Work Text:
The student parking lot is nearly empty so it only takes her a second to spot Troy's car when she pushes open the battered exit door and steps out onto the pavement. Of course, it would have been easy to spot even if the parking lot was packed seeing as how the only people in town with cars even close in the price spectrum to Troy's are, like, his parents but... yeah. She squints against the brightness of the sun when she steps out from under the awning and starts across the parking lot.
Her dad always tells her the same thing when she complains about it. "There's only three days of sun a year in Oregon. You should appreciate them, kid." Yeah, right.
She digs around in her purse as she walks over to the car, finally pulling out a half-empty pack of gum from the crazy mess of pens and notes and makeup. She stops and pulls a stick free, unwraps it, and pops it into her mouth, trying not to groan in pleasure at the first squish of flavor meets her tongue. Eight whole hours is way too long to go without gum. It has to be some sort of crime, she thinks.
She pushes her glasses up her nose once the complete and total joy has passed and squints over at the car. She completely expects to see Troy twisted around in his seat and staring at her, making some totally jerky face like he always does. Like she's some kind of freakshow or something just because she likes gum. He's not looking at her, though. He hasn't even noticed her, it seems.
He's got the top down and the radio on -- a light, fuzzy sort of drone that's not annoying but not really not annoying either. He's staring straight ahead and, like, gnawing on his thumbnail. It looks really painful and she winces as she follows his gaze across the parking lot to the football field where the track team is waiting around for their practice to start.
And then she blinks. Hard.
She wouldn't really be so surprised -- he is such a total pervert -- if it wasn't for the fact that it's the boys' track team and there isn't a cheerleader in sight.
A couple of the guys are shirtless, doing weird stretching things that look more like they're trying to show off their bodies to each other than anything else. Bending their knees and grabbing their toes from behind as they talk, lifting their arms over their heads and rolling their shoulders as they laugh the laugh of the beautiful, unconcerned, preppy masses. One of them bends over to touch his toes, his tiny shorts pulling up and showing off every inch of the back of his perfectly-toned thighs -- the too-bright sunlight making his tanned skin shine -- and Troy shifts in his seat.
She drops her books into the backseat. Troy jerks in shock and twists around with this weird expression on his face, like totally freaked out. His eyes wide and his mouth hanging open a little. The sheen of spit from where he was chewing at his nail, shining on his bottom lip.
The second he realizes who she is, he blanches, grabbing up his books out of the passenger seat quickly and pulling them into his lap. And if she didn't know him better -- didn't know that he didn't have a warm ounce of blood in his entire body -- she'd swear he was blushing. He looks like he's waiting for her to say something but she can't really think of anything to say. Her head is sort of spinning (How long had he been sitting there watching them?) so she just opens the passenger door, pushes the seat up and climbs into the backseat without a word.
He swallows and licks his bottom lip as she settles into her seat. She wonders wildly if he's going to say something about the whole... shorts thing. But he doesn't. His face twists up into a sneer after a second, and he looks just as mean as always and she thinks that it's really weird that he can flip the jerk switch on like that. Like there's two or maybe more different Troys who hang out inside his head or something. "Where the hell is she? I've been waiting for half an hour already."
"Bathroom." She lies and pops her gum, staring right at him. She has no idea why she lies about it. Why she doesn't just tell him that Andy is busy talking to Brand Walsh who'd looked really nervous when he'd called her over. Like he was either going to ask her out or totally throw up all over her. She has no idea why she doesn't tell him. She just doesn't. She doesn't really want to say the words to anybody, much less Troy Perkins, Class Jerk.
Troy glares at her like it's her fault. Like she can control Andy. Like she's not just as pissed off about it. He opens his mouth like he's going to say something else, but stops himself and turns back around to fiddle with the radio instead. He stops on that Huey Lewis song that she hates, she rolls her eyes and shifts in her seat. The sun-warmed leather feeling much hotter than she's sure is even possible. It's Oregon, for god's sake.
"You shouldn't bite your nails, you know. It's bad for your cuticles."
"Just shut up," he snaps, and she thinks that she could have said anything and he'd have reacted the same way. "It's bad enough I have to drive you all over the place, I shouldn't have to listen to you talk, too."
There's a flair of something in her stomach -- hurt or something like that -- and it's totally weird because he usually doesn't bother her. She already totally knows he's an asshole so she mostly just brushes it off. But, for some reason, she just can't help feeling whatever it is. Like maybe she just thinks he should be nice to her for once because she didn't say anything about... the thing. Which she so easily could have done.
She pushes the feeling down and stares at the back of his perfectly-styled head for a minute. Huey Lewis ends and Toni Basil comes on. Troy makes a disgusted noise as he reaches over and flips it off. She watches him, bites down on her gum until it squishes out between the cracks of her teeth and she thinks that she really hates him sometimes. Really. He thinks he's so cool and so above everything because his parents have all that money but he's really just as much of a loser as everybody else. Maybe even more of a loser because at least, like... everybody else can admit it.
She leans forward at that thought and she turns the radio back on, twisting the dial until it's up loud enough to make the track boys turn around and look at them. Troy whips around to look at her, his nostrils flaring and his eyes narrowed.
She smacks her gum loudly a few times, right in his face just like she knows he hates. "Look, the only reason I ride with you is because Andy doesn't trust you not to make moves on her."
Troy glares at her for a minute, staring right into her eyes. He's about to snap something insanely rude or cuss her out, but then his eyes slide over to the track guys across the lot, who aren't even pretending not to watch them, and he doesn't.
He flounces back around and crosses his arms over his chest, grinding his teeth as he stares out in the opposite direction. Ignoring her and the music and track team practice, now in full swing with the arrival of their coach.
She looks at Troy again. At his perfect jawline and his perfect hair and his perfect everything, and she thinks about adding maybe I should just tell Andy that you're way too busy staring at half-naked guys to try anything with her? but she doesn't for some reason that she can't quite pin down.