I Need A Lover

Troy threw his jacket onto the bright pink couch in his living room. Despite the fact that Troy wanted to make it on his own, Sharpay's parents had bought them a house as a wedding gift, and the bride's happy parents also let Sharpay furnish it at their expense. The result was a house that would've fit perfectly in some little girls imagination. Troy loathed it, but he had smiled when Sharpay was dragging him from furniture store to furniture store looking for the perfect lime green armchair. At the time he had thought that you had to make sacrifices for love.

A quick glance at the bright orange clock let him know that it was well past eleven, Sharpay would be asleep. He hadn't realized that he had been at the office for so long. Mr. Evans had set him up with a cushy desk job working for one of his companies, it was a job that Troy couldn't stand. He spent eight hours a day transferring numbers from one program to another. Today Troy especially hated the job, as he had to stay until eleven to try and figure out why the numbers weren't adding up. It was anything but his dream job.

With a heavy sigh Troy sat down next to his jacket on the couch and turned on the TV. Work had been exhausting, but Troy was wide awake. He was absent mindedly channel surfing when something caught his attention. It was some late night talk show, which was something that Troy wouldn't normally watch, but sitting on the couch talking to the host was none other than Gabriella Montez.

"So, Gabriella," the host said, "is it true that you went to high school with Zeke Baylor?"

"Yeah," Gabriella replied with a smile. It was a smile that Troy hadn't seen in years, he avoided watching her interviews. Now, though, he had put the remote down and was watching intently. "Me and Zeke were friends in high school. The East High class of '08 was one to watch out for."

"Two super stars in on graduating class is pretty big," the host said with a fake smile.

"Not just two," Gabriella replied with a laugh.

"Who else?"

"Well, my good friend and song writer Kelsi Nielson was also in our class. And so was her husband." Gabriella said with a small smile. Troy had missed her smile so much, and he hadn't realized it until that point in time.

"Jason Cross?" the host asked her, "the director?"

"The one and only. I was really close with them in high school. There was a group of about nine or ten of us that hung out all the time."

"Who else? I'm sure they'd love to hear their names on TV and know that you still remember them."

"Okay," Gabriella giggled a bit. That too was something that Troy missed. Sharpay never giggled. "There was my best friend Taylor McKessie and her boyfriend Chad Danforth, last I heard they were engaged. Then there was my friend Martha Cox, who was always my partner in bio and I was on the scholastic decathalon team with her."

"You were on a scholastic Decathalon team?" the host interrupted.

"Yeah, school is cool!" Gabriella replied with a huge - and fake - grin. She laughed a bit before she continued, "I did a little bit of everything in high school. I was in a school play. I beat out a girl that had been in the lead since kindergarten. After she tried to steal my boyfriend over the summer we became friends, though. It's weird, I know, but I was fairly close with her brother."

"What's the name of this girl that tried to steal your bofriend?" the host probed her for more information.

"Sharpay Evans, and her brother was Ryan Evans."

"And your boyfriend?" he asked her with a sly smile. Troy waited expectantly. Gabriella's face had lit up at the mention of high school. Maybe she missed it just as much as he did, maybe she missed him as much as he missed her.

"Uhm..." Troy's heart sank as he realized she was trying to remember his name, "he was the captain of the basketball team, we met on new years, we sang together in the musical, he won two championship games..." she rambled off random facts about him.

"And his name?" the host asked her with a laugh. Troy wasn't laughing.

"I couldn't tell you," Gabriella admitted, "I haven't thought about him in years. It started with a T, I know that."

Troy shut off the televison. He was angry and hurt. He didn't know what to do. He knew he didn't love his wife anymore, he had discovered that on their trip to her families beach house in california. He knew that he still loved Gabriella, but now he knew that she didn't love him. One thing he did know was that Gabriella forgetting his name didn't make him love Sharpay again.

For hours the house was filled with the sound of a pen scribbling away on a sheet of paper. Troy had set himself up in the study and was now surrounded by balled up pieces of paper. He had been pouring out his thoughts onto the stationairy that Taylor had sent them for Sharpay's birthday last year. The cheery pink colour of the paper couldn't hide what Troy was writing.

"I'm sorry Sharpay," Troy read his own writing aloud, "but I can't do this anymore. I need someone who won't drive me crazy, I need someone who doesn't make me mad. I need someone who thrills me, where the thought of being without them makes me sad. I need someone who I can't wait to spend every second with, someone who every second without is agony. I have to go, and I'm very sorry Sharpay. I need someone that I love, and unfourtunately that isn't you anymore." He stared at the sheet of paper in his hand for a few minutes more, "four hours and that's what I come up with? Well, it'll do," he said before cleaning up the study. He might be leaving his wife but that was no reason to leave things untidy. Maybe the cleaning would make her hate him less.

Each little creak from the stairs made Troy cringe, the thought of Sharpay waking up terrified him. He slipped into his bedroom and placed the note on the dresser. In agonizing silence he packed a few things into a suitcase. A couple of changes of clothes and his toothbrush were the only things that he could think of taking with him. It took him nearly a half hour to pack, he was moving slowly so as not to wake the woman that was asleep in his bed.

Once his suitcase was fully packed he placed his note on the bed next to Sharpay. He slipped his wedding ring off of his finger and put it down with the note. He wouldn't need it anymore, and she had bought it for him. After one last look at a woman who would surely hate him in the morning, he wheeled his suitcase out of the room and out to his car.

Twenty minutes later Troy found himself standing outside the door of an apartment. He raised his hand to knock, but hesistated. There was no doubt that he had done the right thing, it wasn't fair to him or Sharpay to stay in a loveless marriage, but he wasn't sure if coming here was the right plan. When he realized that it was either knock or sleep in the hallway he loudly banged on the door. He stood quietly, waiting for an answer, but after a few minutes he knocked again.

"What the hell?" Troy could hear from the other side of the door. The door swung open to reveal a very tired, and angry, Chad. Troy could see Taylor standing in the doorway of the bedroom. "Troy?" Chad asked him, he seemed confused, "what the hell are you doing here at 5 in the morning?"

"I left Sharpay." Troy said, as he walked past a very shocked Chad. He made his way over to the couch. "Is it okay if I stay here for awhile? Just until I can find a place of my own?"

Chad simply nodded, still not aware of what was going on.