Chapter 04
The coffee stain on my apron is going to be a tough one to clean up. Fuck Dory for making us wear red aprons. Why can't we wear black aprons that make stains practically invisible? Instead, she makes us wear these ugly red aprons that make us look like we are in a 1950s diner. I actually hate my job sometimes. Maybe this was a sign to look for a new one, a new start after being a married man for six years.
No one ever wrote a manual on how to live your life when you are about to be divorced at twenty-six without a college degree. You hear about young divorces in Hollywood all the time except they involved millions of dollars in settlement. I wish I could have millions of dollars to fling around like that. I wish it didn't hurt me so much to give your cheating wife twenty million dollars.
I got out of my car with my coffee-stained apron in hand to find the light of the right-most bedroom on the second floor lit again. I could have sworn I saw Gabriella out on the porch a few mornings ago. But then again, why would she be here? Maria always had free plane tickets to go visit Gabriella out in LA, Gabriella literally had never been back in this town since she left that hot Albuquerque summer day of 2006. Maria must be cleaning out the room or something. The last time I was over at Maria's home, she invited Sharpay and I over for some of her famous brownies. Pictures of Gabriella were everywhere in her home and Maria never left the topic of her beautiful daughter. She was the apple in her eye and Maria couldn't be prouder than any other mother on earth.
How could you not be proud of Gabriella? She made it out of this town with her own efforts and is making millions of dollars. Maria always insisted that she loved her home and didn't plan to move to California any time soon. She loved her house and loved her garden in her backyard. She wasn't about to give it up for any million-dollar mansion in the world.
The lights in the room stayed lit for the rest of the night. While I was washing out the stain on my apron with every type of soap I could find in my house, I could see a shadow through the curtains while looking at it through my kitchen window. Maybe it really is Gabriella.
Of course I know what she looks like. She was all over the news and all over magazines. But I'm a hundred percent positive she had no idea what I looked like nowadays. I would like to think I got better looking since my seventeen-year old mid puberty face and figure.
Looking out the window and into her room made me nervous and my palms sweaty. The possibility of Gabriella actually existing next door was enough to bring me back to my teenage self. There was always something unfinished between us, we never said a proper goodbye or see you again. We never spoke after she left. Our friendship, our love, and everything we had simply stopped existing.
I could remember vividly that one time when I was a freshman in high school, she left one of her curtains open and I could swear I got no homework done that night. She was practicing her musical audition lines in front of the window with just her underwear on.
When I was fifteen, just a glimpse of naked female dermis made me have a raging boner, much less seeing Gabriella half naked for more than five whole minutes.
"Pretty sure Belle from Beauty and the Beast sings with her clothes on?" It took many trials and errors until I typed that sentence into my phone without sounding like a complete pervert. I didn't want to sound like I've been watching her, but at the same time I wanted to see her reaction knowing I've seen her by her window.
Once I hit send, I could see Gabriella looking back towards her bed to pick up her phone. The moment she laid her eyes on her phone, she looked back up again and into my eyes of where I was standing—doing the dishes while my parents watched a re-run of American Idol.
She looked back down onto her phone to type a sentence back quickly. My phone buzzed and I wiped my hands clean of dish soap again to read and reply to her text. "You are such a pervert, I'm going to come over and tell your parents right now and then I'm going to see the embarrassment on your face for the next week."
My eyes widened in panic as I looked towards my parents and then up at her window again. She was leaving her room, now with sweatpants and a t-shirt on. Before I could go distract my parents, the doorbell rang. My mother rushed to get the door while I stood there already embarrassed at what was about to come.
Damn myself for wanting to tease Gabriela and embarrass her, but in return I was about to get served with my own medicine times thirty.
"Hello, Gabriella. Is everything alright?" My mother asked her, a little confused as to why she was over at this time of night. I could only see the back of my mom's head but I could see Gabriella's smirk in full view.
I couldn't do anything at this point, if I tried to stop my mother from talking to Gabriella, my mother would notice my raging male part.
"Oh everything's fine, Lucille. I was practicing my lines in my room for the audition."
"Troy told me about your plans to audition! I think you'll do great, honey." Gabriella was my closest friend aside from Chad, she was always over doing homework and hanging out with me and Chad. My mother loved her just like a daughter she never had.
"Thanks, Lucille. As I was saying. While practicing, I noticed that maybe your son looking up at my window while he was washing his dishes and may I add that I was in my underwear. Now I don't want to open my curtains for the next four years."
I could see my mother shake her head in disapproval before she turned around and burned her glare into my face. "Troy Alexander Bolton…" Oh shit, I felt my mother looked at that one forbidden part of my lower half.
And that taught me to never mess with Gabriella the same way again. She was a vixen, no longer the quiet nerd I grew up with.
These memories always put a smile on my face. They were a much simpler time that was for sure.
My phone buzzed as I dried my hands on the towel. Reaching my hand down into my pocket, I slid the screen to read a text message from Chad.
"Let's get some drinks, hoops."
A drink is exactly what I need. From thinking about how annoying Dory is, my unfaithful wife, to thinking about my first love, I needed some time off from thinking about women in general.
"I just don't know how to pop the question." Chad took another swig of his beer as I listened to his predicament. "How did you do it, man?"
Another reminder of my marriage, seems like there's no way to get around it. "Well… Sharpay is not that hard to impress. I bought tickets to her favorite Broadway musical and popped the question during intermission." To think how in love I was with Sharpay at the time made me sick with nostalgia. If only things didn't fall off the tracks. We used to be in love, but now we screamed at each other every time we see each other and all I could do was act like everything was still okay between us in front of our friends.
I'm too embarrassed to even admit to myself that I am too pathetic to keep my wife around and too stupid to know they've been fucking for months before I caught them.
"I don't even know how to impress Taylor. We've been together for nearly ten years and I still get impressed with everything she does. But I think everything I do is just dumb to her. She's just such an independent woman." Chad sighed out in frustration. That, he was correct on. Taylor is an impressive woman. She got through law school and even motivated Chad to go to school for accounting and finance and pushed Chad to climb up the corporate ladder to become the head accountant of the company he worked for.
"I think she's easier to impress than you think. Maybe she is traditional and prefers just a classic proposal. Candlelight dinner kind of thing, you know." I took a sip of my beer as well. The bar was playing some country song in the background that I could care less about. This is one of the things you get used to when you live in a small town like Maryville. Every where you went, people played some red-neck music and drove a beat up truck though I'm a victim of owning a beat-up Corolla myself.
"Maybe." Chad nodded as he seriously considered what I said to him. "On another note, I haven't seen Zeke around lately. He's fallen off the grid lately."
That's because he is purposely avoiding me. "He's probably busy." Fuck these friendships that fall apart over a woman. I could care less about whether he was busy or not. Sleeping with your best friend's wife is the biggest and last thing he'll ever impact in my life. The scene of Sharpay in her black lace bra while on top of Zeke in my bed replayed in my mind again. When can I ever stop seeing that scene in my head? When will I forget how vividly I remember it? Just that one single thought compelled me to chug my entire beer down. I want to forget about this, forget about all this bullshit.
"Hit me with a shot of vodka." I told the bartender while Chad looked at me in shock.
"You okay, man? You haven't gotten drunk since you got married."
Marriage ruined me, marriage ruined my life. "I'm fine. I'm just stressed about work." Another lie because I still can't admit to people about how much of a failure I am at marriage.
The bartender sets down a shot glass and I took it right away. I could feel the alcohol burn from my mouth down to my throat. The after taste that came with it reminded me of the days of partying in high school and the times I took a shot at a high school party and got rip-roaring drunk.
I didn't need a chaser, I just needed another shot. The warm sensation of the alcohol traveling down to my stomach made me feel more alive then working those long hours at the diner or lying about my flawed marriage.
"Dude, easy." Chad sipped on his own beer as he chuckled at my sudden bravery.
I sighed out after taking the shot and my thoughts traveled back to Gabriella. "You remember Gabriella?"
"Montez?" Chad's smile grew big as he remembered the times they hung out together. "Of course. Montez is the coolest girl I've ever been friends with."
"She's an actress now huh."
"Well someone's feeling nostalgic. She's been gone for like nine years. Last time I heard about her, she won an Oscar for this drama based on a true story about a famous Hispanic journalist."
"Yeah, don't you sometimes wonder what she's up to?" We never told Chad about our relationship. Gabriella and I were one of those things that just happened. It happened over a long period of time and growing up together. There was never an official day we decided to become a couple, it happened gradually and out of the vision of our friends.
"She's better off than us that's for sure. No wonder she left this town and never came back. People in town sometimes say she just left her mom here and took off to become a millionaire in Hollywood."
"Maria says Gabriella sends her gifts all the time and they talk a lot." I found myself defending her despite not seeing her for so long. I never believed those rumors because Maria always spoke so fondly of Gabriella whenever she invited him over for dinner.
"I'd like to believe so. I mean Montez was a really great girl and we had so many great childhood memories together with the gang. It's funny to see the rest of us still here but one of us world famous." Chad finished off the last bit of his beer. "We used to play in her mom's garden all the time and I remember her mom had the most beautiful peonies… that's it. Taylor said her favorite flowers were peonies."
Finally, something clicked for Chad. His fear of popping the question seemed to have disappeared with an epiphany like this.
"I'm going to buy her a bunch of peony flowers and decorate our entire house with them and make a trail of peonies that lead to the ring."
"You do that." Chad is always full of crazy ideas that sound better than actually put to action. This was just another classic Chad idea.
As Chad rambled on about different ways to use peonies to propose to Taylor, my thoughts are filled with women again. How Dory basically barks when she pesters me to pick up my order or how Sharpay is probably fucking Zeke this very moment or how Gabriella Montez might actually be dancing around in her underwear inside her room, right above my kitchen window.
Sorry for the long wait guys, I swear I didn't forget about the story. I got really busy with my midterms and such and my finals are coming up as well so I'm gonna be pretty busy. Although I can't promise to update this story weekly like I did with my last one, I will be updating it every couple of weeks. I just need to find time to write after I study and do all my homework. I go to a pretty competitive research university so finding time to do extra things can be a challenge. Hope you guys enjoyed this chapter and sorry for the long wait! Please review and let me know your thoughts, they mean the world to me!