Troy laid sprawled across the couch watching T.V. one Friday afternoon while rain poured down outside. The beginning of a major lightning storm had already started, and he wanted to enjoy his electricity while he still could. He tried his best to focus on what he was watching, but a certain brown-eyed beauty kept popping up in his head.
Every day it seemed as if Gabriella had been opening up to him more and more. Ever since she had came over to his house to pour her heart out he had become one of the only people she would talk to, she completely ignored everyone else. Of course she didn't treat him like he was her best friend, but he was satisfied with her just having a civil conversation with him.
Not being able to stop thinking about her, he got up and went to the window to look out at the pouring rain. A flashback of Gabriella looking out that very same window with tears streaked down her cheeks, words pouring from a broken heart appeared in his mind. He closed his eyes at the thought and turned away. How could a mother be so cruel?
The storm was getting worse. Troy could hear the rain pounding on the roof of the second story and the thunder was getting closer to his house. He could see flashed of lightning through the window
Ba-Boom. All the lights in the house went out.
The lights had been out maybe two seconds when Troy's phone began to ring. He looked at the name on the screen before he quickly flipped the phone open. "Hello?"
"Hey Troy, this is Gabriella." the scared voice on the other end of the phone answered, "Did your lights just go out?"
"Yeah, why? Did yours?" he asked in return. Troy looked out the window suspecting the entire sub-divisions lights had gone out. He was right.
"Yeah, umm, you see..." Gabriella stuttered. Troy heard a thunderclap from close by echo through the phone and Gabriella squeaked.
"OK I'm like super scared of thunderstorms and I'm all alone and scared and my lights went out so its super dark and I'm super scared and I was just wondering if you could come over and keep me company so I wouldn't be as scared." Gabriella rushed out in one breath.
Troy didn't need to be told twice. "It's ok, I'll be right there." So without another word, he hung up, got his coat, and hurried out the door.
Gabriella dropped her cell phone on the couch and curled in the fetal position on the floor. She hated thunderstorms. Hated them. They scared her to death. One time when she was little her mom and sister left the house before a thunderstorm and didn't tell Gabriella. By the time she noticed they were gone the thunderstorm was in full swing. She had somehow convinced herself that they had left her and wouldn't come back. By the time they came home she had nearly had a panic attack.
The ringing of the doorbell echoed throughout the house, promising safety and security. Gabriella jumped to her feet, rushed to the door, and heaved it open. When she saw Troy standing on the other side of the threshold a wave of relief swept over her.
"Thank God you're here." she breathed as she practically threw herself on top of him in a hug.
Troy chuckled and replied, "I said that I would be right here."
She let go of him and took a good look at him. He was dripping wet from head to toe. His hair, turned dark brown from being wet, was plastered to his head. His clear blue eyes sparkled as he watched her intently.
"Come on in before you catch pneumonia." Gabriella cringed at how grandmotherly she sounded while she ushered him into the house. Never having gotten through the doorway to the house before, Troy looked around him in interest as Gabriella led him through the house to the living room. When they got there she hurried over to check on Ariela who was sleeping on the floor on a blanket.
"So I see the storm knocked her out." Troy commented as Gabi crouched down next to the sleeping infant. She cracked a smile that caused Troy's heart to leap in his chest.
"Yeah, isn't it ironic. While thunderstorms scare me to death they make her the mellowest baby in the world." she replied jokingly, crossing her arms against the cold.
Troy's soaked through shirt caused him to involuntarily shiver. Gabriella's maternal instincts kicked in and she grabbed him a blanket off of the couch.
"Here, hopefully this can help you stay warm until you dry off."
Troy took the offering thankfully, wrapped it around himself and plopped down across from where Gabriella sat to lean against an ottoman, wrapping herself in another blanket off of the couch. Thunder rumbled outside in turmoil. The sound caused Gabriella to stiffen and sit straight up with alarm in her eyes.
"Are you okay?" Troy asked struggling to keep a straight face. It shouldn't be funny, but it really was.
"Yeah, yeah I'm fine." Gabriella answered nodding her head really quickly as if to prove her point. All it really did was show that she was lying through her teeth.
"Liar" he accused. Gabriella gasped in mock offense.
"That hurt Troy. Truly it did."
"Yeah, right."
Thunder rumbled far away and Gabi shuddered. Troy had to restrain himself from crawling over to her to gather her in his arms to comfort her. Knowing that that was definitely not an option, he came up with another plan to help comfort her.
"Hey, do you want to play a game?" Troy asked excitedly
"What kind of game?" Gabriella asked warily.
" Twenty questions. You know, to help us get to know each other better."
"You already know more than enough about me." she pointed out. And I really don't want you to know any more
"Well, you don't know that much about me. Come on it will be fun." he practically begged.
Gabriella groaned and stared at the ground next to her before answering "Fine how do you play?"
"One of us asks us the other a question, but then we have to answer the same question about ourselves."
Gabriella thought about it and decided that it sounded pretty safe. "Fine I'll bite, but I'm not answering anything I don't want to." she warned him
"That is absolutely fine. Do you want the first question or can I ?"
" You can do it."
"Okay, well then, let's start with the basics. What's your full name?"
"Gabriella Adalene Montez. What's yours?"
"Troy Nathaniel Bolton. See that was painless." he teased
"Yeah you're right. Okay, what about your favorite color." she countered back
"Blue"
"Blue? Wow I would have guessed red, Wildcat." she teased. So she hadn't missed his nickname among the school.
"Where did you hear that?" he groaned
"Haha let's just say that you're a pretty popular subject in the girl's locker room. I can't go a day without hearing about how cute you are."
He actually had the sense to blush and duck down his head. Aww how cute!
He quickly asked her for her favorite color to get the attention off of himself.
"Yellow. It's such a nice color. Just looking at it makes you happy."
Troy laughed "Right, because your such a ray of sunshine at school."
"Um, hello. How often have you seen people wearing yellow at our school? I rest my case."
Though he seriously doubted that that was the reason why she was depressed looking at school, he dropped it.
"So have you ever had a pet? If so what was your favorite?"
"That's two questions" Gabriella pointed out
"Yeah, but they are relevant with each other."
"Whatever, no I've never had a pet before. Whenever me and Catalina asked for one my mom would say that she would end up taking care of it. Looking back on it that was a pretty stupid excuse since she barely took care of us, but whatever."
"Yeah my mom used to say that too, except, you know , it was true." he answered turning pink. Gabriella smiled at the sheepish look on his face.
"What is something that you absolutely hate?"
"I hate it people who have to be right. You know, like when someone is completely wrong but they think that their right, and when they find out they were wrong they blame it on someone else?"
"Oh my gosh yes! I totally know what you're talking about! One of my teachers was like that and she was horrible! One time when we had an assembly she got the time wrong and ignored us when we tried to correct her. When we went in late she blamed it on the e-mail for not stating it clearly or something stupid like that."
" Yeah, it's so annoying when stuff like that happens. So what do you hate?" he asked curiously
"Failing." she continued when she saw the quizzical look on his face. "At anything really. I hate failing on tests, assignments, and projects of course, but I also hate to fail at other things. Like being a mom for instance. I have absolutely no idea what I am doing and this is the number one thing that I don't want to fail at. I want to be a better mother than my mother ever was and to give Ariela one of the best childhoods a kid could ever have. I don't want her to look back on her life and cringe like I do. She should be able to look back and smile at all of the good memories that she will have." Gabi finished her speech with a small smile and leaned back as if it took all of her strength out of her
"Gabriella, I don't think that it is possible to fail as a parent unless you copy your mother's actions or do something worse. From what I have seen you are nowhere close to what you have described your mother as being."
"Haha, thanks but you haven't seen anything yet. Just wait until tonight when I can't get her back to sleep. You will see true motherhood then." she said with a little laugh. Troy started to laugh back when his stomach started to growl which made her burst out in laughter.
"Oh my gosh what's in there, a monster?" Gabi teased him jokingly and giggled when he turned pink. "Haha don't worry Ariela should be waking up soon to eat too."
They both looked down at the little girl sleeping next to Gabriella peacefully. "How old is she?" Troy asked curiously
"She'll be 6 weeks this Sunday. I still can't believe that she's all mine"
" She looks a lot like you" he commented while scooting closer to get a better look
"Yeah, thank God. I was so relieved when they brought her to me and she didn't look like her father. If she had I probably would have broken down." Gabriella confessed
"Do you want to talk about it?" Troy asked knowing that she knew what he was asking about
"Not really. Looking back on our past conversations I don't want to overwhelm you with all of my sob stories."
"You aren't overwhelming me. I'll always be here when you need to talk. Don't feel like you need to hold anything back. However long you need to take I'll be here when you're ready to talk about it." he assured her. Gabriella couldn't help but wonder if it was a trick, but when she saw the sincerity in his eyes she couldn't help but believe him.
"Oh look, she's waking up." Troy said softly. Gabriella tore her eyes away from looking at him and looked next to her, and sure enough, Ariela was just waking, stretching her arms out far behind her. She yawned real big and blinked her eyes sleepily. For a while she just laid there and looked around, but she quickly tired of that and began to cry.
"Oh you poor thing. Well it's about time you woke up. I guess it's feeing time for the princess." Gabriella stated, "I'm sure we have something that will quiet that monster that your hiding in your stomach." she joked with Troy as she started to get up
She leaned down and picked up the baby girl before she led him to kitchen.
"There should be something to eat in those cabinets over there." she called over her shoulder while she reached for a bottle in the refrigerator. Shutting the refrigerator door with her foot she watched as Troy raided her cabinets. He sort of reminded her of a wild animal searching for food in the wilderness. When he heard her giggling he looked up in questioning "What?" he asked
"Nothing. Just look for food and don't mind me."
He squinted his eyes in a should I ask? expression and turned back around to dig around some more. Gabriella shook her head slightly and turned back to her daughter, chuckling when she realized that the baby was staring at Troy. Oblivious to the baby girl's stare, Troy walked over to the counter with his bounty of food gathered in his arms, and started munching away.
Eventually he must have felt her stare and looked over at them. Seeing Ariela's stare he waved at her with a smile. His actions caused Ariela to stop eating and give him a gummy grin. Gabriella couldn't help but smile at their actions. She never knew a guy who wasn't completely afraid of children, and to meet one who was so good with them was comforting.
"Why me?" Gabriella suddenly asked
"Why what?" he countered
" Why did you try so hard to get me to open up? You can't seriously tell me that you do this to every new student." Gabriella looked at Troy
There was a short pause before he answered her "I really don't know" Troy answered honestly "I just had a feeling that I needed to. Like I couldn't rest until I got you to talk."
Gabriella sat there in deep thought for a while. She wasn't used to feeling this way. One half of her felt some sort of connection to Troy and wanted to tell him everything about herself, while her other half was warning her that her feelings were dangerous and that she needed to run far, far away.
Coming to a decision, Gabriella turned to Troy, "Okay, I'm gonna tell you about her father, but you cannot tell anyone about any of this, okay? If you do...I don't know what I'll do but it won't be pretty."
Troy's mouth twisted into a slight smile before swearing himself to secrecy.
"Well I should probably start off by telling why act the way I do. As you know, I move around a lot, and by a lot I mean a lot. Me and my sister have always suspected that our mom is searching for our father because he got transferred somewhere else to get away from us." she started, turning Ariela so she could burp her as she talked.
"Anyways, it was always really hard when I was little because it seemed as though as soon as I made friends and got comfortable ,we would move. Well after a while I just decided why even make friends if I don't get to keep them, so I eventually just stopped being friendly and became a loner. Well that all worked just fine until last year." Gabriella cradled Ariela once more and started to feed her again as she continued.
"Now, our usual time of stay at one school was about five-ish months. Well, for some reason we stayed at this one school for an unusually long amount of time, which is where I met Ariela's father. He treated me a lot like you did, you know bugging me to talk to him. Of course I pushed him away, much like I did with you, but after a while he started to get to me. After we had been there around four months I expected my mom to announce that we were moving again as she always did, but no announcement came. Well, he continued hounding me, saying that maybe my family was going to stay this time, that it would be okay to make friends. So I fell for it and I started to hang out with him and his friends. After about a month we started dating. By February he had me convinced that we were staying for good and started him pressuring me about other things. Before I knew it my period was late and I was pregnant.
I took, like, six pregnancy tests and they all came out positive, so of course I was completely freaking out. I mean I was only sixteen! I couldn't be a mother! So I drove to his house seeking some reassurance. " she laughed that cruel quiet chuckle
"I always thought it was a myth. You know, the boy accusing the girl of sleeping around, them saying it isn't theirs. It isn't, it's the complete truth. He accused me of lying and cheating on him, and broke up with me. I didn't know what to do so I went home and just cried." she paused for a second to wipe away a single tear running down her cheek
"What'd you do after that?"Troy asked hesitantly
"Well, I knew that I had to tell my mom sometime so I went ahead and got that over with. Of course she yelled at me and called me stupid. I was to scared of her to even say anything back.
My mom said that we were long due for a transfer anyway. I could have slapped her across the face when she said that. So we moved to Birmingham, Alabama, and ten months later here I am."
Troy just sat there and digested what she had just told him before asking her another question.
"So where's your sister?"
"Out partying. You see we deal with the whole moving thing completely different. I stay away from, people while she tries to make the most out of every place. She makes friends within the first day and knows where all of the clubs are within the week."
"Oh, I see."
"Yeah, it kind of sucks. It would be nice to have had someone to stick with through all the moving and junk, and we were close when we were younger, but for the past couple of years now we've just been growing apart more and more."
"Well hey, at least you have me now" Troy inserted with a smile
"Yeah, I have you now, and I can't even begin to tell you how much that means to me" she answered, for once feeling like maybe, just maybe, she would be okay.
I am so sorry for not updating sooner! I've just been really busy and school is kicking my butt :P
If you review I will be super happy, and maybe I'll update sooner :)