Hey guys! I've been so busy and forgot to post this sooner! I wrote this while I was taking the mid-terms, so i hope you like it! Enjoy!

Mid-Terms

When Troy Bolton thought about high school when he was a little kid he only thought about basketball and about the friends he would be with. He never in his wildest dreams actually thought about doing the homework and taking the tests. That's why he wasn't in his room, studying away for midterms like he was supposed to be. Instead, he was playing basketball in his backyard, working up a sweat.

His phone started to ring and he sighed. He didn't like to be interrupted while playing the sport he loved. He walked over to his deck, sitting on one of the patio chairs as he opened up his phone, saying hello with a soft sigh.

"Well, I'm sorry for ruining your evening." A female voice said when she heard his annoyed sigh. He instantly sat forward, smiling obviously as he felt his heart beat quicken.

"Actually, you just made it better." He replied smoothly, running a hand through his hair.

"Uh-huh." She said with a laugh. "I have a problem," She started mysteriously. "You see, I have this neighbor who will not stop playing basketball and all I can hear from my balcony window is that stupid basketball. And well, mid-terms are this week and I'm going to fail if he doesn't stop." She finished.

"Oh…" Troy said nervously, standing up as he walked towards the end of his deck. "Sorry, Gabs." He laughed, seeing her standing on her balcony in sweat pants and a t-shirt, clearly ticked off.

"Why are you not studying?" She asked him seriously, putting a hand on her hip, making him laugh as he watched her.

"I've never been good at studying." He told her. "It's just not my thing."

"A's obviously aren't either." She replied harshly, too stressed out about her mid-terms to think about how that would probably hurt his feelings.

"Ouch." He whispered to himself, feeling a cool breeze blow against his face as he looked at Gabriella's backyard.

"Come over." She replied with a sigh.

"What?" Troy asked in surprise.

"You need to pass senior year, Troy, so come over and I'll help you do that." She explained, hanging up her phone.

When Troy hung up his phone and looked over at her balcony she was already gone and he was frozen in his spot, unsure if he was actually going to go over to Gabriella's house… in her room… to study. After a few minutes he was jumping over his fence, climbing up a tree, and knocking on her balcony window. His legs worked faster than his brain… big deal, he thought.

"Hello, Troy Bolton." Gabriella said as she opened the door, one Ipod headphone was stuck in her left ear and the other was hanging at her side.

"You really don't need to help me out, Gabs." Troy told her as he stepped into her lavender colored room, inhaling the fruity smell.

"It's no big deal. All I have to do is give you some studying materials and then you sit here," She pointed to her green chair that was next to her balcony doors "and try to learn something."

"Sounds boring." Troy replied with a groan as she handed him a stack of note cards, full of paragraphs of information written in her loopy hand writing. "Are you sure you want me to be here?" He asked her.

"You say that as if having the star basketball player in my room is a bad thing." She replied as she picked up a notebook, opening it.

Troy smirked and walked over to the chair that she wanted him to sit in and he sat down, sinking into the cushiony fabric. The balcony doors were left open after he had entered and he could hear the branches of the tree sway in the breeze as he looked at the first card.

After a few minutes of going through the first five note cards, knowing the answers to none of them, he looked up to study Gabriella for a minute. She was pacing from her bathroom door to her balcony doors as she read from her notebook; the music playing from her Ipod could be heard.

"Gabriella…" Troy started and when she didn't react to her name being said, he realized that she couldn't hear him.

He smiled softly. This could be fun.

"Gabriella Montez." He started, looking at her, laughing softly. "I've known you for a while now and I think you should know by now that, well, I'm in love with you." He said out loud, watching as Gabriella continued to look through her notebook. "See Chad that was easy. I can totally admit to her that I love her." He said to himself, laughing as he remembered his good friend telling him that he was too chicken to admit his feelings.

"Did you say something, Troy?" Gabriella asked him as she pulled out her head phones. She saw his lips moving earlier and realized that she couldn't hear him.

"What?!" Troy asked quickly, wide-eyed. "No." He squeaked.

"Are you okay?" Gabriella asked with a soft laugh.

"Yeah, totally." Troy said with a nod, looking back at the note cards.

He glanced back at Gabriella and she was already going back to studying. He flipped passed a few note cards and stopped when he got to one that said: Name the four chambers of the heart. Although it was an interesting question- yeah right- Troy was looking at the doodle in the top left hand corner.

I Heart TB!

His heart beat speed up slightly and he looked up from the card to Gabriella, back down at the card and then back up at Gabriella. She was looking at him again, removing her headphones as she stopped pacing.

"You know, I don't think you're actually studying." She told him, sitting down on her bed after she tossed her Ipod and notebook on her desk.

"I'm kind of distracted." Troy said with a laugh.

"Now you understand my recent dilemma." Gabriella said with a smile, running a hand through her hair as she let herself enjoy the quick break from studying.

"So do you go through this every time there's a test?" Troy asked her, straightening the note cards in his hand.

"Go through what?" Gabriella asked with an amused smile, watching as Troy glanced up at her, revealing his perfect smile.

"The piles of note cards, hundreds of pages in a notebook, countless songs on your Ipod?" He listed, setting the note cards in his lap.

"It's not that bad." She told him with a small laugh, feeling her heartbeat quicken as he stood up and walked over to her bed, jumping onto it with the note cards, plopping down next to her.

"It seems so tedious." Troy said to her, feeling her hair brush against his knee which was currently next to her head.

"It is." Gabriella sighed. "But the end results are worth it." She explained.

"Bags under your eyes and zits?" He asked.

Gabriella gasped, sitting up so quickly that the movement of the mattress almost knocked Troy off of the bed. He grabbed onto her arm so that he wouldn't fall off and she screeched as she was pulled towards him, landing on top of him as he fell against her pillows. Troy couldn't help but to laugh as her hair blocked his vision and he could feel his heart beating faster as she slowly lifted her head from his chest, brushing her hair away from her face.

Her brown eyes looked into Troy's blue ones and she hesitantly brought her hand towards his face, brushing her index finger underneath his eye where if he had been studying, dark bags would have been forming.

"See, you Troy Bolton, don't have bags under your eyes or a zit to be found on your face." She said with a laugh, sending his heart beat to quicken again. "What's the fun in that?" She asked him.

"I must say, you already rock that look, so I wouldn't want to steal your thunder." He said with a smirk, causing her to slap him on the chest and a laugh to escape from his lips.

"You are cruel." She told him, moving to the side of the bed to get up to get her notebook, but he grabbed her hand before she could get up, pulling her back so that she was tucked under his arm, her face against his neck. "This isn't studying." She whispered after a minute of being put under a trance by his boyish smell.

"It is to me." He said to her, absentmindedly starting to trail his fingers along her back, creating invisible shapes and drawings.

"So you lay in bed with a girl saying nothing to study? I'm starting to feel like I'm just one of many." She laughed, joking obviously as her eyes lifted to look at the smile forming on his face.

"Nah, you're the only girl I've ever studied with." He smiled, looking down at her, blushing slightly when his lips brushed up against her forehead.

"Does that include lying in bed saying nothing?" She asked him, looking at his neck as her hand rubbed his chest like his hand was rubbing her back.

"Yeah, actually you're the only girl I've ever done that with too." He laughed, hearing her sigh as she closed her eyes.

"I'll quiz you." She started with a smile, hearing his groan in annoyance. Way to ruin a moment!

"If you insist." He replied tiredly.

"What part of the brain controls things like breathing and heartbeat?" She asked him.

"Uh…" Troy stared dumbly at the ceiling, wondering if maybe the answers were somewhere up there and Gabriella giggled quietly, hearing no answer.

"The cerebellum." She told him.

"I was totally going to say that." Troy said confidently.

Gabriella laughed out loud, shaking her head.

"The cerebellum is the wrong answer." She told him, laughing as he shook his head.

"Very funny, Gabs." He said in annoyance. "What's the right answer, smarty pants?"

"The brain stem." She told him, adjusting her head on his shoulder.

"That was my second choice." He replied with a smile.

Gabriella smiled, shaking her head at him as she stayed quiet, feeling his heartbeat against her hand as she pressed it gently against his chest. Troy's hand was still moving against her back and she sighed peacefully, thinking of another question to ask him.

"Name the four chambers of the heart." She said to him. She knew he wouldn't know.

"Right Atrium, Right Ventricle, Left Atrium, Left Ventricle." He said, causing her to crease her eyebrows suspiciously and to sit up, peering down at him as she placed her hands on his chest, seeing another smile form on his face.

"How'd you know that?" She asked him, feeling his breath hit her face as he replied.

"Because on the note card with those answers it said I heart TB on it." He explained to her, seeing her eyes widen as if she never intended on him seeing it. "That's how I remembered it."

"Troy, I…. I, that, I mean…" She started, feeling like a fish out of water as she babbled on about nothing. "It's not what it looks like!"

"What? I thought it meant I heart tuberculosis." He said, trying to keep a straight face as panic flooded Gabriella's facial expressions. "I'm kidding." He whispered as she tried to come up with an excuse.

"I'm sorry; I just get carried away sometimes." She explained, wanting so badly to be anywhere but in Troy Bolton's arms.

"It's okay." Troy said seriously. "Because I heart GM."

"Well, everyone loves General Motors, Troy." She smiled brightly, feeling the rumble of his laugh underneath her body.

"I have a confession to make." Troy said to her, making her instantly wonder what it could be about.

"You didn't come here to study?" She asked him with a smile.

"Besides that." He smiled, winking at her. "I actually need to tell you something." He went on.

"Okay…"

"I haven't finished studying you yet." He told her seriously, watching as she looked at him curiously, staying quiet as she just looked down at his face.

"What do you mean?" She asked quietly.

"I've learned almost everything about you, but there's one thing that I don't know about you that's keeping me from testing our friendship." He explained.

"And what would that be?" She asked him, feeling his quickening heartbeat against her chest.

"I don't know if you love me." He stated.

Gabriella's stomach flipped as he looked into her eyes, wanting her to tell him if she loved him or not. How could she simply tell him this?! She was currently on top of him, his arms wrapped securely around her as she stayed quiet.

"Well I already know you love me because I wasn't listening to music when you first came in here." She admitted, making him sit up so fast that she screeched as she tumbled into his lap, wrapping her arms around his neck.

"Are you freaking serious?!" He asked her in shock, not even aware that he had told her he loved her and she had heard him!

She nodded, giggling softly as he took his turn to panic.

"You know… I, uh, get carried away sometimes?" He said unsurely, stopping as Gabriella's lips crashed onto his, her hand running through his hair as he kissed her back, loving the way it felt to finally kiss her.

"What are you two doing?" They heard, making them quickly pull away from the passionate kiss.

They were wide eyed as they saw Sharpay and Taylor standing in the doorway, both of them with their backpacks secured to their shoulders as they stared at their fellow classmates.

"Uh… we're studying." Gabriella said with a quick smile, laughing as Troy scouted off of the bed, giving her a long kiss before he jogged over to the balcony, quickly leaping onto the tree and climbing down as if it took no energy.

"Well," Sharpay started as she watched Gabriella straighten out her shirt, glowing with happiness. "At least we know he'll pass his gym mid term." She said with a laugh, seeing Troy running across the backyard.

Like it? Review!

Much love,

unknownbyhim22