They had been together for six months. Six months too long as for three of those months, she was fucking the senior football captain. Age didn't matter since they were only a year younger and in the middle of their junior year. He broke up with her though; right after he caught them at her house. He went over to her house on that late February night to surprise her for her birthday, but instead found that Doug Wenzel answered the door--not expecting Troy to be there--in only his pants.
That was the first time Troy hit someone. That was the first time Troy hit someone continuously. That was the first time Troy actually felt more hatred towards someone besides Jason for a long time. And then Lilly came downstairs. Her long tan legs were being shown off by the white boy shorts she was wearing, barely covering anything. And of course she was wearing Doug's shirt as a cover up as it only reached her upper thigh.
Her big innocent blue eyes looked up in surprise, and she stuttered for words as she could feel the hate radiating from Troy's body. It wasn't the first time she did this to Troy, but every time she did do it, she would swear to herself that she would stop.
After beating Doug to a pulp, rumors went around school. Various rumors that had nothing to do with Troy or Lilly as Doug made up some excuse that he fell off his four-wheeler over the weekend. He'd rather live in a lie than let anyone know that he was beaten by a person who wasn't a jock.
Lilly tried to talk to him for months, and on one night in March, he caved. He let her into his house again, he let her explain what she did, he let her retell everything that he knew. He was going to tell her that he loved her on her birthday, but that was a lie. He knew that was a lie once Doug answered her door, and now he felt nothing for her. As she cried on his shoulder, pleading him to take her back, he declined as softly as possible.
By then his anger at Lilly, Doug, and himself for not being able to tell sooner that she was cheating, was gone. The only thing he could do was finally listen to her, and then tell her that there was no way that he could put himself back into her life as a boyfriend again. He was okay after being hurt once, but being hurt twice, was more than what he wanted to endure.
After her crying fit stopped, and she slowly came to realize that maybe Troy didn't want her anymore, she suggested that they at least be friends. She was determined to show him that she could be the girl he thought she was before. She messed up, and she was willing to pay for the consequences as sleeping with Doug Wenzel was a HUGE mistake. He was mean, rude, cocky, and arrogant. He was nothing like Troy, and after dating Doug for a week after Troy found out, it was Lilly's biggest mistake.
She had bright blue eyes that lit up the whole room. They were so expressive that they belonged to only angels. Troy could read her like a book, and even though he might regret agreeing with her, he couldn't resist as she still had some pull on him. But after subtly talking together, and texting once and a while Lilly was getting frustrated. She wanted to be with him sooner rather than later. But when she found out that her and her family were moving in May, the first person she told was Troy.
He was upset. But not enough to burst out crying and begging for her to stay with him. He could learn to let her go even more, because after all, they were only friends. And barely friends at that. She promised she would work something out. Somehow finding a way to visit him during summer because she was convinced that they were meant to be; they were just taking a small three month break as friends. She promised him that she would write every week, and deep down Troy was hoping she was telling the truth because that would mean that there would be some hope left for them. As much as he didn't want to get hurt again, and he knew he could live without Lilly, she was still a great connection to his old life where everything was simpler. But as Junior year went on and Lilly wasn't there, he had a lot more time on his hands for studying, basketball, and hanging out with Chad.
The letters came just like she said, once every week, but then as months went on they only came once or twice every other week. And then pretty soon after the one came in September, she told him that they were moving once again to Florida. The letters all said the same thing before that one in September; she loves him, she misses him, she needs him. And then she would ask him if he needed, missed, and loved her. Each time he read the letters, it pained him as he felt like he was giving her false hope. But yet, deep down Troy did miss her. He missed the time they spent together, and it got harder and harder to read what she wrote. So he didn't respond anymore.
Her dad said only a couple of hours. Only a couple of hours until she could be satisfied that Troy understood what they were talking about. But it seemed like luck was against her as nothing seemed to register.
They had only been in school for about a month and a half, and Gabriella thought that he was only a week or two behind, but as it turned out, after working with him for two straight hours, she had came to the conclusion that she should just reteach everything that their math teacher started with.
At first she wasn't happy about what her dad asked of her. She wasn't and still isn't willing to go behind Jason's back for helping someone out who she barely knows, but as the two hours progressed and her cell phone that was out on the table kept flashing with new text messages and incoming calls that were missed, she slowly convinced herself that she wasn't technically going behind Jason's back. As long as he didn't ask her directly if she was with Troy, and as long as she can keep her answer as simple as possible--leaving out peoples' names--then everything should be okay, and he won't know, unless he places it together. Then and only then will Gabriella deal with the outcome of Jason and Troy.
Gabriella sighed as she swiped at a curl that fell in front of her eye. She put the piece of paper that was covered in more red marks than pencil down and in front of the bored looking Troy. She didn't want to help him at first, but after seeing her father's pleading look, she couldn't turn him down. And now after working with Troy, she knew that he was probably basically pushed into getting help with her father's 'suggestion'.
"Basically you failed." Gabriella told him as he looked at the paper briefly.
Troy sighed as he didn't ask for this. Coach Montez caught him in the locker room as the first class Troy had was gym with him. Coach Montez told Troy that Gabriella was willing to tutor him so that he could stay on the team this early into the season, and Troy was trying to find every excuse possible, as Coach Montez made it seem like Gabriella offered to tutor him willingly, but one look at Gabriella now and Troy could tell that she wanted to be anywhere else but there.
"Okay." Troy simple said as he was also given the option of going to the school's tutoring center to get a trained student who spent most of their high school career tutoring kids willingly. But he promised Coach Montez that he would at least stick it out to at least their second game of the season which just happened to be on the next Wednesday after their first game that Friday.
"Okay?" Gabriella asked exasperated. Her voice rose to the maximum it could get in a library. "Okay?! We just worked two fucking hours on this, and you managed to get every problem wrong!"
She was feeling restless. She had other things to do as her cell phone kept flashing; indicating that she had yet another text, and her mother was home with a 'cold'. Whatever that meant, but she knew that she at least wanted to go home to have a family dinner with them. They would rarely get to do that during basketball season since her father would be away for games, or with the team doing some bonding type thing, and her mother would be working late.
She took a deep breath as yelling at him wasn't the key. "Why don't we just start from the very beginning of this trigonometry, okay?"
Troy blinked. "You mean like, from where we started at the beginning of the year?" He thought Coach Montez said that he would only need a little tutoring. After all, he was only getting a B minus in the class, and it was a high B minus infact, so it should only take a little extra credit to get his grade up. "That's gonna take forever at this rate!" Troy complained.
Gabriella was almost literally bouncing on the edge of her seat as she was ready to throw her cell phone across the library to make it stop beeping. Troy and his complaining weren't helping her frustrations either. "Do you know what? Why don't we take a short break, okay?" She didn't wait for his response. "Good."
She whipped her hand down and opened her cell phone to see that she had five missed text messages, and two missed calls.
"Your boyfriend keeps a short leash on you." Troy casually commented. "He should learn to trust you."
Gabriella was about to make some smart ass comment back, but she was busy looking back and forth between the screen of her phone, and Troy. Her mind couldn't process what seemed like a million words Jason wrote her, as she slowly shut her phone in a daze and blinked wide eyed at Troy. "What did you call Jason? My boyfriend?" Gabriella shook her head. "We're not together. Never have and never will."
Troy smiled charmingly. "You automatically think I'm speaking of that bastard. How can you stand him?" The basketball player asked as an underlining anger flowed with his question, but general curiosity was what Gabriella heard from his tone.
"He's been my best friend since I can remember." She explained softly as whenever she talked about Jason, she always used that tone.
"Is he that important?" He scoffed as he couldn't wrap his mind around the fact why anyone would want to spend time with him. From what Troy has seen, Jason has always been this egotistical guy who was your average jock.
"Yes!" Gabriella shrieked without realizing it, and looked around as the librarian hushed them from her desk at the front of the large, open spaced room. Gabriella flushed with embarrassment as various other people looked at them with angry expressions. She turned to Troy as she tried to cool herself down. "Can we please not talk about him?"
Troy looked her over. Her worried expression to her pleading brown eyes. The brown eyes that had been plaguing his thoughts without him even realizing it. A realization hit him as he smiled. "He doesn't know you're here right now, does he?"
Gabriella shuffled in her seat. She tried to give Troy the benefit of the doubt, even when her best friend told her not to, but she did and they ended up blowing up at each other. But now with him knowing that Jason didn't know about them spending time together, that little fact is hazardous.
"Please don't say anything?" Gabriella mumbled dejectedly while looking down at the ground in shame.
"What was that?" Troy teased.
She looked up with such grace, that it must have taken all of her confidence and will power to do it. "I said, please don't tell him."
"O--okay. Yeah." Troy stumbled over his words as the power of their eye contact intensified. He couldn't tease her as he heard the pleading in her tone, and the desperation. He wasn't that mean where he couldn't keep a secret. "I'm only keeping quiet though so that no one else finds out I need tutoring."
It wasn't a complete lie.
Gabriella nodded her head. "Thank you Troy."
A silence overcame them, and it gradually grew awkward when they did nothing but stare. For Gabriella it was a thank you stare. In a way she was protecting Jason. If he didn't know, then he couldn't and wouldn't get hurt by the fact that Gabriella had to spend time with someone he despised. But for Troy is was an understanding stare. A stare that made him realize maybe the goodness Gabriella showed towards others wasn't as bad as he thought. If she was willing to help him against Jason's wishes, then she can't be as bad as Jason. There was no way she was.
Her phone was flashing again, and she looked away from Troy to see that her mom's picture was on the screen. She bit her lip as she knew that if she was in the middle of tutoring someone, she shouldn't answer her phone, but Troy must have seen the hesitancy.
"You answer that while I start reading over chapter one…again." He added as an afterthought.
Gabriella smiled gratefully. "Sounds like a plan."
When Troy got home, he was half expecting his mom to be home already as it was a little past eight. After taking a break from his tutoring with Gabriella for five minutes while she talked quietly on the phone with her mother, Troy and her studied for another half an hour before calling it a day. He then preceded over to an unsuspecting Chad's house as he remembered the offer some of the guys gave him about going out for pizza, and he tagged a long.
He learned various things about some of the guys as him, Chad, and another player Jake car pooled over to one of the only pizza places in town to meet two other teammates; Kyle and Dane. Jake was a tall guy who had a very muscular build. He was a starter who would start with Chad, Jason, Zeke, and Troy. As Kyle and Dane were more like substitutions for some of the shorter players who needed a light break.
Troy also realized that outside of math, the subject that he shared with just Gabriella and Jason from who he knew, he had English with Dane, along with AP History with Kyle and Jake. And his other few classes consisted of other known teammates that Troy was starting to get to know just at practice.
The boys talked about a wide variety of things as they started off talking about a safe subject shared in common between them all: basketball. But after that they branched out as conversations seemed to flow easily, and Troy could see himself hanging out with them more often. He was starting to come around to the whole team bonding thing, as long as Jason wasn't involved.
"You're home late." His mothers voice filtered through from the kitchen.
He walked in as he dropped his stuff off at the door. "Yeah. Me and some of the guys went to get pizza. I didn't know you would be home early."
His mother looked up from paper work with a smile on her face. "No problem. I ate on my way home." She folded her piece of paper before looking up at him again. "There's mail for you. Something from Florida?" Her puzzlement showed as Lucille knew they didn't have any relatives in Florida.
But Troy froze in his spot as he looked down at where his mother was pointing to on the granite island of the kitchen and paled when the envelope for him was placed on top. He recognized the precise handwriting immediately as it was only a month ago when he last received a letter from her.
"Who's it from?" Lucille asked innocently as her eyes stayed trained on her paperwork.
"Um…Lilly. It's from Lilly." He confirmed quietly as he delicately picked up the envelope that was so fragile in his hands.
"Oh really?" His mother's voice picked up in eagerness right away. "I didn't know that her and her family moved again. Last I heard they were in South Carolina."
Troy scratched the back of his neck as he really didn't feel like talking about his last girlfriend just yet. "…Yeah, they moved about a month ago." He looked around the room while backing out of it. "Listen mom, I have homework, so I should be getting on it right now." He turned around and rushed down the hall without another word.
Lucille cocked her head to the side as she leaned over in her chair to see down the hallway that her son just rushed out of. "He's getting weirder each day." She mumbled to herself before starting to go over paper work again.
Troy flew down onto his bed and held the letter in his hand. She had precise handwriting that no one else had. It was so different as it was stick straight, and not a letter or number misplaced; unlike Gabriella's who's handwriting was all over the place.
He slowly opened it as it was lighter than what her usual three page letters were like. He knew the chances were slim that they would ever see each other again, but it still hurt. He pulled out the one sheet of lined paper and slowly opened it. It was folded so sharply that he knew she must have taken her time to do it, but what he saw next surprised him.
Dear Troy,
I still miss you.
Love,
Lilly.
He blinked once. He blinked twice. He crumbled up the piece of paper and threw it into his small garbage can.
He was still learning not to miss her.
"Jason called here looking for you." Her mom said as she stroked the few curls that were in Gabriella's face off to the side. They were both on the couch with her mom snuggled up to the side and a blanket wrapped around herself, and Gabriella laying with her head in her mother's lap. Her mom said she was feeling a little bit better, so that was why the two girls were watching one of their favorite classic movies, The Wizard of Oz, as oppose to doing homework or doing work related things. "Where were you after cheerleading practice?"
"I was doing schoolwork at the library." As a tutor Gabriella wanted to keep things confidential. And if she was planning on telling Jason the same exact thing when he will ask her the same question, then it was just easier keeping the story the same for everyone.
"Oh. Is everything okay at school? I know that you're taking hard classes this year."
"Yeah. Everything is fine."
"And cheerleading is good. I can't wait to see you perform on Friday night. I'm so excited." Gabriella could hear the excitement in her mother's tone.
She had to smile as the only reason why she tried out to be a cheerleader freshmen year was because her mother was one. "Yeah. I can't wait either." But as the years went on, Gabriella learned to love it. "Shar put together a good routine already. It should be fun."
"That's great honey."
"ELLA?!" Her dad's voice could be heard throughout the house from his den on the lower floor.
Gabriella reluctantly got up as she let the navy blue blanket fall from her body and her mom looked at her sympathetically.
"I think I'm gonna head up to bed after this."
Anna smiled, "Goodnight sweetie. Love you."
Gabriella pressed a quick kiss to her mother's forehead before leaving the room; not seeing the pained expression on her mother's face as she muted the TV. She was getting a head ache again, and the TV was not helping.
"Yeah dad?" Gabriella asked as she entered the den.
Carlos was at the computer with his reading glasses on as usually he wore contacts. He looked up with a bright smile on his face. "You can come in honey."
Gabriella quietly shut the door behind herself as she took a seat in the cushiony chair they had on the other side of the desk; almost like a business office. "What's up?"
"I was just wondering how it went this afternoon with Troy." Carlos sounded hopeful as she let out a slow sigh.
"It's gonna take some work, but I wouldn't worry. He seems smart." She had a genuine tone to her voice as she spoke of Troy.
"That's good. That's good." Carlos murmured to himself as he clasped his hands together.
"Is that all?"
"Yes it is. Thank you honey."
Gabriella shared a smile with her father as she stood up. But when she was about to leave Carlos added as an afterthought. "Are you and Jason okay?"
Gabriella looked at him weirdly. "Yeah. As far as I know, we are."
"Good. Then you should probably call him back. That poor boy's called here five times already. He's probably going through a melt down."
Gabriella shared a chuckle with her dad. She stiffened a yawn as she nodded her head, "I'll get right on that, but knowing him he probably found something else to do."
"He's always working himself into sticky situations." Carlos agreed.
"And that's game!" Andrew Cross exclaimed triumphantly to his panting son. He watched as the orange ball glided through the net perfectly, and smiled at Jason who was hunched over. "You better start training harder son if you want to win."
Jason looked up at his dad as he was truly regretting not calling Zeke and taking him up on his offer of going over to his house for some video games. Instead he expected to hang out with Gabriella, but she wasn't answering her phone, so he got cornered by his dad for a game of one on one in the park.
They had jogged over to the park which was only three blocks away from their house, and then agreed on a game up to eleven points, but as they were tied at ten-ten, Andrew sensed Jason was going to win it as he had the ball, so he decided to challenge him again and instead of going until eleven, they went until fifteen.
"Work on your free throws. Do thirty in a row, and if you miss one, then start over." Andrew instructed, and the only thing that was keeping Jason from walking off that court, was the fact that there was at least some genuine happiness in his father's voice. "And make sure that you bend your knees."
Jason nodded as he was passed the ball. He got into stance, and within seconds, the ball flung through the air perfectly and went through with nothing but net.
"Great! That's great." Andrew complimented.
Jason smiled as doing free throws was one of the very few things that made his father happy. And in the long run, it was worth it.
Author's Note--I have no idea how to express how happy and surprised I am. I am just so happy and thankful that people are reviewing. I honestly didn't expect for people to accept and like my story this much. This story at first was a story I was going to write to just escape into the land of Troyella, but as I write it more often, I find myself becoming even more engrossed into it. I'm still only going to be writing this on the weekends, but I'm still so surprised that this is doing better than what I expected, and I want to thank you guys for that.
