A/N: I'm still not owning HSM.

Chapter 7

So Right, But So Wrong

"Ryan, would you please just listen to me for once?"

"Gabriella, for the love of…everything, would you please just trust me."

"I do. I just want you to listen to me." Gabriella was getting heated. She just wanted to confront Ryan about how she didn't always feel like he was listening to her. She had tried to avoid her feelings about the whole matter for an entire week, but to no avail.

"I do."

"Like when?" It was after dinner, and Gabriella and Ryan were sitting on the front steps of the Evans' house.

"Well, when you told me that you wanted me to tell you that I loved you, I did."

"Yeah," she said sarcastically. "After you told me how insecure I was."

"What is it going to take for you to trust me?" Ryan looked like he wanted to curse. "I just want the best for us."

"Did it ever occur to you that I might like to have some input on that, too? Ryan, I'm not asking to take your powers of decision-making away. I just want you to listen when I have some input."

"I don't need your input to know what's best for us."

"Then why on earth am I even in this relationship? If you're so good at making decisions all by yourself, then what value am I adding to this relationship?"

Ryan took Gabriella's hands, but she didn't look at him. She couldn't.

"I want you to be the women that I come home to every night. I want you to raise our children. I didn't just pick you because you're the first woman I laid my eyes on or because you're beautiful. I picked you because I have total faith that you can keep a house and raise wonderful children."

"You picked me? What do you think this is, anyways? Am I your prize for having the fattest pig at the fair or something?"

Ryan dropped her hands.

"I don't know what the…heck your problem is. I feel like this entire week, you have been distant and judgmental of everything I do."

Gabriella threw her hands up in the air. "I just told you what my problem was! But clearly you weren't listening."

Ryan looked stumped. "I- You- We- I can see that you don't want to talk this out, so I'll talk to you tomorrow." With that, he stood up and sauntered inside, muttering "Women," before closing the door very firmly.

Gabriella buried her head in her hands and groaned. She really wanted to cry, but she was just so angry.

"Gabriella?" a concerned voice asked from the sidewalk up to the Evans' house. Gabriella jumped, snapping her head up. Troy and Sharpay were approaching her.

Troy looked at Sharpay. "I'll be in, in a sec," he told her. Sharpay shrugged, stepped past Gabriella and went inside. Troy sat down next to Gabriella, right where Ryan had been a few moments ago.

"What's wrong?" he asked, after a long silence.

Gabriella put her face back in her hands and groaned again. "Everything," came the muffled reply.

"Wanna talk about it?" Troy asked.

"That's just it," Gabriella replied. "He doesn't want to."

"Well, if you want to talk to me about it, I promise I'll do my best to listen."

Gabriella lifted her head out of her hands and looked at Troy. She knew that Troy would listen. He had a week earlier without any prompting, but then that kiss had happened. Hell with it, she decided. Gabriella desperately wanted to talk to somebody who would listen to her, and he was sitting there waiting for just that. "Wanna go for a walk?" she asked.

"Sure," Troy said, standing up and offering his hand to Gabriella. She accepted and got up. The two walked side-by-side away from the houses and away from the town.

Eventually, the poorly paved asphalt road turned into a dusty gravel road, and Gabriella stopped.

"What?" Troy asked.

"I've never been past this point. This is the Nowhere town limits."

"I would be honored if you would break this record of the distance you have traveled with me," Troy said, offering his hand to Gabriella again.

Troy could sense Gabriella's uneasiness in the dark. Finally, an unsure hand met his. He clasped hers and she took the step from the asphalt to the gravel.

The two were silent.

"Well?" Troy asked.

Gabriella dropped Troy's hand and started to giggle until her giggling turned into a full-out laugh.

"What's so funny?" Troy asked.

"I don't know," Gabriella said between her laughs. "It's just so…easy."

"What's so easy?"

"Well, Ryan is always making such a big deal about how a woman has never left the town of Nowhere for 150 years, but now I'm realizing how silly that is. I don't doubt it's true, but I also doubt that any of them ever even tried to leave. Here I've been hanging onto the threads of my relationship with Ryan, assuming that's it. If I don't marry him, I become an old maid working at the grocery store as a cashier for the rest of my life. It's like I thought there was some sort of invisible barrier keeping me in Nowhere for my entire life. It's all just so…false. Troy, I've never felt so free before. I could just run, forever."

"Then, do," Troy said. "Nobody standing here is going to tell you no."

"Run with me?" Gabriella asked, offering her hand to Troy.

Troy chuckled. "Sure."

As Troy grabbed Gabriella's hand, she felt electricity shoot through her entire body. She laughed and started running, Troy right beside her, holding onto her hand. She let out a shout of joy and kept on running until both of them were completely out of breath.

Panting, they stopped, putting their hands on their knees to catch their breath.

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"Wow," Troy said between pants. "That was really fun." It had been so spontaneous, and Troy had really enjoyed watching Gabriella take such a risk.

Gabriella laughed between breaths. "Yeah." After she caught her breath, Gabriella asked, "Remember that kiss?"

Troy straightened up. That was the last question he had expected from the gentle and unassuming Gabriella. "Yes," he replied cautiously.

"Ryan has never kissed me like that."

Now Troy really wasn't sure what to make of that. He was almost angry at Ryan for not kissing her right. How could he resist kissing the crap out of girl as wonderful and beautiful as Gabriella?

"What are you trying to say?" Troy asked.

He could see Gabriella wringing her hands in the dark. "Could you kiss me like that again?"

Troy was floored. Gabriella had to be out of her mind! "What?" he asked, sure he hadn't heard her right.

"I don't know what the heck I'm thinking right now, but I just really want to kiss you again."

Troy shook his head. Maybe there was something between his ears and his brain that was preventing him from hearing correctly.

Before Troy could say anything, Gabriella mumbled, "I'm sorry. I'm way out of line here."

Troy couldn't even muster a response, so he just grabber her hand. Gabriella looked up from the ground, and Troy gently pulled her to him until she was against his chest. She looked up, and he put her hand around his neck. As his face slowly inched closer to hers, he put his hands around her mid-back.

His world began swimming as he touched Gabriella's lips. He so badly wanted to give her the kiss of her life, the one that she had only dreamt about, but being so close to Gabriella was making him loose his entire conscious mind.

He felt himself start the kiss lightly and politely, but he could feel Gabriella's lips searching for more. He started to feel around her lips with his own until her mouth parted slightly and he was feeling around her mouth. He was searching for something. He didn't know what, but everything just felt so good…so right.

As Troy began exploring her mouth, Gabriella put her other arm around Troy's neck. The two were lost in the kiss.

Finally, Troy pulled away from Gabriella, desperately in need of a breath. The two were silent.

Gabriella laughed softly. "That's the second time I've been out of breath tonight."

Troy swallowed loudly. "Yeah," he said, not sure what to make of what had just happened.

"Um, thanks," Gabriella said.

"No problem," Troy replied gruffly. "Every girl deserves a man who will kiss her right."

Gabriella was silent for a moment. "I-I think it's time to go back," she finally said.

Troy felt so confused as he fell in step with Gabriella, headed back to Nowhere. Sharpay, who wasn't engaged or dating, dodged kissing him, not that he had really intended to before the moment they were lying on the rock, and then a women who was engaged made out with him and had nothing to say about it, apparently.

Troy was even more confused about how a kiss that was so wrong had felt so right.

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Sharpay paced back and forth in her bedroom. What was she doing? In a fit of anger, she grabbed her silky pink pillow from her bed and screamed as she chucked it at her mirror. It fell to the floor with a crash, shattering the glass.

A few moments later there was a panicked knock at her door. "Honey, is everything okay in there?" her mother asked from the other side.

"Fine!" Sharpay snapped.

"Well, if you need to tal-"

"I said I was fine!" Sharpay snapped.

Sharpay heard her mother's footsteps get fainter as she walked away.

She sat down on her bed in a huff. Just a few moments ago, she had Troy right where she wanted him. He was going to kiss her, and she dodged it. She had read in a magazine how to play hard to get, and it sounded intriguing. Judging by the look on Troy's face when she dodged him, it was working. So why was she so wound up?

Sharpay began pacing her room again. This playing hard to get thing was supposed to drive the other person crazy, but Sharpay found that the only person she saw being driven crazy was herself.

That was it. She was just going to kiss Troy. Sure, it was unheard of in Nowhere. Girls never made the first move, but Troy wasn't from Nowhere, either.

He was normal. Sharpay scoffed as she thought about the word normal. What was it anyways? It wasn't normal for a woman to make a first move in Nowhere, but Nowhere didn't exactly seem normal as a whole.

What Troy had told Sharpay about things outside of Nowhere had left her with a desperate burning desire in the depths of her heart to go see what he had only talked about.

Sharpay heard footsteps coming up the stairs and peeked her head out of her door. There he was. Troy was not even twenty feet away. He shuffled to his room.

Sharpay took a breath. All she needed to do was walk ten steps and he was hers.

She took a deep breath. This wasn't as easy as she had originally thought.

Before Sharpay could think, she felt herself quietly shutting the door. There she was, still trapped in her room. Sharpay groaned and threw her hands in the air. Why couldn't this just be simple?

A/N: I know you guys don't like to review, but it would be super helpful. I want as much interest generated in this story as possible, and one way that can be accomplished is by peope reviewing so other people can see that people are reading it. Or maybe people aren't. Anyways, thanks to the handful of those who have reviewed. I really appreciate it :-)