Gabriella

Name: Gabriella Montez Nicknames: Gabi Age: 22 Height: 5′2″ Sexuality: Bisexual

Troy wasn’t going to think into it much about the Sharpay and Gabriella misunderstanding, already brushing it off as if it was nothing and ready to move on. However, he didn’t realize that Gabi was bothered by the mix up until she continued to bring it up. He didn’t mind, of course — one thing he always loved about Gabi was how she would always stay true to herself, no matter what. Hearing her explain her perspective of the interaction, he nodded his head, eyebrows narrowed.

“Huh..” Troy trailed off, momentarily putting himself in Sharpay’s shoes and wondering why she would have acted oblivious. If Gabi wasn’t so hung up on it, Troy honestly would have laughed about it. “Knowing Sharpay, she probably just thought acting oblivious would make things less weird or something. Not that I’m saying she was right for doing that, but..” he shrugged, as well. He didn’t want something so minuscule to make things awkward, but at the same time, he wondered if Sharpay acted oblivious because of how they were growing closer to each other. They hadn’t made anything official, only going on their date to the ball and potentially another one soon, but by now both of them were obviously aware of their growing feelings for each other. He decided not to bring it up to Gabriella just yet, though. There was really nothing to tell her yet, anyway.

“Uh, sure, I’ll take a glass,” Troy agreed with a nod, glad for the subject change. Maybe some wine would help him loosen up some. As she was gone for a moment, Troy quietly looked around at her living room area, enjoying the warmth of her apartment despite the tiny bit of awkwardness lingering in the air. Troy smiled at Gabriella and quirked a brow as she came back into the living room with the wine and glasses. “I didn’t know you had an apartment-warming. How was that?”

     The excuse that Sharpay had probably wanted to avoid making things awkward by pretending she didn’t know about the breakup fell flat—it seemed obvious that doing that would only make things weird when they didn’t have to be, since the blonde had been the one to bring Troy into the conversation in the first place. But Gabriella shrugged it off, not wanting to argue about something so minor as a weird one-off interaction between her and the girl who had treated her strangely since they’d first met years ago. It simply didn’t matter enough, especially if Troy and Sharpay were close now. That obviously took precedence to the uncomfortable tension between Gab and Sharpay.

     When she re-entered the room with wine and glasses in hand and Troy asked about her aforementioned apartment-warming, she clarified with a laugh, “Oh, it wasn’t a big thing. It was just my neighbors coming over to welcome me to the complex with a basket of muffins and this.” She raised the bottle in her left hand to show it off before setting the glasses on the coffee table and opening the seal. Gabi poured two modest glasses before setting the bottle on a coaster and grabbing her glass, finally settling back onto the couch beside Troy.

As her friend joined her outside, Dinah couldn’t help but feel immense relief. “I’m sorry. It’s cold.” She could feel her own nose starting to get sniffly, but that might be the crying trying to start. Dinah hadn’t written much of this out quite yet, so she didn’t really know where to start. Starting was the most difficult. It also felt odd to write about. It wasn’t her story to tell. But how else could she process what had happened?

Dinah tried not to see it all again. Instead, she fished out a cig and a lighter and was puffing in the cold. Trying to get it out of the way so she could get Gabi warm again. She deserved to be warm. Every swallow felt thick. “Um. I might take you up on that, yeah.” Dinah hadn’t wanted to cry, not so much at least. Except she’d been really scared and really worried about one friend and now she couldn’t help but feel the need to love all her others even more, too. That was only right, right? A tear slipped loose and she wiped it away with a chuckle. “I’m sorry. I’ll finish this soon, I know it’s gross. I’m just stressed.” Excuses for the cigarette in her hand and more in her bag but what else did Dinah know as coping mechanisms, besides more vices?

She just wanted to lean into Gabriella’s arms. Cry a little. But first, this cigarette. She’d put it out and be done with them for a while. “Is it okay? If I- Not that I even know what to say…” Dinah didn’t want to just unload everything all at once or anything. “Mainly I want to say how much I care about you. Which is a lot.” 

~

     While a part of Gabriella wished she had thought to grab a coat and pair of gloves before joining her friend on the stoop, she was too concerned with Dinah’s emotional well-being to worry about her own little problem of being temporarily cold. They would warm up inside, but Dinah's heart would still be aching—it was more important to console her right now than try to chastise her about her smoking. That was a whole ‘I care about you and want to make sure you’re caring for your health’ conversation for another day.

     “Of course it’s okay,” she answered softly to Dinah’s question, hoping she knew that she was safe here. “You can say as much or as little as you want. No pressure.” Whether she understood exactly what the other woman was going through now or not, she could sympathize with her pain and would hold her hand through it as long as she let her. The confession that her friend cared a lot about her just about broke Gabi’s collected facade she was wearing to give Dinah a stable shoulder to cry on. Eyes wide and brows drawn together, she replied, “I care about you, too, so much.”

     She didn’t have to know the details to understand how scared Dinah had been of losing one of her friends. It was the same grief Gabriella had been through as a child when her father died—the fear that came with recognizing mortality, the impulse to hold your other loved ones tighter before they slipped away. “I know it doesn’t help to hear this right now, but...it will get better.”

It was weird, to be catching up with Gabriella but feeling like there wasn’t much to catch up on at all. Troy really hadn’t had much going on, and nothing had really changed after their break up, besides how he viewed the rest of the world around him now. Before, Troy used to feel like he could have it all, because he did have it all. Not only did he manage to juggle the two things that made him happy, basketball and performing, but he also had Gabriella by his side to close up the only gap that was missing in his life.

He had only lost one of the three things that completed his happiness, and yet it had felt like he completely lost everything. The other two things that brought him joy didn’t feel as fulfilling as they once did, and seeking someone else to fill that void only made him more sad. It was only recently that he finally was ready to completely move on, but he had conveniently decided that as Gabriella decided to come back to Walt Grove as well. It was as if the universe were giving them a second chance, but that didn’t mean they had to take it,

He smiled at her confession, shrugging his shoulders. “I mean there’s nothing wrong with that, as long as you’re happy with it.” Although he said that, he couldn’t deny that he thought it was a little sad that she didn’t get out much. He’d been doing the opposite, getting out as much as he could between classes to at least somewhat enjoy his early twenties. It almost made him wonder if they would have ever worked out, distance or not — already, their lifestyles were so different. However, he wasn’t sure why he kept comparing things about them, as if it mattered. Troy’s head was spinning as he was sitting beside Gabi, but he was still doing a decent job at coming off calm and casual.

He nodded his head at her question, eyebrows narrowing and a smile forming. “Huh?” He asked, a chuckle escaping his lips. “No, I see her all the time. I … Don’t see how she wouldn’t know, I hung out with her a lot when it happened..” He trailed off, assuming that Gabriella just misread the situation. “You must of just heard her wrong or something. Uh.. Sharpay and I are actually pretty close now.”

     Hearing that Troy and Sharpay were actually close, that they had been ever since the breakup, put things immediately into perspective. Gabriella was ready to brush the incident off as just another case of Sharpay being Sharpay, but Troy telling her she must have ‘heard wrong’ didn’t sit right. It was always his way to give people the benefit of the doubt—even after they’d proven time and again that they only had their own interests at heart. It was probably why Sharpay Evans was still in his life after years of her being outright rude to many of their friends.

     That was just a part of his kind nature—but him implying that Gabi was the one who must have misunderstood, rather than it being another one of Sharpay’s weird little power games that she had played from the moment Gabriella first moved to town...and which she’d hoped was just a high school phase until now—when it was proven Sharpay clearly wasn’t over the rivalry that she’d decided existed between the two. While the last thing she wanted to do was feed into it, she wasn’t going to let Troy disrespect her under her own roof by casting doubt on her lived experiences. He could take Sharpay’s side in the end if he wanted, but Gabriella wasn’t a meek mouse who was going to sit by without defending herself.

     “Unless gasping is how you react to news you were already completely aware of,” Gabi said, shaking her head, “She acted like she had no idea. I'm pretty sure her exact words were ‘You’re kidding!’ and ‘No way.’” She shrugged. The last thing they needed was to make things even more awkward than they already were, so that was all she was going to say. She’d told him what happened, not what to think; that part was entirely up to him.

@dinahxnash

     “How about this? Or like this?” Gabriella tried one pose after another, fluttering her lashes and acting silly while she sat to have her portrait done. Dinah was an artistic soul if there ever was one, and Gabi was happy to foster that passion by allowing herself to be sketched, but she couldn’t help bringing a little humor into the situation while she was at it. It felt unusual to be the subject of a painting; wondering exactly how the artist would interpret her, she needed to ease the tension somehow. “Okay, okay. I’ll sit still!”

@sharpayyevans

     “What can I say about Sharpay? She’s obviously talented, but it’s like...she can’t let anyone shine brighter than her, even her own brother. Back in high school, she always acted like he was her sidekick or something, and I was the villain who stole her spotlight and her crush. But it wasn’t really like that—we’re not characters in a movie, we’re just people. And it’s so confusing, too, because sometimes she acts so nice and I think there’s really a good heart inside of her that she just doesn’t know how to show all the time...but then she’ll go behind your back and do something shady to get the upper hand, and it’s like...she sees life as this competition, or game that I don’t even wanna be playing. I wish we could just be friends, not frenemies.”

@wildcatroy

Embarrassingly, part of Troy hoped that perhaps Gabriella wasn’t home, that maybe she had forgotten or something came up last second. In that case, he could go home and pretend she’d never invited him over to begin with, and he could continue to keep the girl off his mind.

It only took a moment for her to open the door and greet him though, and the familiar smile she always gave him only made him smile in return. It had been exactly what he was afraid of, how his heart fluttered a little bit when he was around her, and any worries he had completed faded away. Even through all the time, space and heartbreak, she still had the same effect on him.

“Hey,” Troy replied, returning the hug and following her inside. “Thanks for inviting me over,” he said as he took off his shoes and coat. The warmth of her living room was soothing and helped his nerves a little bit, sitting down on the couch and ready to catch up with Gabriella.

“I’ve been good,” Troy answered with a nod, pausing to think of what to say. “Keeping myself busy, working at the country club between classes and still focusing on basketball and performing.” As he said this, he realized how it sounded like his life had hardly changed, but he surely didn’t feel like the same person he was before he and Gabi broke up. “What about you? How has it been, being back in town?”

     “That’s good,” she replied as Troy explained that he’d been doing well, wondering whether they’d have that much to catch up on after all. It didn’t sound like he was up to anything out of the ordinary, and she could talk about her law degree if that wouldn’t bore him to tears—but there wasn’t much in the way of her personal life to discuss, since she spent so much time studying or working at her internship. Making time just to sit and chat with Troy tonight had been a deliberate shifting of priorities on her schedule, but it had been something she felt was important. The air between them was still somewhat awkward, and she didn’t want it to stay that way.

     Since she’d been in town, she hadn’t had much opportunity to reunite with old friends, and seeing Sharpay at the coffee house the other day had really gotten Gabriella thinking about everything. There was a disconnect between her past and her present life in Walt Grove, but if her future was here, too, then she needed to do a better job at bridging that gap. When Troy asked his question, she uttered a small sigh, but accompanied it with a smile nonetheless. He was somebody she could be honest with—in fact, someone she had to be honest with. From the very start, she was compelled to trust him, and even though there had been some stumbles along the way back when they were together, they always came out all right on the other end.