All She Wrote

Epilogue

A kiss has many meanings and many forms. The meeting of lips can be like sodium meeting water, explosive, blazing. It can compensate for a lack, for an ability to find the words – for love, for deception, for gratitude, for emotions that defy definition. A kiss can be comfort. Kisses are warming, joyful, pleading, inadequate. They can signal the start of something new, the end of something beloved.

They are everything that falls in between the two.

The kiss shared by Troy and Gabriella that evening months ago had been all of that and more. Their lips had brushed together tentatively and said everything that they had each been too scared to voice. Their kiss had spoken of powerful emotions that seemed too overwhelmingly real to be true. Their souls and bodies had crackled in the heat of the exploding tension between them. Their hearts had frolicked in the fulgor of their newly explored feelings.

The union of their lips had built a bridge between them and their friendship and a seemingly unreachable romance perched on the horizon.

Up until that point every day since her mother's death had seemed stretched; some invisible power had pulled the crepuscular hours separating the days outwards and outwards until their thin, translucent substance had woven a web of timelessness and morose confusion around Gabriella. Time had stretched and Gabriella had had no choice but to wade through the obscurity. That kiss had been the lighthouse guiding her path through the fog. It had been the closing of a door and a ventilation of her mind.

After Troy and Gabriella had broken apart there had been no fear or nervousness. They both knew that everything was how it was supposed to be. Their faces had been split by delirious smiles and Troy had wrapped his arms tightly around Gabriella's body before lifting her up and swinging her around until he had almost tripped in his dizziness. Less than thirty seconds later Troy had asked her to be his girlfriend and Gabriella still wondered that such a simple request had been able to make her feel so alive.

The days were still heavy; she still carried them and the memories, the sorrowful memories, on her back as she ambled through the closing weeks of summer vacation. What was the end of Troy's summer vacation was the end of Gabriella's idleness. In two weeks she would be starting her course at New York University and she was positive that it would be yet another thing to lessen the burden of the past on her shoulders.

Opening her eyes after an uncertain period of quiet, Gabriella smiled softly at the concentrated expression on Troy's face. She reached up to brush her thumb across the frown lines creasing his forehead and watched as his blue eyes gradually regained clarity. "Penny for your thoughts?" Gabriella asked; her voice was barely louder than a whisper. It was as though she feared interrupting the mellow symphony of the zephyr floating around their bodies.

Troy's eyes darted over his girlfriend's face, the true reason for his pensiveness seeking concealment, until his lips twitched as he flexed the arm that she was resting on. "I was just thinking that I have lost all feeling in my arm," he teased.

Her eyes widened and her lips parted apologetically before Gabriella shifted so that- she was leaning on her elbow and holding her weight off his limb. "Ooops," she responded with a blush. "I can't help that your arm makes a good pillow."

Shrugging disarmingly, Troy now curled his arm around her waist. "It's a sacrifice that I'm willing to make if it means getting to cuddle a beautiful girl," he charmed and his ego paraded in the further reddening of her cheeks. The flirting was more natural, brasher, than it had been before their relationship had left platonic behind it. Before lingering looks and hesitant caresses had needed to suffice, but now Troy relished being able to woo Gabriella with his words; he took pride in thinking that he had been one of the few people to ever make her believe in her beauty.

Gabriella traced a finger over the line of collarbone peeking out of his V-neck jumper with a bashful grin. "What else were you thinking about?" she probed further, sensing that he was deflecting her questioning for a reason. Expanding the parameters of her relationship with Troy had largely distracted her heart from its lamenting. Her fears about allowing herself to feel something other than pain had sunken back into their malicious pit. It still felt as though there was an icy moat cutting her heart off from the warmth and energy of the blood flowing through her veins. She honestly wondered whether the hole in her heart would ever be filled.

Its presence no longer seared her body with constant pain though.

Troy's lips crinkled at how perceptive she was: he could never distract her thoughts when an idea took hold and it was a curiosity and stubbornness that he was enamoured with. His shoulders slumped slightly as he answered. "I was wondering what you were thinking about." His tone was almost flat and despite the vagueness of his words, Gabriella knew precisely what in particular he was referring to.

Sighing, Gabriella nuzzled her nose against the sleeve of his jumper. "Mainly how – " She searched for the word, "content I feel: how much fun we've had the last two months; how excited I am about starting college again." Gabriella chuckled softly to herself when Troy brushed a kiss against her temple. She sat up and folded her legs under her thighs as she boldly changed tact. "My Mom loved a good romantic novel, you know, and she adored Les Miserables. Even towards the end she always remembered that damn story," she paused to roll her eyes and nibbled her lips as she contemplated how to continue.

Troy's eyes twinkled with mischievous bliss at the blush that crossed her cheeks. "Marius and Cosette, love at first sight?" Troy questioned.

"Yeah..."

Gabriella's insides crackled at the smirk teasing Troy's lips as he raised his eyebrows at her. "Wonder why you decided to bring that up, out of the blue?" he joked. "I know this great story," he charmed, desiring a greater part in this next chapter of their lives. "Once upon a time there was this girl, -" He narrowed his eyes in insult when Gabriella snorted and interrupted his story-telling.

"'This girl'?" Gabriella mocked. "Eloquent as always, Troy."

Not leaving her the opportunity to continue teasing him, Troy pinched Gabriella's lips closed with his thumb and forefinger. "Shush! You've interrupted my creative flow now," he proclaimed overdramatically. "Once upon a time there was an extremely beautiful, kind, intelligent, funny, if sometimes a bit mean, girl," Troy began again and his eyes danced with mirth when Gabriella's own bulged at his final addition to the list of qualities. "She was really sad because some crappy stuff had happened to her and she'd moved to a big city to try and start again. She loved to write so one day she wandered around trying to find somewhere quiet to try and sort out her head. She found a coffee shop, arguably employing the best barista in town, and sauntered in, completely unaware of the fact that she was about to knock the poor guy for six." His cheeky smile had dimmed into an almost bashful one as he continued. "She walked right up to the counter, distracting the guy from his newspaper, and the guy almost forgot what coffee was in the first place." Troy hesitated as Gabriella's eyes softened and the joking nature of the past few minutes evaporated. "Does this sound familiar?" he murmured.

"Is this the one where the coffee guy makes the girl smile for the first time in an eternity?" A deep-rose stain diffused across her cheeks as she suggested the tale's continuation.

Smiling, Troy softly marked the perimeter of her blush with the pad of his thumb. "Maybe: my version's the one where the coffee guy can't stop thinking about the girl and watching the girl and wanting more than anything to be with the girl, even though they've barely spoken."

"Your version is a bit more romantic than mine," Gabriella admitted awkwardly. "In my version the girl's kinda too embarrassed and oblivious at first to realise that – " Her words trailed off into nothing and she shrugged in order to fill the void with meaning. "Because, you know, the guy is sort of cute and has these amazing, sapphire-like blue eyes that she can't get out of her head and he says the most adorable things and it made the girl all flustered and unable to realise what's going on."

Troy laughed. "What was going on?" he asked and his voice was so unintentionally seductive that, for just a moment, Gabriella thought he had managed to charm the breeze into blissful submission.

It was rare that Gabriella would be the forthright one in their relationship. So many things had been perfect since they had become a couple: so natural and unassuming. The laughter and giggles had flowed more freely: no longer reined in by the nervousness and fear of unrequitement. When she really thought about it, deep down inside she had known for a long time that Troy's feelings for her went beyond mere friendship. It had been his innate understanding of her, his knowledge that she needed time and his anxiety about frightening her off, that had nearly always stopped him from making the first move at times like this; even today. Their relationship had evolved so much; they had experienced and explored and erupted with happiness, and yet he still worried about pushing her too far.

He knew that the acknowledgement of each milestone was another first without her Mother by her side.

He knew how much that fact destroyed her.

Gabriella stared into Troy's eyes, she saw the answer and the knowledge reflected in his translucent irises, and it only strengthened her conviction. Perhaps the earnest of the moment would have been more appropriate for her revelation: their first kiss had been utterly emotion-wrought; their first time making-love had been intense and devoted. She couldn't keep her lips from twitching though as she realised that Troy knew exactly what she had meant. He had known just as long as she had and had probably felt it himself even longer.

"She was falling in love." Gabriella giggled at Troy's exploding grin.

"She was, was she?" he murmured delightedly into her skin as he dropped his head to rest in the crook of her neck.

Gabriella nodded and pressed a kiss to his forehead. "Completely and utterly."

He danced butterfly kisses along the curve of her neck before raising his head and attempting to speak through his euphoric grin. "Can I tell you a secret?" he whispered into the breeze. "My guy kinda fell in love with your girl the moment that she walked into the coffee shop." Troy waited to gauge her reaction; his next phrase hesitated waveringly on the tip of his tongue. A chocolate ring of delight shimmered around the edge of Gabriella's pupils and spurred Troy into continuing. "I love you, Gabriella."

Her resulting smile stretched muscles that Gabriella had never even known existed. "I love you too, Troy." Ecstasy crawled up her spine and made her shiver in the echo of the words. She carried on smiling as she caught Troy watching her, anticipating that some sort of dark cloud would settle over her. Gabriella's smile dimmed, but it didn't disappear. "I know," she murmured, answering his unvoiced concerned. As she paused and the obvious words lingered in the air between them, she cocked her head thoughtfully. "You know how much I wish she was here." Gabriella shrugged helplessly and one of her hands busied itself twirling a piece of grass around her finger until it snapped. "It's funny..." When her eyes casually met Troy's she couldn't help but giggle at how inappropriate her choice of wording was. "Not funny, definitely not funny. Peculiar is a better word. But, you know, it's peculiar how much it used to hurt to think about what had happened. Physically it hurt to know that Mom wasn't here anymore. It was like the worst heartburn you could imagine and it consumed me. But now...it makes me sad to think about it. I still can't stand the thought that I am never ever going to see her again. Sometimes it makes me cry and it still stops me from falling asleep a lot of the time but at some point along the line it's stopped being painful." She sighed loudly as she looked up at Troy again and she smiled as she felt him squeeze her hand in his. She hadn't even noticed him reach across to wrap her small hand in his larger one. "I've never been in love before; she'd have wanted to see it. She loved a good fairy tale and maybe I'm being naive but this feels about as fairy tale as real life can get."

A boyish grin charmed Troy's lips as he stroked a hand through the front strands of Gabriella's hair. "Even though I don't have a trusty white steed with which to save you from dragons?"

Gabriella laughed and her eyes shined coyly before she responded. "You do have an unreliable, white truck though."

"Well if my truck doesn't get us back home now we'll know why." His eyebrows furrowed as he answered her unvoiced question. "She's sensitive you know."

Snorting, Gabriella played with his fingers before bringing them to her lips and kissing the digits. "That truck would have been the only thing my Mom would have disliked about you," she giggled. "She would have thought you were so dreamy," Gabriella informed him, shuddering at the word. "It would have been so embarrassing. We really were friends, you know, but she took it way too far when she tried to talk about boys with me."

Troy smiled softly at the look of horror on her face. "You know, my Grandpa died when I was pretty young really: he smoked like a chimney and paid the price, I suppose. I only have really vague memories of him, but when I was younger and my Nanna would leave me in the kitchen or the front of the store for a minute, she always warned that Pops would be watching me. She said she always knew when I'd done something I wasn't supposed to because he would tell her." Troy shrugged. "Mostly she was trying to scare me, but I know she really believes that he is still there with her." His fingers tangled in her hair as he momentarily desisted from combing his fingers through her waves. "Your Mom's probably watching us now, keeping an eye on you."

A rueful smile smoothed over Gabriella's lips at the thought. "I'd like to think so."

Her eyebrows creased suspiciously at the smirk that made its way onto Troy's face. "Although," he began in a mysteriously gravelly tone. "You just told me that you love me." He had to break off at the grin that burst over her features again. "And I told you that I love you too." Both of their smiles curved even more widely. "And you keep smiling like that and I have wanted to kiss you so badly since you first said it. The problem is that we're lying down and I'm pretty delirious really and I'm just not sure that I'll be able to stay coherent long enough to pay attention to what my hands are doing." Gabriella blushed and rolled her eyes at the seductive gleam in his eyes. "I really don't think your Mom would be happy seeing that."

His thumb brushed across her temple a few times as he tilted her head downwards to meet his poised lips. "I love you, Gabriella Montez," he repeated again softly against her mouth.

A kiss can be a lot of things. For Troy and Gabriella it was butterflies and fireworks, glittering love and blazing passion. It was a healing full-stop placed at the end of a chapter. It was the decorated opening of a new one.

Gabriella could sense the future now; she no longer felt cut off from it. She had realised that the past might define her, but that it didn't have to imprison her. With each step that Gabriella took, the weight of absence and the past would make her footstep tread that much noticeably deeper. It would leave a more lasting imprint in the ground.

She would never stop longing for her parents to be back by her side. She would always wish that they were there to share her joy, to divide her sorrow. Gabriella wondered whether it would ever stop being instinct to want to turn to them when something new and exciting happened.

Troy was a good start.