant to be there. He stared at the sky, the blue that outlined the clouds charring his similarly colored eyes. As a child, he remembered looking up at the sun, wondering how something so far away could reach a place like Earth. Troy had always pulled him away, reminding him he should be mindful of his eyesight. But Harris had thought this to be silly; his father was one of the blindest people he had ever met. Who was he to chastise him about vision?
The door to the shop opened, and both of his parents plodded outside, looking apologetic. "We have mostly addressed Arielle in this situation," Gabriella said softly, coming to sit down beside him. "But we both wanted to know how you were holding up." Evidently, she had not mentioned anything to Troy about their conversation early that morning.
"I guess," Harris said, propping himself up on his elbows, "that I don't really have an opinion. Nothing has changed for me, if you think about it. I'm still a lanky teenager whose home life isn't very different from anyone else's, save for the missing parent thing. But you guys are working it out."
Neither of the adults looked particularly promising, but he didn't add anything else. Gabriella pressed her hands together and tilted her head to one side. "Can we do anything else for you, Harris?" she asked, voice as fragile as the glass perfume bottles he had always been tempted to drop at department stores. One slip of his fingers and the flasks would burst against the ground like tiny bombs. And when they were all broken, fragmented into millions of shards, there would be silence.
"Lie here, on the ground," he answered after a moment of pondering. Troy and Gabriella both looked at him oddly, unsure of what he meant. Harris pointed a finger at himself, as if to demonstrate. "I want both of you to lie down next to each other for half an hour. That's all I want. Don't ask why, because I don't really have a reason; just consider the things around you and what your life once was."
He stood up and disappeared into the shop; both of the grown-ups looked apprehensive, before Troy fell back against the snow and Gabriella did the same. He could feel her hair tickle his shoulder, even through the thick fleece of his jacket, just as he remembered. "What would you do if I kissed you right now?" he asked, his arm bumping hers emptily.
"Probably kiss you back," she said, and he wondered if she was smiling but dare not sit up to look. At this moment, Troy wanted to listen to Harris and keep his promise: half an hour on the ground.
"Okay," he said faintly, and felt her fingers wrap around his wrist to give him a small squeeze of reassurance, as if to say, I'm glad you can still read my mind.
TYWY
The Christmas Eve dinner was nothing special. Gabriella made a Mom-dish—hamburger casserole—as it was the end result of all the ingredients she could find in the kitchen. Harris had finished three glasses of pomegranate juice in five minutes; Troy was carving a picture into his food with his fork; she couldn't blame either of them. For a holiday evening, there was very little warmth to go around.
No one tried to deny the terribleness of the meal, so Harris sprinted for downstairs as soon as his mother excused him. The adults sat back, awkwardly, not sure what to say. "I guess I should go talk to her," Troy said lamely after a few minutes. He was talking about Arielle; it had just occurred to him he had not seen her for nearly a day.
"Don't ask me," Gabriella replied stiffly, reaching for Harris' dishes. "I'm not her mother." He winced as she dropped a plate and let it break when it hit the floor. Troy started for the mess, crouching to pick up the pieces, but she waved her hands at him. "No, no, I've got this. Go talk to your daughter. She needs you."
Her door was closed. There was a soft train-like sound in the background; he knocked, hesitated, and then turned to knob to let himself inside. Troy eyed the iHome that sat on the nightstand, the only reminder that this room was partially hers. "It's Imogen Heap," Arielle said hoarsely, her face stuffed into the blanket. He walked over to sit on the edge of the bed and pry her away from the comfort of asphyxiation. When their eyes met, she finished, "You lied to me."
The guilt did not go away after a while; Troy couldn't believe that anyone would ever say that, after a week or two, shame could begin to dwindle. He could feel her words branding scars into his heart like hot metal. "I know that, Ari. But, look," he began, not sure where he was going with this.
"No," she said aggressively, her posture tightening as if she lay against an ironing board. "You look. Thirteen whole years and you completely disregarded telling me about this? You turned a blind eye when, in fact, you knew that Gabriella had left twice—count them, yes; two separate times! Every moment I asked about her, every time I brutally insulted Cassandra or threw around some rumor and claimed it to be true, you could have dropped me a monosyllabic note citing my actions as 'futile' or 'empty'. You could have saved me the trouble of crying over her before I went to bed, from trying to find her when really Harris was the one who would have the treasure chest as the end!"
She knew she was ripping into him with every single thing she sneered; and secretly, she liked it. She liked to see her father bow his head in regret—there was some twisted justice in watching those who have betrayed you suffer.
"Arielle," Troy began one more time, but the look on her face made him melt. If nothing else, his daughter did have a way with manipulation. He wondered which side of the family passed down that trait.
The iHome changed a song, and he thought he remembered the lyrics but bit his lower lip subconsciously. "I begged you for something to help me understand, some sort of idea or encouragement. It was difficult enough to not know everything the other girls in school did, because I just a dad who couldn't talk to me about my period or puberty or sex. It was one of the worst things in the world to get a stepmother when I thought there was another woman who was being robbed of her rightful spot in the family. But the thing I hate most?" Arielle stopped her, looking down at her torn cuticles, bitten fingernails. "The fact that Harris has been my best friend my entire life, and yet he's only fifty percent of who I am—he's my half-brother, and I never knew that."
The song chorus played. Yes, Troy knew this song. He opened his mouth to speak, listening to I chime in with a, "Haven't you people ever heard of closing the Goddamn door?" But Arielle finished first, "It's for that—I hate you."
No, it's much better to face these kinds of things with a sense of poise and rationality.
No parents wanted to hear that. Maybe some deserved to hear it, but certainly no parent wanted to witness their child's claim to hatred for them. Troy's palms clammed up as Arielle turned away, silently mouthing the words to the song. He grinded his teeth, debated whether or not to reply. Finally, the father stood up, shaking his head an inch to the left, and an inch to the right, before leaving the room. In the living room, Gabriella was moving her body mindlessly, hearing the music. "I remember this," she said, leaning on her broomstick. Beside her, the dustpan held the broken shards. "It's Panic! right?"
"She hates me," he answered, "She hates me. Her father, her parent, her own flesh and blood."
"As opposed to what?" Gabriella asked curiously, picking up immediately on his brooding mood. He looked at her and she smiled. "She's a teenager; you are her overbearing, unfair, somewhat mendacious father. Of course she hates you. And now that she's got you in a corner, she'll do almost anything to hurt you—to get you back."
He picked up the dustpan, and saw the vague reflection of himself in the plate pieces. "Why are you the parent that has all the answers when—" Troy stopped, embarrassed.
She nodded her head as if to prompt him. "When I've been gone for the last thirteen years?" He looked down at the floor sheepishly. "Well, I was her age at one point," Gabriella sighed, throat burning; but she didn't think she was getting sick. "I hated my mother a lot, too."
"When does it stop?" Troy asked desperately. There was a sunken misfortune in his eyes, like he had crashed against the woe and now it stuck like glue to him.
Gabriella took the dustpan from his hands, balancing it against her stomach for a moment as she considered his question. "When she realizes why and just how much she loves you."
At midnight, Troy is reminiscing high school days in the shop downstairs.
Had Gabriella never come to East High, he would have most-likely started going out with Sharpay.
Had Gabriella never come to East High, he would have continued a basketball career and never felt the joy that echoed through him while he sang.
Had Gabriella never come to East High, he would have never realized how stupid it was to stick to the status quo.
Had Gabriella never come to East High, Harris would never have been born.
There were plenty of things running through Troy's mind, convincing him that Gabriella's transfer to East High was not a bad thing. But still—couldn't she have just remained a New Year's Eve snow lodge memory? Something to make him smile when he retired, remembering the naïve days of his life? He felt bad to wish for these things, but he couldn't help it to think that she was the central cause of all this.
"You couldn't sleep, either?" a voice asked, and he jumped from his spot near the front window. Gabriella stood in her bathrobe and pajama bottoms, rubbing her arms half-heartedly in an attempt to warm up. The heater was broken.
"Crap, you scared me," he sighed, holding a hand to his temple, maybe trying to steady the rambling conclusions inside his head. For a moment, she looked old and worn and exhausted, but then her teenage semblance shone through—a smile only he could see; opinions only he could understand. No one in Sampson knew the Gabriella Montez in high school. The kids didn't know the Gabriella Montez in high school. They didn't know how smart she was, or how many different laughs she had.
There was the annoying, giddy one that she used when she was trying to get back in someone's good graces. There was the soft laughter, when she was trying to be tactful. There was the uncontrollable giggling she got whenever someone said something random and hilarious.
But then there was the coquettish snicker she got, whenever they were fooling around on the high school campus; in the gym room, on the bleachers, in a classroom when they were supposed to be filing papers for the teacher. Usually, he'd kiss her neck, or her collarbone, and her eyes would light up and she'd simper. This laugh he liked best, because it was the one that caught her off guard the most—where she wasn't so formal and proper and just let go for once.
She sat down beside him calmly, staring out the window. The moonlight illuminated her face, giving her an eerie glow, skin bone white. "Have you ever hated me?" he asked after a moment, somber-faced. "I mean in the last thirteen years—while we were apart."
Gabriella hummed. "No, I don't think so. At least I can't really remember. If anything, I was the one to be hated." She looked at him, exhaled.
He shook his head. "No, I've never hated you. Maybe some resentment, but heartache can do a lot to a person," he said, the ledge beneath the window digging into his palms.
"My turn to ask a question," she said, obviously prepared. "Are you lonely?"
The answer spilled out of his mouth much too quickly. "Yes, but also no. I love Harris, and Arielle, both more than air. It's hard to imagine people who don't want a family. It's this big, life-changing thing; all of the sudden you've created another human and they're your responsibility and love and whole day. I remember when Harris first started to walk, I was ecstatic." He sighed, holding himself up in order to keep from slipping. "But even now, they're growing up. They're a lot older, and Cassandra doesn't really love me, and I don't love her."
After a minute, he asked what she hated to hear: "Are you lonely?"
"And if I was?" she countered.
"Don't avoid the question, I answered honestly and now so do you," he said, settling onto the ground. She took a spot beside him and yawned pensively.
"Yes," Gabriella finally decided. "But in an almost satisfied way, as if I know that this is all I will ever have and it's my fault that I'm solo. I'm sorry, you know."
His head swayed to one side, implying no. "Don't apologize. We're both at fault."
"You aren't stopping me," she noted at the door. In her hands were two suitcases, packed more efficiently than the last time she had left. He had come home to find her stuffing her wardrobe into the luggage, a little more expectant now.
"No," he said softly. It was only days after Thanksgiving, at which point Troy had gone with April in Boston and Gabriella had spent time with the Danforths.
Her lower lip quivered, and she blinked away tears, staring at the empty hallway in front of her. "I wanted you to want me, too."
"I do want you," he insisted halfheartedly, knowing any attempt was fruitless.
"But not like you did before," she finished.
Troy wrapped his arm around her one final time, and she kissed him, still feeling the very same spark, as did he. But neither of them spoke, and she asked to make sure Harris would know that she loved him. He, of course, would oblige, but could not understand why she wasn't taking him this time; why she chose to abandon him.
In the elevator, she broke down. She felt her heart heave a leaden wound as she sobbed into her arms, trying to clean up before anyone saw her. "Going somewhere, Ms. Montez?" the doorman, Alan, asked curiously when he spotted Gabriella come outside the apartment lobby with her suitcases dragging behind her. "A winter vacation, perhaps? Where is the rest of the Bolton clan? Troy too engrossed in his art again?"
That day was absolutely the worst day of Gabriella's and Troy's lives; it was a mistake that was irreparable, but also a forewarning to jeopardy of the future. She crawled into his lap again, and this time, he ignored his conscience that despised hatred and infidelity, bringing her lips to his. "I've been waiting for you to do that this entire time," she whispered into his shoulder, feeling her eyes burn with tears again. "Is that bad?"
"No, it isn't, because I've been waiting this entire time, and the past thirteen years, too," he replied softly, running his fingers through the very tangled ends of her hair. He pulled his index finger through one knot and she arched her neck against his chest. "You're satisfied with being lonely, then?"
"Yes," she murmured, tucking her legs beneath her and feeling his warm arms stroke her skin.
"I'm not," he told her, pulling her up so she kissed him with fervency he had missed for quite a while. "Glad to know we're on the same page."
A/N- Ick. That last scene was hard to write, and I think it's cornball-ness is pretty evident. But, review? -love- Desireé