Chapter Text
Troy had been planning this road trip for months. Surprisingly, his parents had agreed to it a lot more easily than he thought they would—a freshly eighteen-year-old kid going on a solo road trip for the entirety of spring break wasn’t the kind of thing that most parents would be okay with, but Troy’s parents seemed to trust him. His mom had been a little hesitant, and his dad had actually been the one to convince her, reminding her that their son was in fact a Genuine Adult™ and technically didn’t have a curfew on non-school nights. So, they’d allowed him to go.
His parents didn’t fully understand the motivation behind his road trip, though. Mostly because Troy hadn’t told them. It was a mature reason, honestly—really, his parents would have been even more in favor if they knew. Showing responsibility and all that jazz. But he had a feeling that they’d flip if they knew he had a handful of college tours planned around the southwestern United States, so he had left out that little detail.
They knew he’d already chosen his school. Or at least, they believed they knew. He’d been offered a full-ride athletic scholarship at the University of Albuquerque. Less than a twenty-minute drive from his home—very convenient, very practical, in his mom’s words. And of course, his dad was in favor of U of A; his dad never shut up about the stupid school.
At the heart of it, that was the real reason Troy still hadn’t accepted the scholarship. It seemed like every minute of his future had been planned out by his parents. Troy didn’t think they really meant to do it; it just sort of happened. His dad had graduated from U of A, it was decently close, and it would be fully paid for. From a purely logistics standpoint, it did make sense.
But this was his life. It wasn’t pure logistics. He needed to think about what was right for him.
He just hadn’t really known how to do that. That’s kind of the trouble when your whole life is planned out—it’s hard to take control when you never have before.
That’s how he ended up planning all these last-minute college visits with just a few weeks left before his deadline to accept. He’d applied to a handful of other colleges earlier in the year, unbeknownst to his parents. (It was really just his dad he didn’t want to tell. His mom would have understood—she always did—but Troy always felt like he was skirting the line of being a disappointment to his father, and he hadn’t wanted to tell his mom and make her keep his secrets.)
All those college applications, though, and he still didn’t know what to do, so he’d planned this elaborate road trip when he knew his friends had their own plans. Chad was going out of state with his family, so he was good there. Zeke and Jason had new girlfriends, so they’d be spending every waking moment of spring break with them. Kelsi had something or other going on with Ryan Evans—she’d called it an out-of-state date to go site-seeing in New York, which sounded like the most ridiculous lie Troy had ever heard. (But then again, who was he to judge?) Gabriella had plans with her boyfriend, so that checked her off the list.
He’d planned the trip last minute, asking his parents’ permission less than two weeks in advance and calling the schools a week before, but it had all worked out.
He’d narrowed his list to four schools. They all offered the program he was interested in; they were all reasonably close to an airport (or a major highway straight to Albuquerque, in one case). They all seemed like decent enough schools, so his plan was to check them out and see which one he felt most comfortable with.
Yup.
It was just that easy…
…To make a decision that would decide the next four years of his life.
Yeah. Just that easy.
The night before he was slated to leave, Troy couldn’t sleep. The nerves were getting to him. As a general life rule, Troy tried to play everything cool, like nothing could bother him. Like he had everything under control one hundred percent of the time. Everyone—his parents, his friends, his teachers—they all expected him to be perfect, and so he gave them perfect.
He rarely felt perfect, though. He was about forty percent anxiety on a good day (and closer to eighty percent on a bad one).
After lying in bed for far too long, he finally gave up and stepped outside to get some air. He slipped his jacket on as he made his way out the door and down the back porch steps. The old treehouse was his thinking spot—it had been for a long time—so he started that direction to hopefully clear his mind.
Well, “clearing his mind” wasn’t really something Troy ever managed to figure out. His mind seemed to go a mile a minute, and any attempts to turn it off just seemed to make it worse. He did manage to get better at tuning it all out, though. He’d even managed to glean some amateur astronomy knowledge from staring up at the stars all night. It gave him something to focus on, at least, while he let his mental voice blather on in the background.
Halfway up the ladder to his treehouse, he noticed Gabriella’s bedroom light on. He didn’t want to spy on her by any means—they were just neighbors and borderline friends at best—but he couldn’t help but consider that it was past one in the morning. He didn’t know Gabriella all that well, but she always made it sound like she adhered to her sleep schedule religiously, even on weekends and breaks. And Troy was pretty sure her sleep schedule involved going to bed at some crazy early hour like nine o’clock. She’d told him as much one night while sitting on his back porch steps, waiting for her mom to get home from a business trip that was supposed to have ended three hours earlier.
(Troy had walked her the whole fifty feet home around nine-thirty, and she had complained that she shouldn’t have even bothered waiting up. Miss Montez had always been nice to him, and that moment with her daughter had always stuck with him. Like maybe even adults aren’t perfect, like they don’t even have their lives figured out yet.)
Troy shook off the distraction and climbed another rung. He glanced over to Gabriella’s house again and did a double take as he realized she was sitting there, huddled up on the floor of her balcony, wrapped in a cocoon of blankets. He cocked his head and squinted at her, trying to piece together what she could possibly be doing out at this hour.
After a moment of staring and realizing he could very well look like a stalker, he quietly called out, “Gabriella!” just loud enough for her to hear.
Her head poked further out of the blankets, and she turned to look his way, a confused look on her face. “Troy?”
Hanging half off the ladder, he waved to her widely, unsure how well she could see him in the darkness of the night. “Hey.”
“Hey,” she said faintly.
“What are you doing up?”
She shrugged. Troy could barely make it out with the pile of blankets enveloping her, but he could see the small movement in the glow from her bedroom light.
“Do you want some company?” he asked. They might not have been close, but Troy didn’t want to leave her alone if she needed someone. He wondered if maybe her mom was late back from a business trip, but then considered that Gabriella was probably used to that and could sleep right through it. Now that he thought about it, she probably just wanted to be alone. Why else would she be hiding outside her own house at one in the morning?
Gabriella’s voice was fainter than he imagined his own was right now, but he could still make out enough of what she said. “I don’t want to bother you.”
He rolled his eyes. “Gabriella, it’s one in the morning and I’m in my backyard. I can’t sleep—I have nothing better to do than to keep you company. If you want, at least.”
She didn’t say anything, but he saw the way she huddled back into herself. She was too far away for Troy to make out her face, but it didn’t take a genius to figure out that she was upset about something.
Without much thought, he dropped his hand back down a rung on the ladder and made his way back to the ground. Like he’d said to Gabriella, he didn’t have anything better to do than to keep her company. While they may not have been best friends, mostly due to their different social circles at school, he still cared enough about her to not leave her alone like this.
He hopped the fence between their houses and stood at the bottom of her balcony. She must have heard him making his way over—it was the dead of night, and his footsteps were loud compared to the silence around them. Still, he wanted to check that he wasn’t overstepping. “Hey,” he said quietly, “is it alright if I come up?”
He heard her make a loosely affirmative noise before she muttered, “Wait, how?”
He ignored her with a chuckle as he stepped over to the tree in her backyard. “I feel a little like Romeo and Juliet right now. Except, you know, the whole mutual suicide and everything.”
Above him, she gave the tiniest laugh. He braced himself on the tree and hoisted himself up, climbing onto the branches and over the railing. She looked at him, brows raised in mild amusement. It was here that he could make out tears on her cheeks, but he talked on like he didn’t notice. “I used to have a friend that lived here when I was a kid,” he said instead. “I used to sneak into his bedroom all the time with this tree.” He sat down opposite her, with his back against the railing, just a foot or two away. “Granted, the tree was smaller then, but so was I.”
Gabriella gave a halfhearted chuckle without looking up. “Thanks.”
The smile fell from Troy’s face. He didn’t know how to comfort a girl like this. Lighthearted jokes usually worked on Chad, but then again Chad usually wasn’t in tears when Troy had to cheer him up. He looked at her awkwardly a moment before saying anything. “So… Did you want… to, like… talk, or…?”
Gabriella shrugged.
“So… Why are you out here exactly?” he asked, trying again.
She parted her lips but didn’t say anything. It looked like she might, though, and that maybe she was merely gathering her thoughts, so Troy remained quiet too.
A fresh tear fell down Gabriella’s face, and instead of wiping it away, she just buried her face a little deeper into the blankets. Her mouth was muffled, but Troy heard her finally respond. “Alec broke up with me.”
“Oh.” Well. Troy didn’t know what to say to that.
Troy didn’t really know Alec all that well. They ran in different circles. He’d always seemed nice enough, though. That kind of made it more difficult to comfort Gabriella since Troy couldn’t just play it off like Alec was just a jerk and Gabriella was better off without him. (Is that what he should even do? It seemed like the thing to do, but he’d never really comforted someone after a breakup. Breakups just sort of happened in the background and earned a “that sucks” response, and then life moved on. Chad wasn’t the type to dwell.)
“Yeah,” Gabriella said. “He said he didn’t want to feel tied down when we go to college, so he figured it’d be better to end it sooner rather than later. Said he didn’t want to waste time—” She sniffled. “—investing all this energy into a relationship when it wouldn’t pan out,” she said bitterly.
“He said that?” Troy asked. Okay, so maybe Alec was a bigger jerk than he’d thought.
Gabriella nodded. “Here.” She shifted around a little under the blankets before reaching out, phone in hand. “You can read it yourself. It’s in the texts.”
Troy took her phone and stared at it, skimming over the messages. “He broke up with you over text?”
She nodded again.
“Ouch.”
Gabriella glared at him.
“I—Sorry.” Maybe not exactly the ideal, sensitive response he should have aimed for. “That’s just a total dick move.”
Gabriella barked out a laugh. “You never swear,” she said.
“Well, yeah, but, like… Total dick move. Seriously.”
She lifted her hand to wipe the dried tears from her face and laughed again. “Yeah, yeah, it is.” Then a frown formed again on her face. “I just don’t… We talked about it, you know?”
Troy nodded, even though he actually had no clue what they talked about. He handed her phone back to her, and she absentmindedly scrolled back through the texts.
“He’s going to Oregon State. It’s a nine-hour drive, but he said we could make it work. There’s a train that runs between Oregon and Stanford, and we had plans to visit at least once a week. I—I thought—” She started to cry again and wiped at the new tears.
Troy was not prepared to deal with this tonight, but at least it took his mind off his own problems. “Hey, hey.” He scooted closer to her so their feet were touching. He didn’t know if he should reach out to her or not. Would that be weird?
“I just don’t get why he did this now,” she continued. “It’s not like this is some new development. He always knew I was going to Stanford, and his whole family has gone to Oregon State. It’s not like it was a surprise or something.” She sniffled.
Yep, great. That brought him back to his own problems. More perfect people that know exactly what they want to do with their lives, and then there’s him. No clue what he’s doing. Wonderful.
“If he wanted to break up, I wish he’d have just done it earlier instead of leading me on. And right before spring break,” she said. “We had all these stupid plans, and now I’m going to be—” She sniffled again. “I just… I hate this.”
Troy nodded awkwardly, trying to figure out what to say. “Yeah, it sucks. I’m sorry.” That was one of his classic responses to Chad or Jason—while it wasn’t exactly fit for Gabriella, it pretty much encapsulated his best opinion on the matter.
“I’m sorry I’m ruining your spring break. You didn’t have to come over.” She ducked her head down against the blankets. “Aren’t you supposed to be on a road trip or something right now?” she asked.
“I leave tomorrow morning.”
“Shouldn’t you be sleeping, then?”
He shrugged. “Couldn’t sleep. And my neighbor looked like she needed some company.”
Gabriella chuckled emotionlessly. “That’s an understatement.”
“Sorry your spring break got ruined. That sucks. You deserve better than that,” Troy told her. He really meant it, too. Gabriella was always one of the kindest, most genuine people he’d ever known. He’d vented to her a handful of times when he couldn’t go to one of his other friends, and even though they weren’t particularly close, she always listened to him. She really did deserve better than getting dumped over a text message.
She shook her head. “Yeah.” They sat there together in silence for a beat before Gabriella changed the subject. “So tell me about your spring break plans. I know you’re going on this cool road trip, but I don’t know anything about it.”
Troy nodded and thought for a minute. His rehearsed line was that he wanted to get out and “see the world” before he started the college grind. But he didn’t know if he should use that line with Gabriella or not. That was the beauty of their friendship—he didn’t feel the pressure of being perfect from her. He’d told her countless things he didn’t feel comfortable talking about with anyone else, mostly because everyone else always had their own agenda with him, and at the end of the day, she just listened without telling him what to do or what to think.
“Can you keep a secret?” he asked.
She looked at him, intrigued. “Yeah,” she responded slowly.
He took a deep breath. “I’m going to check out some colleges upstate and out West.” He gave her a cautious glance, and she didn’t seem like she wanted to jump in and force advice on him. She was still brushing tears off her cheeks, though, so her attention may have been a little divided. Either way, he decided he could keep talking. “I haven’t told anyone this, but I got accepted to a handful of other colleges, and I haven’t fully decided yet where I want to go.”
“I thought you were going to U of A,” she said.
He ran his teeth over his bottom lip. “Yeah. Everyone thinks that. But I don’t know if that’s what I really want to do. Everyone just assumes that’s where I want to go, and I don’t know how to tell them no.” He sighed. “That’s why I’m going on this trip—I scheduled some college tours and I’m going to see if one of them seems better than U of A.”
She looked at him curiously. “And you’re doing this all alone?”
Troy snorted. “Have you met my dad? He’d have an aneurysm if he found out I was thinking of somewhere other than U of A. So yeah. I figure I’ll make my decision and then tell him if I pick somewhere else. I’ll have to,” he said.
“But… What about Chad? Why not go with him?”
Troy shook his head. “Chad wants me to go to U of A just as much as Dad does. He’d freak out. Like I said, you’re the only person I’ve told.”
She nodded. “It just seems like such a long trip to go on by yourself. I’m worried about you.” She chuckled. “I’ve seen that truck you drive. I don’t know if it’ll make it out West and back.”
Troy laughed. “My truck is in perfect working condition, thank you very much. I just fixed it up.” Well, he was pretty sure it was all fixed up. “It’s not that I want to go alone or anything—I’d actually like some company—but if I bring someone along, then I have to tell them that I’m looking at other schools. And I don’t want to tell anyone that.”
Gabriella made a noise of understanding.
Troy paused at his last statement and thought for a moment. “How strict would you say your mom is?” he asked.
Gabriella looked at him quizzically. “I don’t know. Not very.”
“Like… let-you-go-on-a-cross-country-road-trip-with-the-neighbor-boy not very?”
Gabriella’s eyes widened as she processed his question. “Wait. Are you…?”
“I mean, I don’t know if you’d want to, but if you want plans for spring break…” He trailed off.
Gabriella was quiet for a moment. Troy hoped he hadn’t overstepped by inviting her, but he was serious when he said he would like some company. If the only reason he wasn’t bringing someone was because he didn’t want to tell them his plans, and if he had already told Gabriella his plans… then there was no reason not to invite her.
“I’ll ask my mom,” she said after a beat. “She likes you—I think she might say yes,” Gabriella said with a small smile.
Troy’s eyes widened in excitement. “Yeah? Seriously? That’d be awesome if you could go.”
Gabriella smiled, her tear-stained cheeks glistening in the light, and nodded. “It’d be nice to have plans. Something to distract me from all of this.”
Troy smiled. “I’ll be the best distraction you’ve ever seen. Promise.”