72Troy Bolton sat on the side lines watching his team, the Lakers, finish up their practice for the night. Sharpay's plane didn't get in until tomorrow morning, so it didn't matter what time Troy got home tonight. He'd probably go out for a late dinner at Applebee's with Chad Danforth, his co-captain, or go home and crash on the couch with ESPN. Either way, he didn't have to worry about his girlfriend till later tomorrow morning and that was just fine with him. He loved his girlfriend, but there were times when he just wanted to be alone and not worry about a thing in the world. Tonight was one of those nights. But as Chad crashed down on the seat next to him, he had a feeling worry-free wasn't going to be a part of the equation. Turning his head toward his best friend and partner, he lifted his eyebrows to show him he was paying attention.
"Ready for Saturday night, buddy?"
Troy was sure he had missed something, because he couldn't for the life of him remember what he was supposed to be ready for tomorrow night. He hoped it wasn't important. From the blank look on his face, Chad continued.
"Class reunion. Albuquerque? It's been ten years, man. Doesn't surprise me you've forgotten. I think you've been trying to avoid it like the plague."
Troy nodded, leaning back in his chair more, closing his eyes. "I have been trying to avoid it!"
Another voice came up from the other side of him, an object hitting him from the side as he looked down to see what it was. "What have you been trying to avoid, coach?"
Troy looked up the looming figure of "Jules" De Aquila standing between Troy and the court.
"Our high school reunion," Chad answered for the silent head coach. Troy turned his gaze back to his best friend and glared. Chad only chuckled.
"Why wouldn't you want to go?"
Again, Chad took the opportunity to answer for the now annoyed Coach Bolton. "Because he doesn't want to get in the middle of the Bitch Fight to end all Bitch Fights. Latina meets Blondie."
Jules turned his head slightly, picking up his water bottle. "I'm not following."
Troy stood up between them, holding up his clipboard and his other hand as if to split the two of them. "Can we just leave it at that, please?" He was frustrated, and he really didn't like talking about his personal life, especially his past life, with his team. It was bad enough that Chad was bringing her up but why did he have to bring her up in front of one of the team members?
"He doesn't want to get stuck in the middle of Armageddon with his girlfriend now and his high school girlfriend. Especially considering they were best friends back then."
Troy dropped his head as Jules head snapped forward toward his coach. "Damn, man!" He started speaking a million miles a second in Cuban or Mexican or Puerto Rican, something neither Troy nor Chad understood.
"Holy fucking Spanish, Batman!" Chad said, laughing at Jules, shaking his head. "I can understand why you don't want to go, Coach! I wouldn't want to go. But hey. Tell you what," he said, patting his coach's back, "Danforth here, he and I, we got your back." He nodded, waving his finger back and forth between the himself and Chad.
Both Troy and Chad looked back and forth between the towering Latino. "How are you going to have my back, Jules? You won't even be there. We didn't even go to school together."
Jules pulled his arms back, clasping his hands together. "Albuquerque? East High Class reunion? I will be there," he told them, nodding his head slowly. "We haven't told anyone yet. Planning on telling people tonight. But I will be coming with my fiancée."
Both Troy and Chad nodded slowly before starting to shake their heads together. "Who's your fiancée?"
Jules' face lit up when Chad asked this. "Ella Leigh." Troy's face lost all color and Chad turned quickly to look at him. "We haven't set a date yet or anything, but..."
Troy looked around. He didn't know what he needed... to sit down... to get some air... He just needed something.
"Coach?"
Troy didn't even hear him. He walked past him, heading toward his office. He only needed to be alone. The love of his life was marrying another...
Troy just wanted to be alone. He knew Chad would like to drag him out to Applebee's tonight, but all he wanted to do was go home and drown himself in the strongest liquor he could get his hands on. He hated thinking about Ella Leigh, and he hardly ever did. It had been years since he had thought about her. He didn't like thinking about her. It was too hard for him to think about her, even if her face was plastered all over the TV, her face was all over Hollywood, but she wasn't Ella Leigh to him. She never had been, even before all the fame and the distance between the two of them.
He had to figure out a way to get out of going to the reunion. He couldn't face her. Not after all this time. Not when he knew he still had feelings for her. He knew it wasn't right, considering he was dating Sharpay Evans, a name just as big as Ella Leigh in Hollywood, but since he'd known her since high school, he wasn't about to fall into the celebrity circles following her. He was her boyfriend and he had he own career. Troy wasn't famous like her, but that didn't make her any less important in his eyes. She just … She wasn't … She wasn't Gabriella either.
"Did I say something wrong?" Jules asked, looking down at Coach Danforth.
Chad shook his dreadlocked head as they watched Troy head down toward the locker room. "Nah. Not really. Not anymore so than the reunion being this weekend." He turned to look back up at Julian De Aquila as he stood. "The Latina of the bitch fight I was talking about, none other than your fiancée, bigger than Angelina Jolie and Jennifer Aniston combined." Chad shook his head. "But she wasn't always that big. Back in high school, she was just plain old Gabriella, Gabby, Bri, or my personal favorite Pepper."
He laughed, remembering coining it himself, but also remembering no one else having caught on to it. It was a damned shame too. He had really liked it. He held back on telling Jules Troy's nickname for her though. That was something that had been for the two of them alone. Chad and the rest of their class had always thought that the two of them were meant to be together, but things had happened, things that... no one had seen coming, even if they had been spiraling down a road that both of them could have prevented. They weren't together now, and Troy was with Sharpay now and apparently Gabriella was apparently marrying Julian De Aquila. But Troy had been with Sharpay for a long time... Chad was sure he wasn't over Gabriella, though. He was sure he had never gotten over her.
"And what did Coach Bolton call her?" Jules asked as he and Chad started heading toward the locker room as the rest of the team started pulling in.
Chad shrugged his shoulders. "Same things as the rest of everybody."
It was a lie, but he didn't see the harm in telling him that. He didn't need to know how close they were, or that Troy still had feelings for Gabriella. Never mind it was Jules' fiancée, everyone still believed they should be together, whether Gabriella did or not, whether Troy would allow himself to or not the rest of us did, all of their friends, well maybe not Sharpay, but the rest of their friends did, and that was enough for him, and if it took all of tomorrow evening to get them back together, he'd do it. Single-handed if he had to, but they would be back together by the end of the night.
Chad walked into Troy's office, seeing him staring at a picture of him and Sharpay and tried to think of anything, anything to distract him. What Chad didn't know was, Troy wasn't thinking about the blonde in the picture, he was thinking about the girl who used to be Sharpay's best friend.
"Applebee's?" Chad asked, clapping his hands together, if for no other reason than to add extra distraction to Troy's pensive contemplation.
Troy sighed, placing the picture frame down on the desk, turning to Chad. "Not tonight, man. I just want to go home and... forget. Like I've been doing for ten years, like I want to continue to do. And I'm not going to the reunion Satruday. Can you just accept that and let it go?"
Chad shook his head, walking around the desk and leaning against it beside his best friend and partner. "No. I can't and I won't. I am not going to let you crawl under a rock just because you are afraid of seeing your old high school girlfriend."
Troy pushed himself away from his desk, standing up, his chair rolling back and hitting the wall loudly. "Jesus Christ, Chad!" He muttered under his breath, turning away from him and pacing the floor toward the award stand.
"You can go home and wallow in you misery tonight because Sharpay's not home to keep you dry and sober tonight. Probably the only reason you're not a drunken mess at all." It was harsh and it was cruel, but deep down, the two of them knew it was probably the the truth. Troy had never told him the truth about why he and Gabriella had broken up and Chad had never pushed on the subject, but the truth didn't change that fact. He would be a drunk, maybe have died from alcohol poisoning by now if it hadn't been for Sharpay in his life. But that didn't mean he loved her... not like he loved Gabriella.
Chad came up to his friend's side, staring him down. Troy knew his friend wasn't going away and turned to look at his best friend, staring him down as well. "You're going to the reunion this weekend. You're going to suck it up, and you're going to be a man about it, and you're going to go!"
Troy narrowed his eyes on his best friend, breathing deeply. There wasn't anything more he wanted than to stay drunk clear through the weekend, but hangover or not, he had to pick Sharpay up in the morning, and he couldn't do that drunk. He knew he was going to get a lecture about drinking, and he knew Chad would have his back and say he was out drinking with him last night, even if it wasn't the truth, even with this upset... They were still best friends and there wasn't anything they wouldn't do for each other. That's why Chad was going to do what he was going to do for him.
"So, you go home. You get your ass smashed. And tomorrow night, Taylor and I will pick you and Sharpay up, and we will all go to the airport."
Right now, Troy hated his best friend, but he knew that Sharpay wouldn't let him get out of going tomorrow either, and there wouldn't be a legitimate excuse for getting out of it. If Chad was going, he couldn't use the team, and that would be the only excuse he could use for not going, especially if she saw De Aquila there. He had to go and he knew it.
Troy nodded and sighed heavily. "I hate you, you know that."
Chad nodded. "Of course you do. That's why I'm your best friend."
Troy scoffed, shaking his head, looking down at the floor. "Can you really believe she's marrying that giant Latino?"
Chad only remained silent. He knew if he had anything to do with it, and he would, she wouldn't be marrying no Latino. She'd be marrying the man standing next to him, and he'd be standing right there beside him, just like he had been standing right there beside him the day Chad had married Taylor. They had all been together since high school. It was only right that Troy and Gabriella make their way back to each other. It's not that he didn't feel bad that he was going to be tearing Sharpay's world apart, but she and Sharpay didn't belong together. Troy belonged with Gabriella, and when they all realized that, they all would be a whole lot better for it.
"Come on, bud. Want me to give you a ride home?"
Troy lifted his head, giving it a slight shake. "No, that's alright," he said, raking his fingers through his brown hair, pulling at it slightly. "I've got my truck."
Chad nodded. "Call me if you need anything."
Troy sighed heavily, dropping his hands to his side. "Thanks, Supes." He hated that he was being treated like... like he was being babysat, but he was just going to let it go. He left Chad standing in the room, not even bothering with talking to the teammates, especially not the one who was bringing on the alcohol binge to his night, as he headed out the back way through the locker room toward the parking lot. He wanted to get as far away from him, and as far away from Chad and anything that reminded him of her. There would be things at the place he shared with Sharpay that reminded him of her, but he would do his best to stay away from every picture of him and Sharpay. He wouldn't turn on the TV. He wouldn't turn on the computer. Nothing would remind him of her. He wouldn't be reminded of her no matter what he did.
It took what remained of a bottle of vodka and half of a bottle Smirnoff Raspberry Twist, Sharpay's favorite. It wasn't particularly Troy's favorite, but unless he wanted to go down to the state liquor store or the corner grocer, which didn't have much more than beer and nasty wine, he'd drink the twist. By the time half of the Smirnoff bottle was gone, he didn't care that flavor wasn't his favorite. He wasn't even thinking about what he was drinking anymore. He wasn't even thinking about Sharpay or Chad or even the towering Latino on his team either. The only thing occupying his thoughts was the one person he swore he didn't want to think about anymore. She was the only person he had swore several times over the years that he didn't want to think about anymore. But every time he swore he didn't want to think about her, she always came creeping back into his mind.
It always happened. She never stayed gone long either. It usually came about the time that Sharpay started talking the M word. So it only stayed true to reason that she would pop back in when De Aquila would mention that he was … Did he seriously say he was marrying her? That she was his fiancée? Troy's heart tightened in his chest. She had always sworn to him that there was no one in this world for her than him. He had made the same promise. And he had kept it. That's why he'd never been able to make the commitment to Sharpay. He could never marry Sharpay because it was the truth. He was still in love with Lily, and he always would be. She was everyone else's Ella, but to him, she would always be his Lily. Despite what had driven them apart, despite their loss, she was his Lily and he still loved her. He would always love her, and he knew... or at least he had to believe she still loved him.
She ran into his arms, wrapping her own around his neck, as he spun her around, kissing him as they held each other. She pulled back, looking into each others eyes. "I missed you," she whispered, her fingers playing in the ends of his hair at the back of his head while his tangled in her long locks at the base of her spine.
His heart leaped in his chest as he continued to hold her in his arms, her feet dangling slightly off the ground. "I missed you," he repeated her words, kissing her chin gently. It had only been a few classes they had been separated, but they never could keep their hands off each other, even while they were at school.
"Take me home," she whispered.
His parents were never home, and they could do whatever they wanted. And what they wanted was each other. They'd been together forever, it seemed. Two years old, she moved into the neighborhood and the rest was history. They had been best friends until they knew what a kiss was and then when those funny bumps popped out on her chest and Troy got a boner they went from being best friends to being... well, you know how the story goes. They just knew that they were meant to be together. Her parents never liked their relationship, and they did all they could to keep them from being together, but that didn't keep them from seeing each other.
Gabriella did everything she could to be with him. She didn't care what anyone said or did. That's part of what Troy loved about her. There were so many things he loved about her, and he had fallen in love with her long before that, but that made him love her even more. Thankfully for the two of them, his parents supported their relationship and they didn't have to fight against the two of them to be together. She had pretty much moved in with them, even knowing what the two of them were doing in his bedroom. They'd give them "the talk," but in the long run, whatever happened as a result of their actions was their responsibility, and his parents knew that. If they wanted to have sex, they had to know what would happen if they did. But the two of them only cared about the themselves, nothing else.
"I love you, Lily," he told her, holding her in his arms late one night, the window open as the rain came pouring down outside.
She was half asleep, but she mumbled it back anyway, "I love you, Troy."
She was barely able to keep her eyes open, but she didn't miss a moment telling him she loved him. He was the most important person in the world to her and she knew he would always be. She knew no one in this world would ever take his place. He kissed her bare shoulder and pulled her backside closer to him. Even though his parents were right down the hall, he knew they wouldn't walk right in without knocking. They knew what they did in here. Just like he wouldn't barge right into their bedroom without knocking. It was about respect, and it went both ways in this house.
"Marry me, Lily," he asked her, whispering softly against her ear.
She groaned softly. "Troyyyyy... Not nowwww."
He smiled, kissing the side of her head, laughing slightly. "No, not now. After graduation."
She pulled his arms more against her, shaking her head. "No," she groaned more, burying her face in his arm, pushing her face into it. "Don't ask me now. I'm sleeping."
He kissed her head again. "No you're not."
She pushed her back against his chest, letting out a huff of air. "No puedo creer que tu está haciendo esto ahora. ¿Seriamente? ¿Esta noche? ¡Todopoderoso del Jesucristo y de dios! ¿Qué tu espera?"
Troy winced slightly, pulling his head back. "Is that a no?" He knew she was speaking her family's language, something she spoke only when she got really frustrated, but he didn't understand any of it.
She reached over, flipping on the bedside lamp before turning to him. "Troy, we're still in high school. If you're worried I'm going to find someone else, you can stop worrying. I swear to you, I'm never going to to find anyone else." She sat up, looking down at him. She was wide awake now, obviously confused that he would even … "Where did this come from, Troy?"
He sat up, helping her pull the sheet up around her naked body. "I want to be with you, forever, Lily. Not just while we're here in high school. And I know you're not going to find someone else. I'm not going to either. I just," he tucked her hair behind her ear, caressing her bare shoulder, looking into her dark chocolate eyes, "I want you to be my wife. I want everything with you, baby. Forever."
Gabriella smiled softly at him, biting at her lip gently as she pulled her knees up against her body, tucking the sheet around her. "Forever?"
He nodded, rubbing her arm softly. "There will never be anyone else in my heart for me than you."
She turned back to the lamp, turning it off before laying back into his arms, smiling brightly. "Forever! ¡Por siempre, mi amor!"
He knew that was her way of saying yes. He didn't know when but they would be getting married and he couldn't be happier. Gabriella was happier than she ever thought she could be. Forever was a long time, but Troy had started out as her best friend, and she knew that's what he was, and on top of that, they were in love. They would live happily ever after, and that's what a happy marriage needed. She knew she had nothing to worry about as she fell fast asleep in her future husband's arms.