Author's Note: Part Two of Comprehend
Comprehend
When he awoke in the morning, it was to the ring tone of his cell phone. Reaching over, he looked at the caller I.D. It said Home. Sighing, he ignored the ring and rose from the bed, throwing on a shirt just in time for Gabriella to rush into the room.
"You're home?" she breathed, an almost relieved tone in her voice. "I…I was afraid," she confessed softly. "I called you last night, sometime around ten," she said quietly. "I got really scared when you didn't answer."
"I didn't really feel like talking at the time," he admitted, looking down at his feet. She stepped closer to him and he noticed that she was still dressed in her work clothes from yesterday. The top two buttons of her dress shirt were hanging open and her skirt was twisted on her waist. Her hair was down and knotted and there were bags under her eyes.
"We have to talk about it eventually," she said softly. He nodded and walked over to the closet, searching for a pair of clean pants. "Don't shut me out," she begged, her voice so low he could barely hear her. Pulling out the pants and a shirt, he dropped them on the bed and then walked past her and into the kitchen. Glancing into the living room, he noticed even more tissues on the floor.
She followed him around for the next twenty minutes as he got his coffee, checked the weather, and moved towards the bathroom to take a shower.
"Please, Troy," she said loudly, grabbing his arm. He finally turned to her and she saw the tears in his eyes.
"I have to get ready for work," he croaked, pulling his arm away from her. Slamming the door behind him, she heard him lock it. Pressing her palm up against the door, she let her forehead fall against the wood, tears dripping down her face. He leaned back against the door, closed his eyes, and exhaled shakily. He covered his face with his hands, slamming his head back against the door.
Dragging herself to the kitchen, Gabriella called in sick to work. She heard the shower shut off, but she didn't go near him.
He was hunting around the room for socks when she passed by the bedroom door. Sitting down on the bed, he sighed, running a hand through his hair. How he was going to make it through a day at work was a mystery to him. Slipping his shoes on, he moved through the hallway quietly.
She was sitting on the couch, staring at the television, which hadn't been turned on. He brushed his fingers on her shoulder and she jumped, whirling around to face him, a look of hope on her face.
"We'll talk when I get home, alright?" The hope seemed to fade off her face, but she nodded.
"Alright," she whispered, standing up. He went towards the door and she followed him. As he pulled the door open, she sighed softly. "I love you," she called after him. He stopped and his eyes turned to her.
"I love you, too," he said softly, "More than you know." Then he disappeared out the door. Gabriella gripped the wall as the door shut. Going to the bathroom, she searched through the medicine cabinet for Advil, only to find nothing. Groaning, she grabbed her purse and went out the door, heading for the CVS down the road.
The air was warm and the sun was shining, but she couldn't have been more miserable. As the doors slid open, she walked into the store, searching the aisles for Advil. She passed the magazine rack as she paid for her medicine and almost burst into tears at the image of a bride and groom on the cover.
The cashier handed her the bag and she left the store hurriedly, her head spinning. Her steps were slow as she walked down the sidewalk. When she reached the front door, the doorman smiled at her, opening the door. She smiled back weakly, almost running into a bellboy. He pointed her to the front desk, saying that they had been looking for. She thanked him, turning around and approaching the desk.
"Hello, Miss Montez," the red-head behind the desk said. Her high pitched voice pounded around Gabriella's head. "Someone dropped this off for Troy-uh-Mr. Bolton." Gabriella winced inwardly, taking the small bag from her.
"Thanks Valerie," she mumbled, clenching the bag in her hands. "I have to go." Valerie nodded at her, watching as the brunette stumbled across the lobby. Gabriella reached the elevator, blinking as the bright buttons swirled before her eyes. Sinking to the ground, she put a hand to her forehead, waiting for the throbbing to cease. Another bellboy asked if she was alright and she nodded, saying she just got a little dizzy.
The bell for the elevator rang and she struggled to her feet. She made her way inside, grasping for the level-six button. As the elevator lurched up, she grabbed her stomach, suddenly wishing her boss had fired her instead of offering her a new job. The doors open and she stepped out, her head pounding as she opened the door. Dropping her coat to the ground, she got a glass of water from the kitchen and quickly swallowed two pills. Moving to the couch, she tossed the package on the coffee table and lay back on the couch.
After several minutes of lying down, she sat up groggily. Reaching for the package, she frowned slightly, wondering exactly what someone would send to Troy in a bent, ripped, taped, and glued manila envelope that was stamped with a Hilton hotel seal. Tearing it open, she reached in and pulled out a small piece of paper.
Troy, you left this with me last night.
She gasped, a hand flying to her mouth. Is that why he was avoiding her? Because he spent the night with some…some…whore? Reaching into the envelope again, she pulled out a small box. Her eyes widened and she looked back at the note, dropping the box on the table. Turning it over, she found more writing.
I'm sure things will work out between you two.
Chad
She let out a relieved sigh. Okay, so maybe he hadn't been with a whore. He'd been with Chad. Slowly, her stomach twisted and she looked back at the box. Her hands were shaking as the reached for it. It couldn't be… It just couldn't be. Anxiously opening the cover, she felt herself getting dizzy again when she saw the gleaming surface of, what she assumed was, an engagement ring.
He left it at Chad's last night. He'd had it with him when he went to Chad's. He had it when he left the apartment. He'd had it when she told him about the job. He'd had it when they were eating dinner. He'd had it when she came home.
That's why he had cleaned. That's why he had cooked dinner. He was going to propose.
"Well, that's just great," she exclaimed sarcastically, snapping the box shut. "The day he's going to propose is the day that I decide to move to New York." She angrily shoved the box into the envelope again, followed shortly by the note. Throwing them down on the couch, she stormed into the bedroom, angrily falling onto the bed.
"What are the chances?" she screamed to herself, kicking the mattress hard. "God, I hate my life!" She heard the door open, but she chose to ignore it, not registering that Troy would have been at work for another five hours.
He closed the door slowly, rubbing his hand across his forehead. He dropped his keys on the table and his coat on the ground. He was surprisingly glad to be home, even if it meant facing her and realizing that they were…well, over. He heard a faint noise from the bedroom and sighed, starting down the hallway. When he appeared in the doorway, Gabriella had the pillow covering her face and she was screaming incoherently.
He took the pillow out of her hands, tossing it to the other side of the bed. Her eyes snapped open and she sat up.
"You're home," she said softly as he nodded. "Why? Oh, I mean, I'm glad but you're supposed to be at work." He nodded again, looking down at his knees.
"I looked sick so they sent me home." He didn't add on so she spoke up.
"Chad dropped off a package for you," she said softly. "I put it on the couch." He nodded slowly.
"Can we talk now?" she asked. He nodded again. "Are you actually going to talk to me?" He nodded a third time.
"I don't know what to do," she confessed. "I want to take the job, but taking the job means that I have to leave you here when I go to New York." She put her fist up to her mouth, sniffling, feeling all the emotions from last night swelling up inside her chest. "And loving you as much as I do is just making this decision harder." He looked away.
"Just go to New York, Gabriella. It's what you want. New York is your future." She wiped a lone tear away from her eye.
"What about you? Troy, I'm a girl; do you know how many times I've pictured my life when I was 'all-grown-up'? You were always in it. You're my future too. I want the perfect house with the perfect children and the beautiful Golden Retriever with the white picket fence. And I want that all with you." She smiled softly. "And I would settle for the small apartment with a barbed wire fence and the bratty child and a vicious cat just as long as you were there." He sighed, running a hand through his hair.
"Gabriella, it comes down to you choosing between New York and Albuquerque, between me and the job. And I can't ask you to make that choice. I won't let you. You're-" Something caught in the back of his throat. He closed his eyes momentarily. "You have to go to New York. There'll be other guys." She scooted closer to him, resting her hands on his arms.
"But there'll be other jobs too," she argued. He shook his head. "Troy…"
"For God's sake, Gabriella," his voice cracked, "Just take the job!" He stood up, running a hand through his hair.
"Why are you doing this?" she asked, following him across the room. "Why do you keep pushing me to take this job? I thought you would be the one who would want me to stay. But you want me to go more than I do!" She hooked her index finger on the belt loop of his pants. "I don't want you to tell me what to do. I want help deciding." He turned around to face her, tears in his eyes.
"I don't want to be the reason you stay," he whimpered, wishing he wouldn't get so emotional. "I don't want you to stay just for me and hate it. I don't want you to regret not taking the job. I don't want you to hate me for making you stay." He exhaled very shakily.
"I'd rather you be happy and leave than be miserable and stay with me." She pulled him into a hug, burying her face in his chest. His head fell onto her shoulder and she felt him crying.
"I could never hate you," she whispered into his ear. His shoulders were shaking and she was rubbing slow circles on his back.
"I thought," he said, pulling away from her, "that we would be together forever. You know? It all feels solid, like nothing's going to change, ever. And then, it's like, everything is ripped from underneath you." She watched him place his hands on either side of the dresser and she saw him staring at his reflection in the mirror. "And you start trying to figure out what you did to deserve it."
"You didn't do anything, Troy," she whispered, standing beside the dresser. "Life just sucks sometimes. We're given choices and we're trusted to make the right ones. Even when it's really, really hard." He loosened the knot in his tie, yanking the material away from his body and casting it onto the floor.
"I hate this." He ran a hand through his hair, closing his eyes.
"You hate this?" she screeched. "I'm the one that has to choose!" She lowered her voice so he couldn't hear. "I'm the one that has to choose between a job…and a husband." And suddenly, she knew exactly what she was supposed to do, where she was supposed to be, and what her future included.
"I'm not going to New York," she said abruptly, "I love you and I'm staying with you." He turned to her quickly, confusion etched on his face.
"Brie," he croaked, "You can't; you said it yourself, you've wanted that job forever." He placed his palm against his forehead. "I can't let you give that up."
"If I don't stay here, I'm going to regret it forever." She reached out for him, taking his hands. "I know I will." She held her arms around his stomach loosely.
"But what about the job?" Something clenched her stomach and she held him tighter. "You'd make more money than you do now, and you're not really happy with the job you have now anyway."
"Forget the job; it's just something to do for a few hours. I don't even know if I would like it. I would just end up going home and missing you and being depressed. And then I would break, and come back, and you would have a wife and I'd be even more depressed. And then my life would suck." He shook his head.
"There wouldn't be a wife," he mumbled into her cheek.
"But if I stay here, I get to continue with a job that I already know I like, with people I like, still missing you. But then when I come home, you're going to be here. And I don't know about you, but that sounds a lot more appealing."
His eyes brightened and he smiled slightly. "You really want to stay? You're really staying in Albuquerque?"
"Mmhm." He beamed.
"Hold on; I'll be right back." He pulled away from her and rushed out of the room. She felt something twitch in her stomach and she was filled with this slight sense of delight.
He hadn't come back yet. Going out into the hallway, she found him sitting on the couch, staring at the envelope.
"Are you alright?" she asked softly. His thumb was rubbing over the box.
"Is that why you decided to stay?" he asked, turning to her.
She furrowed her eyebrows. "What?" He held up the box.
"You opened the package. It was already open. You saw the ring, didn't you?" She looked down at her hands guiltily, slipping to the front of the couch. "God, Gabriella…" She sunk down onto the couch.
"It's not like it matters," she tried, picking at her wrinkled skirt. "What difference does it make?"
"Gabriella, it makes a huge difference! You knew!" He grabbed his head. "God, you knew everything! You knew that I was going to propose! That changes everything!" She grimaced.
"It doesn't change anything," she insisted. "How does it change anything?" He stood up, pacing the floor.
"You knew I was going to propose. You knew…"
"God, yes, I knew you were going to propose. We've covered that! But why should that matter?" He let out a sound halfway between a groan, a grunt, and a snort. Sitting down on the edge of the coffee table, he ran his hands through his hair.
"You knew everything. You knew I wanted to be with you for the rest of my life." She shook her head in disbelief.
"Why does that bother you so much?" she squealed, clambering over the coffee table to sit beside him.
"You didn't have to take a chance on us!" he yelled, storming to the bookshelves. "You were totally safe in either choice you made. You didn't have to risk anything, Gabriella, not anything! You got what you wanted either way!"
His eyes fell on a picture from her graduation. His had been the day before hers and he'd flown all night to get there in time for her ceremony. She was wearing a deep red cap and gown, and a diploma was clutched in her hand. The only thing that made the picture different from any other typical graduation photo was that her feet were dangling through the air with her arms wrapped around his neck; he was holding her. He'd been in the process of spinning her around when her mother insisted on a picture.
"You knew that if you stayed, I would ask you and we would spend the rest of our lives together. And if you went, you would get the job you always dreamed of. Either way, you won." He turned back to her, his eyes stormy and dark.
"But for me, if you went, I would lose my everything, my world. Because you are my world Gabriella. But I was willing to let you go because I wanted you to be happy. But that's beside the point. For me, it wasn't a win-win situation. I had to risk you making the decision to leave."
"Tell me something," he snapped. "Would you still be staying if you hadn't seen the ring? Would you have been so quick to say that you're not going to New York if our future wasn't certain?" She hesitated for a second. He scoffed, looking away. "See?" Gabriella wrapped her arms around herself.
"Why don't you believe me?" she whimpered, her voice thick with emotion and her eyes shining. "Why don't you believe that I love you? I want to be with you so badly, Troy." She swiped a tear away from her face, her shoulders shaking violently. "Do you know how long I've been dreaming about the day you would ask me to marry you?" He turned his body towards her, still looking away.
"Troy, marrying her high school sweetheart is every girl's dream. And knowing that I could have that just made my choice that much harder. Because I had to choose between a job and a marriage; a relationship that was certain. It would have been easier to leave a relationship when the future wasn't clear. But ours," she took a shaky breath, "Ours has been set in stone for a long time. We're meant for each other, Troy." She whipped her hand through her hair. "And it sucks that it took this long for me to get that, but I get it now and that's what matters."
"Gabriella…"
"No, Troy, listen to me. There is only one thing that I want more than that job. And that's you. And I have to choose between you and that job. I'm not picking the job." He shook his head and she groaned, moving to him. "I," she grabbed his hands, looking into his eyes and letting the tears flow freely down her face, "Love," she put his hands to her heart, "You," she thrust them back at him, planting them firmly on his chest. "Why don't you understand that?" He looked into her eyes, shaking slightly.
"I'm just afraid that when you realize what you stayed for, you're going to leave." She wrapped her arms around him in a hug. "It's just easier to push you away than it is to wait to be pushed away."
"I will never leave you," she choked, holding the base of his neck and staring into his eyes. "I will never push you away. Not even for Manhattan." He swallowed, a slow smile working its way onto his face and then she smiled back and started giggling through her tears.
"You promise that you're staying?" She nodded.
"Albuquerque is my home," she murmured. "I love it here." He bit his lip.
"Marry me?" His voice was shaky. Her jaw started to shake and she brought a hand up to her face.
"I used to…dream about you…saying that…all the time," she whispered as tears began falling down her face. "But it sounds…so much better…when it's real." He smiled softly, looking at her expectantly. "Yes, I will marry you."
"Really?" he asked, bringing his forehead down to hers. She slowly weaved her arms around his neck.
"You're stuck with me, Troy Alexander Bolton." He grinned at her.
"So I am, Gabriella Anne Montez, soon to be Gabriella Anne Bolton." She grinned, arching her back and smiling up at the ceiling. His lips touched her neck and she squealed, tightening her hold on him. He pulled her down onto the couch, sucking on the skin of her shoulder. She was left gasping for air when he pulled away, collapsing against the back of the couch. He took her hand and she moved her eyes to him. He slipped the ring from the box onto her finger. She smiled down at the gleaming diamond on her finger.
"I love you." She looked up at him, noting the serious look on his face.
Smiling, she whispered, "I love you too. Always have, always will."
"We've been fighting for two days." Her smile faded slightly. "And they were the two most miserable days of my life." His tone wasn't a joking one.
"Me, too," she said softly. "I don't like fighting with you. I don't like not being able to touch you." The mood was getting much too dark for her liking. "And this couch is really uncomfortable." He just stared at her for a moment before a smile found his face.
"Yeah, well, you're never sleeping on the couch again." Slipping onto the couch beside her, he didn't put his arm around her like he normally did. They had just been fighting for two days, as he pointed out. Things were slightly awkward.
"You want to watch General Hospital?" she asked suddenly. He blinked twice and turned to face her. She shrugged helplessly.
"Sure," he said slowly. He watched as she found the remote under a magazine and turned the television on. "You know, this isn't exactly your typical post-proposal conversation." She shifted closer to him as she flipped through the channels.
"Your typical pre-proposal evening doesn't usually involve a two-day fight either. I guess I kind of ruined things for you yesterday, huh?" He shrugged and looked down, making sure to move his hand just enough that it brushed hers.
"It's okay; think of how much worse it would have been if I proposed first. You would've burst into tears and run into the bedroom, leaving me alone, feeling like an idiot." She smiled slightly, flexing her fingers to brush against the back of his hand.
"Yeah… That would have been really bad." He smiled and raised his eyes to the daytime soap opera.
"Who are these people?" he asked, watching a man with sandy hair and half an Australian accent eat dinner with a skinny woman with long brown-blonde hair.
"Well, the guy is Jax and the woman is Carly. They're dating." He shook his head.
"How do you know this?" She shrugged her shoulders, moving her shoulder closer to his.
"I just do." His eyes darted back and forth, between her face and the people on the screen. He raised his arm slowly and let it drop down around her shoulders slowly. She grinned and scooted closer him. He was vaguely aware of the 'Jax' taking 'Carly's' hand and kissing it.
Looking down at his fiancé, he sighed, content. He bent his head down and kissed her shoulder. "I love you," he whispered softly into the crook of her neck. She entwined their fingers, pulling him closer.
"I love you, too," she murmured back, pushing mute and discarding the remote. His other hand found her stomach, holding her close to his body. He pressed one more kiss to her neck before shifting. His hand left her stomach and found her chin, tilting her head towards him. She smiled at him.
His gentle kiss threw into harsh reality just what was so utterly fantastic about Albuquerque.
Author's Note: Alright, I'm starting to think that I rushed the end and that their argument was really repetitive, but that's okay. This definitely was NOT my best work. But it's one in the morning right now, and I'm tired. So I'm going to post and go to be.
Which is older: gingko trees or Mexico? - A spastic moment between me, my friend, and my cousin. The decision was gingko trees, but what do you think? (I'm sorry; as I mentioned it's one in the morning, and I'm overtired and my friend is pressuring me to put in random quotes. My apologies.)