exclamation point!

troy has been playing men's doubles with chad for ages, but chad has to retire due to an injury, and troy plans on retiring from doubles too, until he sees up and coming gabriella play and it's not a want, but a need to play with her. they immediately click after meeting and decide to give their partnership a shot.

meanwhile, sharpay and ryan have been dominating mixed doubles for years, but sharpay is restless, and she needs more. she's been trying to get troy bolton to play with her after finding out he's not partnered with chad anymore (he's at the top of the atp and she's at the top of the wta, it just makes sense), but he keeps refusing because, well, he doesn't like her very much. then he suddenly enters the mixed doubles with a new partner and sharpay is furious, because why would he turn her down for a nobody? what does gabriella montez have what she doesn't? she can't be that good.

In, out. In, out. In, out.

Anthony rubs his temple, ignoring the pounding of his heart in his chest and he tries to regulate his breathing. It’s too much, far too much. Not just the fact that he travelled back in time and is now walking around amongst younger versions of his parents and uncles and aunts, but also this fiasco of an Evans family dinner that he and Sabrina just witnessed. A fiasco that involved his own father.

He had snuck into the dining room with Sabrina in an effort to spy on her family, sitting with her in a far corner as not to rouse suspicion. He would be remiss to deny that it had felt like a date, his heart stuttering every time she looked at him with those maddeningly beautiful piercing blue eyes of hers, but the magic had quickly been broken once Troy showed up.

They had only picked up on bits and pieces of the conversation at the table, as they were sitting too far away and Aunt Kelsi’s music was too loud, but what they heard was not good. Not good at all.

He knows that whatever happened in the summer of 2007 isn’t good, that much is obvious because of how much his parents don’t talk about that stretch of their early burgeoning relationship, but he can’t deny that it hurts to see his father being pushed into a corner by the Evans family and roped into whatever evil plan Sharpay Evans has concocted.

He might have feelings for Sabrina Evans-Leverett that aren’t purely platonic, but he sure doesn’t like her mother, if not just for the sad look on Sabrina’s face whenever the topic of her strained relationship with Sharpay comes up in conversation. And seeing her manipulate his father was far too much for him to bear.

Once the excruciatingly long dinner came to an end, he had all but fled from the dining room, needing some air outside, while Sabrina’s curiosity got the better of her and she had stealthily followed after her mother, uncle and grandparents.

Which leaves him here, in the far too humid Albuquerque summer air, all by himself and hyperventilating.

When Troy comes to, his head is pounding. Groaning as the memory rushes back in of what happened, he rues the day he met Chad Danforth and curses the fact that he let Chad rope him into doing a cartwheel on the slippery tiles at the edge of a swimming pool.

Troy is not clumsy by any means, being an athlete and all that, but that does not mean he can defy gravity when slipping. The last thing he remembers is losing his balance and falling headfirst on the tiles before losing consciousness at the impact.

Now, he’s lying on his back and he vaguely registers a soft, unfamiliar touch on his neck. Slowly cracking open one eye, he winces at the bright sun up above and closes it again.

Above him, he hears a faint, feminine chuckle, and the touch becomes stronger, two fingers pressing against his pulse point.

“I think he’s okay,” he hears a female voice say, and in the distance, he hears Chad breath out a sigh of relief. “Can you go grab an ice pack for me? Looks like he might get a nasty bruise on his forehead.”

He hears footsteps disappear and then it’s quiet. After a minute, he tries to open his eyes once more, now with more success, and he immediately feels his face flush as he registers the face hanging over him.

Long, raven-coloured curls are framing her face and her eyebrows are furrowed with mild concern as she watches him with large, brown eyes. Her face is heart-shaped and her lips are supple and pink.

He’s seen the pretty lifeguard around in the past couple of days, and he’d be lying if he hadn’t stared at her bright smile in the sunlight and ogled her long, tan legs and curves, perfectly on display in her red bathing suit, from a distance. She’s even more stunning up close, a notion that makes him feel a little dizzy. Or maybe he feels dizzy because of the fall. Yeah, definitely the fall.

“I’m such a fool,” he groans, and his heart flutters as she giggles, the sound angelic to his ears.

“Can’t argue with you on that,” she teases him. “But you’ll be fine.”

“Other than that nasty bruise?” he fires back, quirking an eyebrow and hissing at the sharp pain that shoots through him at the movement.

Her lips pulling into a sympathetic grimace, she nods. “Other than that nasty bruise. Are you okay to sit up?”

He considers it for a moment, registering that his back is starting to ache from the hard underground, before he sighs and nods. Her hands grab his, and he ignores the chill that runs down his spine at the contact as she carefully pulls him upright, Troy grunting in the process.

When he’s comfortably seated, his legs pulled up, he releases his hands from hers and lets his left one fly up to rub at his forehead.

“Sorry,” he says sheepishly and she smiles at him, her brown eyes glimmering with amusement, as she shrugs.

“It’s okay. At least you seem to respond well to my help. The other day, I had to help this girl who fell into the pool and she couldn’t stop screaming and cursing at me when I tried to bring her to safety.”

Troy winces and nods. He’d been there. The girl in question, blonde and clad in a tiny pink bikini, had been livid at the lifeguard for some reason. Later, inside the hotel restaurant, the very same girl had been leering at him and throwing him flirty smirks from across the room, but he had chosen to ignore her advances. Too much trouble, he’d reckoned.

“Well, I do appreciate your help,” he tells the lifeguard, before offering her the most charming grin he can muster in his current state.

He’s not sure, still partially blinded by the sunlight, but he swears her cheeks are suddenly tinted pink, and suddenly, his pain is all but forgotten and he feels like he can lift a car. He wants to make her blush again and again and again.

Still grinning, he extends his hand to her. “Troy.”

She looks at his hand for a split second, before smiling back at him and shaking it. Again, a spark rushes through him, and god, she’s beautiful and he thinks he just fell in love.

“Gabriella.”

“Nice to meet you,” he says sincerely, before letting go of her hand.

troy is in his late twenties when he and gabriella have the karaoke moment, and he's on the verge of a burn out. he went to u of a and did everything right, but his life is meaningless. he has a high-paying corporate job (he blew out his knee in college, so his nba career never took off), but it's so boring. he has a nice apartment, but it's void of life. he has a perfect girlfriend (some girl he met in college, sweet but completely uninteresting), but he doesn't love her, only stays with her out of obligation.

he ends up spending new year's eve partying with chad at a ski lodge, but he loses chad in the crowd and suddenly the spotlight's on him, and on quite possibly the most beautiful woman he's ever seen in his life. the rest would be history, except it isn't. he doesn't get her number, and he goes back to his boring life, his night with gabriella nothing but the ghost of a memory.

a few months later, on a random tuesday morning, he runs into her at the reception at the office. it turns out that gabriella is a new hire for the legal department of his company, having just moved to albuquerque.

he offers to take her to his favourite place in his favourite park during lunch, because obviously, he's a nice person who likes to show new people around. it's not because his heart stutters when she smiles at him shyly.

it becomes a regular occurence for them to hang out during lunch and troy finally has something to look forward to, a beacon of light in the darkness. he gets to really know her. he learns what makes her tick, her deepest fears and insecurities, her dreams and desires, the things that make her so happy she shines brighter than the sun. he falls hard and fast.

in an effort to get herself out there - troy is her only friend here and she's kind of lonely -, gabriella decides to sign up for a choir. when she tells troy about it and he sees how nervous she is, he offers to go with her.

their first rehearsal, when he gets up there to perform, it's like the world has tilted on its axis. suddenly, his life has meaning again. this is what he was meant to be doing all along.