Chapter Text
The summer before junior year was the worst of Ricky’s life.
He knows that sounds dramatic and one could perhaps make the case that his opinion is colored by hindsight but Ricky would vehemently disagree. It sucked then, and it sucks now.
Objectively, it wasn’t that different from every other summer. He either stayed home, hung out at the skate park, or in Big Red’s basement. All of which he did by choice.
Even the couple of girls he texted back and forth with a little bit wasn’t that unusual for summer.
What he wasn’t used to was how much lonelier everything felt this time.
His seventeenth birthday came and went with little fanfare. Which, to be fair, is what he always said he wanted on his birthdays, groaning and rolling his eyes whenever anybody made a big deal about them. But still, it was weird not being woken up to breakfast in bed by his mom because she wasn’t around, and had been in Chicago for work for over a month.
It was weird not hearing from Nini, who he would’ve expected to call from camp to wish him a happy birthday and excitedly tell him about all the things she was planning for them to do when she got back. Granted, they were on a break (one that Ricky himself had asked for, idiot that he was) but it’s not like they had started dating yet when she snuck away from her moms during their family hiking trip in the Philippines to call him just so she could be the first person to wish him a happy birthday at midnight the summer before.
So his birthday was spent gorging on Hawaiian pizza and playing video games with Big Red. The girls he was talking to either didn’t know it was his birthday, or got sick of him going on about Nini constantly and gave up on him. Which suited him just fine, because he realized that none of them could ever make him feel the way Nini did. Safe, grounded…
Loved.
And sure, that last part kind of freaked him out at the start of the summer and led to him calling the break, but that wasn’t even really about Nini. If anything, it was about the way he couldn’t remember the last time in months that the word “love” had been exchanged between his parents, even before his mom went on her latest extended work trip. It was about how his dad deflected every time Ricky casually asked him anything related to her.
So, yeah, the whole summer sucked.
For the first time ever, Ricky was actually pretty glad when summer came to an end. Nini was finally back in Salt Lake and, sure, her response to his text wasn’t the most enthusiastic, but it wasn’t bad either (“hey” was definitely better than “we need to talk”).
Which is why he finds himself completely stumped when she hits him with just that on the first day of junior year.
“Wait, wait, is this a joke?” Ricky glances back at Big Red, half expecting him to crack and give up the game.
“Still talking here,” Nini snaps, bringing his attention fully back to her. She continues but Ricky cannot for the life of him process the words she’s saying. He feels like upon hearing the words “I met somebody else” come out of her mouth, there was a record scratch and freeze-frame in his brain and it still hasn’t come back online.
“Please,” he interrupts whatever insignificant detail Big Red is asking about, pauses, then gives up trying to make sense of any of this. “Tell me you’re joking.”
“I'm not. Come on, Ricky, you know what you did!” Nini insists. She frowns slightly and looks away from him. “Or, what you didn’t do.”
He does, of course he does, and he knows it was dumb but in his defense, everything has been changing so fast, and he didn’t expect her to jump into another relationship without even a heads up. An announcement echoes through the PA system but is drowned out by the slowly-building ringing in Ricky’s ears.
“I don’t believe this. You’re blowing me off for some theater punk you met four weeks ago?” He asks incredulously. “At a lake?”
“You kinda dumped me!” Nini retorts and Ricky feels exasperation begin to mix in with the shock.
“It was a break, it wasn’t a breakup!”
“Well, I’m sorry Ricky, but it’s a breakup now.”
The bell rings, and thus officially ends the worst summer of Ricky’s life.
The rest of the day passes in a progressively thickening haze. Ricky, focused on trying not to spiral about the apparent death of love, barely pays attention during the welcome back assembly and the only thing he takes away from it is that there’s a new drama teacher who seems to be in denial about her age, is obsessed with High School Musical and fires t-shirt cannons unprovoked. And then because the universe is conspiring against Ricky, it so happens that the guy Nini is ditching him for actually goes to their school. Except instead of the tights-wearing theater punk Ricky expected (hoped), Nini’s new boyfriend turns out to be the EJ Caswell, possibly the most popular senior around, whose theater nerd status somehow doesn’t tarnish his jock reputation.
That might be the most incomprehensible part of it all, Ricky thinks. Nini dating EJ. Not because EJ is out of her league, of course not. Nini is pretty, and kind, and the most talented person Ricky knows. If anything it’s Ricky whose league she’s way out of. But those things have always been true, and yet she never seemed to mind. She was happy to just chill with him, eating pizza and telling him how cute she found his stinky feet. So when did she start wanting popular dudes with Letterman jackets and chiseled jawlines? Why the sudden change? And why is Ricky the one left behind?
Existential dread gnaws at Ricky’s stomach all day, and by the time the final bell rings, he’s on his skateboard and out of the doors faster than Principal Gutierrez can call out “no skating inside the school, Mr Bowen!”. He feels a little bad about ditching Big Red but he’ll catch up with him at the skate park anyway. Right now he just needs to breathe some air that doesn’t taste like anxiety and skate until the only reason for the shake in his legs is too much time on the board.
By the time Ricky gets home, it’s almost 8pm and he feels a little calmer, less like the sky is threatening to come crashing down on him (the magic of kickflips and shuvits).
Which, of course, is when it does.
It smells of smoke when Ricky walks through the front door. It would be concerning, if he couldn’t hear his dad in the kitchen swearing loudly, echoing throughout the house. Ricky snorts softly as he shucks off his jacket, tossing it aside and not waiting to see where it lands as he shuffles through to the kitchen.
“I’m doing something wrong,” his dad says by way of greeting. In one hand he holds the lid of a slow cooker that Ricky isn’t convinced is even on, so the source of the smoke smell remains a mystery.
“I mean, you’re cooking, so…” Ricky teases as he moves around the counter to get to the fridge and check for any takeout leftovers.
“This chicken's been in here for ten minutes. It's colder than when I put it in!”
“Call mom,” Ricky says, still searching the fridge for something edible.
“How is that possible? Did I hit the freeze-dry button?”
“Just call mom,” Ricky repeats.
“Yeah, we're not bugging your mom,” his dad mutters. Ricky frowns at his tone.
“It’s like, 9pm in Chicago,” he argues, shutting the fridge. “She can’t still be in a meeting.”
His dad doesn’t respond, lifting a whole, very frozen, very raw chicken out of the cooker and dropping it dejectedly on the floor.
“Okay, I’m calling mom,” Ricky decides, pulling his phone out of his pocket.
“Don’t!” his dad yells. “She doesn’t wanna hear from me right now, okay?”
Ricky pauses.
“What?”
“She just. She just needs a couple more days in Chicago to think things over,” his dad says, as if that’s a perfectly normal thing to say and hasn’t set alarm bells blaring in Ricky’s head.
“What is there to ‘think over’?” Ricky pushes.
“It has nothing to do with you, okay?” his dad chuckles tightly, the casualness in his voice so clearly forced. “It's gonna be fine, bud.”
Ricky’s insides twist themselves into knots. His legs feel unsteady again and he leans against the counter for support. He knows things haven’t been entirely rosy between his parents recently, knows it isn’t necessarily normal for his mom to spend months on a “work trip”, but he thought it was just a rough patch, and that being apart for so long would’ve made them realize how much they still need each other, absence making the heart grow fonder or whatever. But for his mom to apparently not want to hear from them is one thing. For his dad to not even try?
Ricky can’t help the swell of frustration rising in him and he unlocks his phone as a distraction. He pulls up Instagram and because everything is conspiring against him, the first thing he sees is a suggested post by EJ Caswell. It’s a photo of him and Nini, his arms wrapped around her shoulders and her smiling up at him, with arrows pointing at them that are labelled “Troy” and “Gabriella”. Ricky feels sick, but the longer he stares at it, an idea begins to take shape in his head. His dad might be willing to give up without a fight, but Ricky isn’t.
So, here’s the plan:
Ricky is going to audition for the role of Troy after school and Nini will be so impressed she’ll realize there’s nothing special about EJ Caswell and break up with him immediately. Later, in the evening, he’ll go to her house with his guitar and sing the song she wrote for him outside her window to finally tell her he loves her. She’ll be so happy and emotional that she’ll rush down to give him a hug and they’ll make out and get back together and everything will be right again.
It’s a pretty solid plan in Ricky’s opinion, but Big Red was so against it that Ricky had to ditch him at lunch just so he wouldn’t get in his head and chicken out.
Still, the seed of doubt has been planted. Ricky plants himself in an empty stairwell, propping up his skateboard and pulling out his guitar from its case. He plucks at the strings and hums the notes of the song as he ruminates. Could Big Red be right? Could this be an awful idea that ends up backfiring on him and making Nini hate him even more? That’s the last thing wants and if it’s the most likely outcome then maybe he shouldn’t go for it. But he can’t just give up, either. He can’t just let some theater jerk steal his girlfriend, the one person who’s always been there. He has to try and hold on to what they had, or else he loses everything.
He needs an outside perspective. Someone who can be objective about the situation and give it to him straight.
By some stroke of luck, a girl who seems like just the person walks by his stairwell at that precise moment.
“Excuse me?”
The girl stops. Ricky realizes at that moment that he doesn’t recognize her. He isn’t Mr Popular by any means (he’s certainly no EJ Caswell) but he’s lived in the same house his whole life, gone to school with the same people. He might not have ever spoken to some of them but he’s pretty sure he could name most of them. Probably. At the very least they should all spark something in his memory, but she doesn’t. He would definitely remember seeing someone who looked like her.
He wonders if she’s a freshman, but discards the idea quickly. Freshmen tend to move in groups this early in the semester, and in any case she walks with way too much confidence to be fourteen years old. Considering what Ricky looked and felt like at fourteen (thank you, braces), the world can’t be that unfair.
Her brown eyes narrow at him and Ricky starts a little, remembering he stopped her and now she’s waiting for him to speak.
“Do you have thirty seconds?” he asks hopefully. She quirks an eyebrow.
“Left to live?” Her voice comes, easy and lilting. “I would not spend them here.”
The words catch Ricky off guard and startle a laugh out of him.
“That was dark. I’m impressed,” he grins, setting his guitar aside. It almost feels weird to smile, like his face isn’t used to it anymore after the past 48 hours. The girl glances back at the hallway like she’s ready to end this interaction and Ricky takes the hint to hurry it up. “I, um. I need a stranger’s opinion on something and you’re giving me the vibe that you’re brutally honest.”
The girl cocks her head.
“Well, now I’m intrigued,” she says, taking a couple of steps closer to Ricky. For some reason, his pulse quickens a little. He takes a steadying breath and braces his hands against the step he’s sitting on.
“So, I, um,” he begins to explain, hoping this all doesn’t sound as cringey and he suspects it does. The girl gives off an effortlessly cool aura that he can’t help but find a little intimidating. “I have this ex-girlfriend, Nini—”
She laughs, once again catching Ricky off guard. He pauses, not entirely sure what triggered her reaction since he hasn’t even gotten to the potentially cringey bit. She seems to realize he wasn’t joking and her smile drops.
“Wait, I’m sorry, that’s her name?” she asks flatly. “Nini?”
Ricky feels his face heat up. Nini has been Nini for so long that he forgets it isn’t exactly a typical nickname. He isn’t sure if the warmth in his cheeks is due to offense on Nini’s behalf that this girl would laugh at her name, or embarrassment on his own, seeing as he was responsible for the nickname in the first place.
“Long story,” he says, fighting down the blush. Either way, he can’t afford to get sidetracked now. “When we were still together she posted this song on her Instagram where she told me that she loved me, and I was a moron and couldn’t say it back.” The girl starts to roll her eyes and Ricky, inexplicably feeling the need to justify himself to her, rushes to add, “for completely legitimate reasons, by the way!”
“Maybe you just don’t love her, full stop,” the girl says, shaking her head. Ricky kind of hates it. He hates that this stranger who knows nothing about him, about Nini, about their relationship, thinks she has any right to judge them like that.
Mostly, he hates the treacherous twist in his gut that wonders if she’s right.
“That’s not—” he starts to counter and promptly stops when he hears the defensiveness in his own voice. He isn’t going to convince her like that. And besides, he doesn’t need to. He doesn’t owe her an explanation, when all he needs is an opinion on his plan. He takes a calming breath. “I’m planning on kinda telling her I do, tonight, by singing the same song outside of her window. Full stop.” He looks up nervously for her reaction.
“Wow, you are like a cliche from a John Hughes movie,” she says, but she’s smiling and Ricky takes that as a positive sign, immediately perking up.
“Uncle Buck?” he suggests cheekily. She ignores him.
“So, this girl who doesn’t even have a real name told you how she felt about you in front of all her Instagram followers. That takes guts.” She stares at him dead on. “If you love her, don’t you think you owe it to her to make your song a little more public?”
She’s right. He knows she’s right because the safety of doing this at night, with nobody around but Nini to see or hear him was precisely why he’d chosen it. Nini wouldn’t laugh at him for it, but he has no guarantees with anyone else. Still, he knows what his best chance of success is, as much as he hates the thought.
“I’m actually trying out for that High School Musical thing in a few hours,” Ricky confesses. “Because Nini is.”
“Oh, then sing it there,” the girl nods slightly in approval. “Her song.”
That’s the last thing Ricky wants to do. Getting up on a stage and pouring his heart out to his ex-girlfriend in front of the whole school (or however many people actually try out for these things, Ricky has never paid enough attention to know) sounds like a nightmare coming to life. He pulls a face but the girl just watches him, challenging.
“That feels kinda lame,” he practically whines, wringing his fingers.
“Well love is lame, idiot,” she says, like it’s the most obvious thing in the world. Maybe it is. “That’s why I avoid it.” Ricky has no response to that and sees the moment her interest fades, despite the parting smile she gives him that seems vaguely mocking. “Good luck, skater boy.”
There’s an edge to her voice, something he hadn’t noticed had slipped away until it was back. For some reason, it bothers him for their conversation to end on that note as she turns and walks away.
“Hey, thanks for the free advice,” he calls out. She glances back at him and Ricky is surprised by the shock of nervousness that races through him. “Intimidating girl,” he tacks on. The corner of her mouth quirks like she’s trying not to smile for real and Ricky feels like he’s succeeded at something he didn’t even know he was trying to do. She continues down the hallway and Ricky stares after her a second longer before standing and gathering his stuff.
No way around it, then. He’s going to have to risk humiliation and public rejection if he wants to win Nini back. He supposes it’s only fair, considering Nini did the same when she posted her song on Instagram, and then had to take it down. This must be his karma. He isn’t shy, but the thought of standing on that stage and his mind going blank makes him shiver.
He needs to practice.
Ricky gets cast as Troy.
He isn’t entirely sure how that worked out considering he’s pretty sure he bombed the audition; he had to read for Chad, despite only having watched Troy’s scenes, and could barely string two sentences together. And when the time came to sing Nini’s song, he panicked at the last second and still couldn’t say he loved her. The whole thing was a disaster and Nini was furious with him for being there at all, which Ricky really wasn’t expecting. Still, there’s lots of time to turn things around.
For the first few weeks, there wasn’t much by way of rehearsal—beyond a few awkward ice-breakers—as the drama teacher (Miss Jenn, Ricky learns she’s called, and also that she might be slightly insane) and her student assistant (Carlos, Ricky’s pretty proud of himself for remembering) actually wrote the rest of the script and came up with the dance numbers. Nini avoided him like the plague and spent every waking moment with either Kourtney or EJ, or both.
But once the script was finally done and they had the read-through, it seemed like things were finally looking up, especially when Miss Jenn told him and Nini that she added a kiss between Troy and Gabriella in the final scene that she wanted them to practice. Nini refused, but Ricky knew she would never do anything to risk the play, so it would only be a matter of time.
Before then, though, he would have to get through the first dance practice from hell.
“I'm kinda lost,” Ricky admits when Carlos shows them the routine they’re supposed to be practicing as students of the drama club stretch and warm up all around the bomb shelter. “If the, uh—if the play's over, why would we still be dancing?”
Nini looks at him like he said something absurd but Carlos smiles.
“It’s a curtain call,” he explains with a small chuckle. “You’re the last two to come out and we want to bring the audience to their feet!”
Ricky still doesn’t really get it.
“Teach them the dance,” he jokes.
“Carlos, can we just wait until Miss Jenn gets here?” Nini borderline cuts him off to ask, like even the sound of his voice is unbearable to her now. She won’t even meet his eye.
“Miss Jenn is busy tracking down a prop. She’s asked me to create a crescendo, people, so let’s stop swirling and start twirling,” Carlos says, clearly trying to inject some enthusiasm.
“But why are we practicing the bows when we haven’t even practiced the play?” Ricky asks because the whole thing seems completely backwards to him.
“Because,” Carlos responds, this time with forced patience. “You start with the hardest dance that takes the longest to learn. It’s in the Big Book of Broadway, page thr—”
“Page three seventy-four.”
Ricky looks up at the new voice and his eyes find its speaker—a girl called Gina. Cast as Taylor, she’s made no secret of the fact that she wants the role of Gabriella. And although Ricky is convinced that Nini is the most talented person in the world, even he can see that Gina would probably crush it in the role. Watching her walk away after high-fiving Carlos, he briefly wonders what it would be like if she did get Gabriella (as opposed to just being her understudy) and he still got Troy, but he quickly pushes the thought out of his mind and turns back to Nini—the reason he’s here. If Nini wasn’t Gabriella, Ricky simply wouldn’t agree to play Troy.
“Okay, people,” Carlos announces. “Let's take it from three counts of eight, right before Troy and Gabriella's entrance for the bows.”
Everyone moves into position like they all somehow understood what ‘three counts of eight’ means and Ricky just mirrors Nini and hopes for the best.
“A five, six, seven, eight!”
The best does not happen.
Ricky cannot for the life of him figure out what they’re supposed to be doing and the dance moves feel ridiculous on his limbs. He gives up quickly and starts goofing around in a way that would typically have Nini in stitches. The music slows to a stop.
“I’m sorry,” Ricky says, trying not to laugh. Nini doesn’t laugh. She glares at him disbelievingly and turns to Carlos.
“What is he doing?” she asks flatly. Ricky frowns.
“Why’re you talking to him? I’m right here.”
“‘Cause you’re not…here,” Nini says. It’s the first time she’s spoken to him directly in weeks. “At least not for the right reasons.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Exactly what I said, Ricky, you hate musicals. You’re only doing this so we’d be in each other’s grills.”
“Back to the dance, please,” Carlos tries gently, but apparently now that Nini is talking to him again she has a lot to get off her chest.
“And now you’re rubbing some weird cologne on your neck—”
“Hey, you love Throb!”
“—And wasting everybody’s time by making fun of something that the rest of us take seriously!” This is the most disappointed Ricky has ever heard Nini, somehow even worse than when she yelled at him after the audition. Carlos calls a break and the other students slowly shuffle out of the room.
“No, come on,” Ricky argues, following Nini to where she’s grabbing her bottle. “Hey, I take this seriously—”
“No!” She yells. “No, you don't. You don't take anything seriously, you just—you coast. And the second someone asks you to make a commitment, you make a joke or you—you sink into some imaginary hole in the floor.”
“I didn't sink, Nini,” Ricky practically pleads. “I just wasn't ready to say it then. But I went to that audition to show you—”
“Only because I had met someone else!” She retorts, which Ricky immediately thinks is unfair considering he was trying to get back together when she dropped the bomb on him that she was with ‘someone else’. “You wanted to drag me back into tenth grade like my summer had never happened. But if you really cared about me, Ricky, you’d let somebody who wants to play this part play it.”
“Like EJ?” he asks bitterly. Nini doesn’t try to deny it, doesn’t even grace him with a response. It cuts much deeper than Ricky would’ve thought to be told point blank that he doesn’t belong here, considering he didn’t even really want it in the first place. But to hear it from Nini, the one person he thought would never abandon him, feels like salt in the wound of everything else going on right now.
Ricky grabs his stuff and races out of the room before anyone can hear the shake in his voice, not even stopping for Miss Jenn.
Hours later, Ricky arrives at the skatepark. He told Big Red he needed some time alone after quitting the show, but it barely helped, if at all. When Carlos had caught up to him outside school, Ricky really did mean every word of what he said, certain that trying out for the play had been the dumbest idea of his life (of which there have been many) and they would all be better off without him there, since Nini had made that abundantly clear. And while he’s still convinced of the truth of that, a part of him regrets it a little; as awful as practice was, it was a temporary relief to have something to focus on that wasn’t everything falling apart around him. Being at home by himself just made him feel worse than before, a reminder that the world still turns for everyone else and he’s always left behind. Better he fills up time and brain space skating.
Ricky is making his way down the stairs, watching a guy on a bike do a flip ahead of him, when he hears a familiar voice call out.
“Hey, you.”
He turns around.
“Gina?” He frowns in confusion as she takes off her pink headphones. “What are you doing here?” He’s pretty sure he would’ve noticed if she was a regular; she certainly stands out from the typical crowd with her hot pink leather jacket.
“Babysitting,” she explains with a shrug and a roll of her eyes. “My neighbor asked me to watch her kid.” Ricky looks around but doesn’t see anyone of babysitting age.
“Where is he?” He asks, slightly concerned. Gina barely spares a glance.
“Somewhere.” She grabs the handrail and pulls herself to her feet. “So, is it true? You dropped out?”
Ricky drops his stuff and shrugs off his backpack.
“Haven’t made it official yet, but yeah. I guess so,” he mumbles. It bothers him that the news has apparently already spread, like they were all just waiting for him to drop out.
“That sucks. Having you there kinda gave us all street cred,” Gina says with a sigh. Ricky almost balks at that. Whatever he was expecting her to say, it wasn’t that. She continues, “I mean, you’re not a drama geek. You’ve never sang outside your shower—”
“Did Miss Jenn send you here?” Ricky cuts in, because there’s no way someone like Gina actually cares about him being in the play, and he can’t figure out where this is meant to be going.
“Please,” Gina snorts. “I think I scare her.”
“You are a little scary,” Ricky says, shirking his jacket. She’s a sophomore, and yet she has all the confidence of a senior and, from what little he’s seen, the talent to back it up. The rest of the drama club seems to think so, which is maybe why they all kind of avoid her.
“Gotta be, dude, I’m a transfer student. You either eat, or get eaten,” Gina levels with him. Ricky wouldn’t know, never having been in that position. “That’s why I was stoked when she cast you.”
Ricky looks up at that. Stoked? He could believe that she wasn’t as offended by his casting as everyone else, but ‘stoked’ feels like a stretch.
“Outsiders keep everyone on their toes,” she states matter-of-factly. Then, her voice softens. “I mean it. You kept us real,” she says with a kind smile. Ricky is a skeptic by nature, but something inside him desperately wants to believe her, to believe that he has something to offer. He shoves it down.
“Probably better to have someone up there who can actually keep time.” He grabs his board and helmet. “That five and six stuff?”
Gina actually laughs, lowering herself down to the step again.
“You don’t need Carlos to tell you how to move. He bites other people’s styles.” She pauses, looks him up and down and smirks. “You have your own.”
Warmth starts to creep up Ricky’s neck and he turns away before she can see the pink in his cheeks, putting his helmet on and continuing his descent, determinedly not looking back.
The idea is laughable to Ricky—that he could actually bring something to the play. He’s a skater, not a theater person, and clearly that’s the way things should stay, Gina’s theory of outsiders be damned.
And yet, ridiculous as they are, her words don’t leave his head as he skates. What if it could be true? What if he could actually find a way to make this work—learn the steps, hit the counts, play the role somehow? He’d probably have to stay up all night practicing to get even a fraction of the dance down, but what if he did just that? What if he could prove to Nini that he wouldn’t quit on this, so she’d realize he wouldn’t quit on them?
What if he could actually matter?
When Ricky gets home that night, he plants himself in front of the TV and puts on HSM, skipping straight to the last dance sequence. It takes several hours of tripping over his feet and accidentally hitting himself, but eventually the moves finally start to stick. And when his dad joins him in the living room, even getting up to try it out himself, the both of them cracking up, it feels like things might actually get to the point of being okay.
(Ricky showcases his brand new, Carlos-approved moves at rehearsal the next day, and although nobody is wowed by the level of skill he’s displaying, he still feels pretty good.
“I don’t know what made you change your mind, but I am so glad you didn’t quit,” Carlos says to him. Ricky glances past him, over his shoulder. His eyes find Gina, already looking at him. The corners of her lips quirk slightly. He looks back to Carlos.
“Told you. Not doing that anymore.”)