A/N: So, today is rather special for me...I just got in to uni (my first choice, too!) I got two Cs and a B and that's all I needed :D I even managed to drag my Literature grade up from a D to a C :D So I'm really happy right now! There's been lots of tears and lots of hugs :D

Chapter 18

Gabriella was having rather a crappy day. Her left shoe had practically disintegrated on her way to work meaning that she'd had to fix it with staples and tape from Troy's office. She'd been planning on finding a new pair during her lunch break but that hadn't worked out when she had gone to leave for her lunch and Troy had pointed out a hole in her pair of shorts, revealing her unflattering pair of pale blue knickers. So instead of venturing out into Scarborough's town for new shoes, she spent her lunch hour cutting one of Troy's shirts up to tie around her waist so that her underwear wasn't on show for her entire town to see. Troy joked saying that he didn't mind seeing her underwear. But she obviously did.

In the past week, since her confession to Andy, Jamie had discovered their relationship. Perhaps Jamie had figured it out. Perhaps Andy had told him. Troy and Gabriella didn't care much as long as jokes and teasing were kept at a minimum. Still, Jamie had chosen this particular day to open fire and make wisecracks about his brother's relationship. It hadn't exactly lightened her mood, like Jamie probably intended.

She stood in the doorway of the garage, musing about the real, truly terrifying reason that she was in a bad mood. With her mobile balanced between her ear and shoulder, she listened to Sharpay on the other end. Meanwhile, the fingers of her right hand were continuously rubbing the skin of her left wrist. It had been a simple mistake, a slip of the mind. Perhaps she was still feeling the effects of being with Troy the previous evening. But, for the first time in God knows how long, she'd forgotten her bandana.

She tried to reason that it wasn't that big of a deal. At the end of the day, it was a scrap of material she'd had for years. And yet, she knew that deep down, she was downright terrified. Paranoia bubbled beneath the surface. She'd smudged oil, on purpose, in the inside of her left wrist in an attempt to hide the one thing she still had to tell Troy. It was easy for her to say that confessing her addiction was one of the hardest things she ever had to do. But she also knew that nothing would compare to the day when she finally sat Troy down and told him everything.

She peeked over her shoulder, grateful to see that Troy seemed too engrossed in a stupid motorbike he was fixing to ever notice the hint of her past that was permanently present on her wrist.

"How could you guys not have done it yet?" Sharpay asked.

Gabriella sighed, feeling like banging her head against a brick wall. "Shar, we're not teenagers anymore. I don't have to tell you everything I do with a guy." As soon as the words were out of her mouth, she knew it was the wrong thing to say to Sharpay Evans.

"Gabi," she whined.

Gabriella smiled weakly to herself. "Seriously. What do the kids call it these days? Making out? All we did was make out for a while. I don't know, I guess I'm not ready."

Sharpay seemed to ponder that for a moment. "You will be. Soon. So what's the real reason you called me?"

She glanced at Troy again. "I need you to go home for me."

"Why?" Sharpay asked slowly.

Gabriella sighed. "I forgot my bandana and I don't want Troy to see. Please, Shar? I can't go home. Jamie's out on lunch and me and Troy have to watch this place. Please?"

"I wish I could," Sharpay muttered. "I have a dress fitting in two minutes and, let me tell you, she's the devil of all Bridezillas."

Gabriella groaned. "Can't you push it back a bit?"

"Did you hear what I just said?" Sharpay exclaimed. "Gabi, just tell him."

"Speaking of Troy," Gabriella murmured, "I'd better go. I'll talk to you later." She hung up and headed back towards the car she'd been fixing. She couldn't help but notice how Troy didn't say anything to her, focussing only on the motorbike he was working on. That was rare. If they were watching the garage, just the two of them, they usually got up to something.

Gabriella could guess why. Although her day had been far from perfect, Troy had also had something on his mind. Through all of his jokes and banter, she sensed a distraction. A distraction that she could only guess was to do with Andy. True, Andy had stopped drinking as much as he was, before an addiction could rear its ugly head, but he wasn't exactly the former, flirtatious guy she remembered meeting.

"Hey, Brie?" Troy called.

Before she straightened up from the bonnet of the Honda, she smudged a bit more oil over her wrist. Anything to mask the revelation of her past. She turned to Troy. "Yeah?"

He frowned as he wiped the seat of the bike down with an old rag. "Andy said that he might be leaving. You know, after graduation."

Of course.

Gabriella turned back to the car in front of her. "Why?"

"If this thing with Steph doesn't end well," he mumbled.

She sighed. "Well, where would he go?"

"Wales," Troy said instantly. "Well, I have to clarify that he never actually said where he was going. Just that he was."

She rolled her eyes. "Then how do you know he's going to Wales?" she snapped. She didn't mean to. The second the words left her mouth in that tone, she wished she could take them back. Troy was only caring for his son. But Gabriella really wasn't in the mood to listen to Troy whine about how worried he was. She knew that a relationship involved compromise; give and take. No matter how crappy you felt, you were there for the other person.

For better or for worse.

But, in the end, it didn't happen that way. Or, at least, it didn't happen for her. Someone always wanted something that the other didn't. And you don't always get what you want. That's how life works. She knew that better than most.

She folded her arms, still looking away from Troy, and chewed her thumb nail. "I'm sorry," she whispered.

"Well, if you must know," he mumbled, ignoring her apology, "we went on holiday to Wales once, in a village outside of Cardiff. He said he wanted to go back. Perhaps to visit, perhaps to live. At age 10, he really didn't know. At first, I thought he was joking. I didn't think he actually would go. But he kept asking when we could go again. It would've been easier for him to go to uni down there. But he stayed here for..."

Me. The unspoken word hung in the air like smoke.

He sighed. "He's going to go sooner or later, I know. But I don't want him to leave behind the best thing that's ever happened to him. I didn't realise how good Steph was for him until she wasn't around. Brie, what do I do?"

She turned to him. "You let him figure it out," she said slowly. "If he can't figure out that the biggest reason to stay in this shithole of a town is his best friend, he doesn't deserve her."

Troy stared at her in disbelief. "You always say that! Brie, my son is about to lose his best friend and I don't know what to do."

She rolled her eyes. "Troy, he's a grown up. You can't make decisions for him anymore. You just can't, okay? You asked for my opinion and I gave it. If you don't like it, don't ask for it. It's as simple as that, Troy."

"How would you feel?" he sneered, striding towards her. "If your son was heartbroken, blind to how his best friend felt about him, and on the verge of losing her, how would you feel?"

"Me?" she exclaimed in shock. "Me? If that was my son, I'd be thrilled. I'd be over the moon, I'd be freaking ecstatic because she'd damn well be alive."

It was in that moment that the tension between them broke and reality came crashing down for both of them. It was Gabriella's inconsistent use of pronouns that did it. She. Her tone of voice, laced with anger and despair; experience. Her eyes glazed over. Not with tears. In fact, in that respect, her eyes were bone dry. But, it was if she was in another place, another time, not seeing Troy, reliving moments with her.

The silence hung heavily in the air like wet laundry. You'd think that considering the seriousness of their relationship, after the lengthy conversations, the tears, the breakdowns, the secret pasts dug up like buried treasure, something would've clicked. Troy should've seen an obvious, bright neon light, telling him that, although he was on the brink of losing his son to heartbreak, Gabriella had already been held captive in that torture chamber. The truly horrific, ironic thing about losing a child, no matter the cause, was that the worst part wasn't actually losing your entire world. The truly gut-wrenching, vomit inducing, heartbreaking pain occurred when you walked in halfway through the conversation, knowing that it was already too late to do the one thing you swore you'd always do: protect your own flesh and blood.

Troy was worried that he'd lose his child, but Gabriella had already lost hers.

Gabriella shook her head and focussed her gaze on Troy. "I'm sorry." She rubbed her forehead. "I have to go." She grabbed her bag from the table and then strode out of the garage.

Troy was twenty years old when he grew up. A lot of people grew up earlier, some later. It was a personal change that depended on what life threw at you. For Troy, he became a father.

For most of his years, he'd lived an easy going life. He'd had average grades, good enough to get him into sixth form and eventually university. He'd had nice clothes, belongings and friends. His parents were supportive but not pushy. He'd had the opportunities and chances to go to parties and hang loose for a time.

I'm pregnant, she'd said. She was uninterested in his response, more interested in celebrities' failing marriages in her magazine than in their baby. When he hadn't voiced a response, she continued, I'm getting an abortion.

He'd made an instant but conscious choice. It would've been quite easy for him to agree with her. He could've kept the life he'd been living. But, in that instant, he didn't care about having money and nice clothes. He didn't care about being able to go out and get plastered at parties. All he knew was that he wanted that baby in his life. He'd volunteered to change his life to accommodate a life he'd created. He endured crash courses on cooking and how to do laundry, learning how to do things he'd sworn he never would. But none of that truly mattered until he was in the delivery room and the reality of his situation came to life.

When their wives are in labour, and they're scrubbed up in the delivery room, husbands or boyfriends in a normal, loving, committed relationship would hold their significant other's hand. Normal husbands and boyfriends would do anything to take away their other's pain. But Troy never even got a chance. He wanted to take her pain away. He didn't like anyone to be in pain. But she pushed him away. She didn't want anything to do with him. I don't need your sympathies, Troy. You're not the one pushing a watermelon through a ten centimetre hole, are you? To be fair, no man would be able to argue with that. But it was the principle. All he wanted was to support her. And she wouldn't even let him.

She gave one final, large push and he witnessed his very own miracle slip into the world; into the midwife's capable hands. Troy had never been so relieved to hear a baby's cries before. It's a boy, she exclaimed, joy lacing her voice. Her eyes were bright and she looked over to give Troy a congratulatory smile. She'd known him maybe an hour and a half, two hours at most. But she already knew that Troy would be an excellent father; no matter his age, no matter lack of experience or money. She could see through the cool exterior to a small little boy, brimming with excitement, with a heart of pure intentions. It was probably from her job and how she saw anxious fathers on a daily basis. But however she did it, she had decided he would be an excellent father.

Would you like to cut the cord? She'd asked, offering him a pair of surgical scissors. He'd stared down at the naked, bloody, wriggling mass of flesh and limbs on a towel. Can I? He'd whispered, not taking his eyes off his son for even a second. The midwife smiled and talked him through how to do it properly.

Once the baby was separated from his mother, he was whisked away by a nurse to clean him up. Troy paced up and down nervously while they cleaned the baby's mother up. He was positive something would go wrong: his son would stop breathing, there would be something wrong with his blood, he would be blind or deaf.

He just wanted his son to be healthy.

His vision blurred with tears as a nurse walked towards him with a tiny bundle wrapped in a blue blanket. The second his son was in his arms, the world stopped spinning. Time stopped ticking because nothing else mattered. He was honestly holding perfection. A tiny mop of blonde hair graced the crown of his son's head. He had ten tiny fingers and ten tiny toes. The little boy wriggled in his father's arms until one of his arms was freed from the confining blanket. Troy smiled to himself as he let his son wrap his tiny fingers around his own large one. The second they touched, the baby's cries and screams mellowed down to become small, hiccup-like mumbles. His eyelids fluttered open, revealing the eyes that Troy saw everyday in the mirror.

Nothing could have prepared Troy for the moment of serenity he felt when he held his son for the first time. He'd tried to prepare himself for the transition between student to father. But the truth was that it was that moment that he'd changed. The laborious learning of household chores meant nothing compared to the change in the way he saw the world.

It was in that moment that Troy learnt that no matter how hard you tried to prepare yourself for change, it always crept up on you.

Do you have a name? The nurse had asked. Not even looking up from his very own miracle, he'd whispered, Andrew. Andrew Bolton.

Troy read somewhere that Plato, a Greek philosopher, believed that humans were originally designed as having two heads, four arms, four legs, and two hearts. They were split in half and were to spend the rest of their lives finding the half they parted from. Troy wondered if Plato was right and it was that reason that Troy had closed the garage and wandered down to the beach, despite how it was nowhere near closing time. He hadn't even text Jamie to tell him where he was going. He just...left.

He couldn't explain why he was headed to the beach. Particularly as he was heading to the south bay, near the Spa, a large entertainment complex, the part of the beach furthest from the garage. In his opinion, it was the nicest beach Scarborough had to offer. It wasn't near the road or the arcade. It was peaceful. Sand, sea and sky. That's all there was. Troy had spent a fair amount of time on this particular stretch of beach when Andy and Steph had been little. There had been countless days of sandcastle building, paddling in the sea and standing perilously on rocks with cheap nets, trying to capture life that lived in rock pools. Troy was convinced that it had been these frequent trips that had sparked Steph's obsession with the ocean.

Although Troy hadn't known her very long, he knew that the connection he had with Gabriella ran deeper than any bond he'd had with any other woman. He wondered if he was being drawn to the beach because Gabriella's heart was calling to his own on some wavelength he would never be able to understand. Maybe it was possible that Gabriella had been constantly telling him things, right from the first day they met, without actually saying a thing. Maybe she'd always been talking about her past, who she truly was, and he simply hadn't listened.

Part of him felt relief when he saw a familiar figure sat on one of the large rocks, staring out to see. Another part of him knew that she'd be there. He approached slowly, allowing his trainers to sink into the sand. He climbed up onto the rock that Gabriella was on and sat next to her. At first, he was unsure whether she knew he was there. But, then she put her left hand on his knee and rested her head on his shoulder. Tentatively, he wrapped his arm around her shoulders, trying to shield her from the pain he had unknowingly caused her.

The ironic thing was that what they felt for each other meant they would do anything protect the other. However, they both had reasons to be hesitant, to run away before it became too serious. It was probably what had caused them to say things they hadn't meant. They were testing each other, seeing how much they could push before the other snapped.

In the silence that ensued, Gabriella offered Troy one of her earphones. It was only then that he saw that she was listening to her iPod. The other earphone was still in her ear. Troy slowly put it in his ear and heard Billy Joel's soothing, hypnotising voice. It took him only a moment to recognise the song as 'Leningrad'. As soon as he'd recognised the song, he knew that it was this story that had caused her addiction. He didn't know how he knew, just that he did. It was probably from the way she seemed to crave his touch, as if it was keeping her alive.

As they both listened to the beautiful melodies and harmonies, Gabriella used the hem of Troy's shirt to wipe the oil from her left wrist. As it was wiped away, a tattoo peeped through; a patch of permanently inked skin. When the majority of oil and grease was wiped off, Troy saw one word: Alyssa. Troy traced the ink with his fingertip. He sought her eyes.

"Was that her name?" he whispered.

She nodded mutely. He knew, he could tell, that she was silent because if she spoke, she would cry. And although he never minded her crying, it was obvious that saying the words aloud was very painful for her.

She reached for her bag and rummaged around until she found her purse. She opened it up, revealing her array of bank and shop loyalty cards. She handed it to Troy and then looked out to sea.

He looked down at her purse, seeing a picture slotted behind the transparent plastic. A little girl, perhaps two years old, was smiling back at him. With a mop of dark curls, chocolate eyes and tanned skin, he was looking straight into the eyes of Gabriella herself. "Was this her?" he asked with a squeeze of her shoulders.

Gabriella nodded slowly. "Do you want a fun fact about me?"

He shrugged, unsure where she was heading, but willing to go there with her. "Sure," he said.

She held his hand and looked down at the picture in her purse. "If you'd met me twelve, thirteen years ago, you'd be talking to Mrs Gabriella Lewis."

Troy frowned. "You were married," he said with realisation.

She nodded slowly. "Yeah. We'd been together for four or five years and we tied the knot straight after we graduated from uni. By the time I was twenty two, I'd given birth to our first, and only, daughter."

"She looks like you, you know," Troy said. He wondered what kind of girl Alyssa had been. Was she fun and quirky or quiet and shy? Was she always centre stage or was she happier in the background? Would she have grown up working beside cars like Gabriella or ran in the opposite direction? Troy would never know for himself, only through what Gabriella told him. But that didn't matter. He knew that Alyssa would have been one of the most wonderful girls in the world because Gabriella was a part of her.

Gabriella gave a small smile. "I know. Mi niña hermosa. (A/N: My beautiful girl) She was the missing puzzle piece. I had everything I ever wanted. I loved being pregnant. It was the most amazing feeling in the world. Although, I wasn't impressed that I couldn't fix cars for about six months." She looked at him. "I was a house with legs. I couldn't bend over bonnets or get under cars on a creeper. But it didn't matter because I got Alyssa out of it." She rested her head on his shoulder. "I'd never seen anything so beautiful in my whole life."

Troy kissed her hair. "Even meeting you can't compare to seeing Andy that first day, you know," he admitted.

Gabriella paused and buried her face in Troy's neck. It took him only a moment to feel the dampness caused by her wet, salty tears, as if the ocean itself was crying for her.

"When she was two years old, she was diagnosed with leukaemia," she said. The words rushed out of her mouth, as if they wouldn't have the harsh implications that they did. But Troy heard them, loud and clear.

Troy could never comprehend that. Sure, he was scared of losing Andy to heartbreak and that he'd move away, but how could that compare to losing a child to a battle with a fatal disease? Just thinking about watching Andy suffer meds, treatments and operations made his heart ache.

"Everyone said I was the best mother alive," she said quietly, looking out at the North Sea. She knew from many days of paddling that even in the summer, the iciness pierced your skin like knives. It was the kind of torture you became accustomed to after a few moments; your body heat regulating with the temperature of the sea. But nothing could make you get accustomed to the torture of watching your child suffer.

"But I had to wonder: had I missed an earlier symptom that, if I'd spotted it, she would've lived longer," she muttered. "She would've been about sixteen now. And she missed all of those years because she died when she was four." She gave Troy a weak smile, trying to reassure him that she was alright discussing such a dark part of her life. But they both knew that she wasn't. "She'd been unconscious for days and was getting progressively more unresponsive to treatment every day. I refused flat out to leave the hospital and so did my husband. We sat there, mostly talking about dolls and singing nursery rhymes." She looked down at the picture that was slotted in her purse. "Do you see her there? That's nothing how she looked in the final few days. She'd lost most of her hair, she was thin and she was pale. Basically a ghost of that girl. But, when she was awake, she still managed to smile."

Gabriella looked at her left hand and began rubbing the base of her ring finger, where her wedding band used to be. It had always looked out of place on the background of her dark, callused, oil-stained skin. But, at the time, it had fit so well that it was almost like it was some more skin, a part of her, not the gold that had represented their marriage.

"After Alyssa died, we, me and my husband, weren't talking as much. When we did talk, all we did was argue over the most pathetic things. A month later, he filed for a divorce. By the end of the year, I'd lost everything I'd worked so hard to get. It had taken me years to be able to be called a good wife and a good mother. But it only took a moment for those titles to be stripped away," she said.

Troy held her close to him. This woman had come into his life with a cool exterior, seemingly so sure of herself. And now he knew why. She had been masking how broken she'd once been, hiding the cracks she hadn't been strong enough to cement back together.

"That's why you started drinking," he said. It wasn't a question or an accusation. It was just something he'd figured out about her.

She nodded slowly. "It started with a bottle of whiskey he'd left at our house and then I was drinking all day, every day because it was the only way I could forget that it had ever happened." She paused and wiped her cheeks. "You know, I always hated nice days. Really nice days. With sun and heat and laughter because I knew that sooner or later, something would happen to bring it all crashing down and it was always that much more devastating. It's kind of like life, really. The minute you get comfortable, when you start enjoying yourself, the rug is pulled from under you and you fall flat on your face again."

"Can't you hope that someone's there to pick you up?" he asked.

She shrugged. "At that point in my life, I didn't hope for much other than enough money to buy a bottle of vodka." She paused. "I used to come down here a lot. When I was drinking. I'd be completely drunk, with a bottle of Jack or vodka and just watch the waves. Remember when I talked to you about temptation? How it's like having a voice telling you it's okay to do something when you know it's not?"

Troy rested his cheek against her hair. Her dark curls, partially tamed by her usual bandana, were warm from being exposed to the sun. He rubbed her arm as he listened to her hypnotic, mesmerising voice. Her voice which usually held so much warmth and happiness, a teasing tone, was laden with pain and hurt as she relived memories he knew she'd buried long ago.

"I remember," he said.

"When I sat here, trying so hard to forget everything, I used to get tempted by the sea. I knew it would take just a few minutes to reach the water and just let it take me. I was past the point of caring. I knew it would be quicker than waiting until my liver failed or I poisoned myself to death," she said. Her hand squeezed his knee. He was unsure whether she was giving him support, after all, it wasn't something he was exactly prepared for her to admit to, or whether she was seeking support for her.

"Why didn't you?" he asked.

She sighed. "I don't know. Maybe I believed that I deserved the torture of living a life I didn't want." She inhaled sharply. "The only person on the planet who knows that part is Alex. The less Mum and Dad worry, the better, and same for Addie."

Troy kissed her temple. "I'm glad you told me that. I'm glad you felt that you could tell me that." He paused. "Andy's going out tonight. Do you want to come back to my place?"

She nodded against his neck. "If you want me to."

Steph turned to Andy and folded her arms. "I'm leaving," she muttered.

He frowned and followed her gaze to her pink flip flops. "Why? Where? I don't get it. I thought the whole point of you staying here was that you didn't want to leave!"

She shrugged. "I changed my mind."