Just A Click Away

Do This Again

"Are you serious?" Gabriella laughed heartily at the confession Troy had made to her. "You have a dog named Basket? That's a little obsessive, don't you think?"

"I was nine when I named her, okay?" Troy rolled his eyes, taking a nibble off of his pepperoni pizza. Gabriella laughed again at the thought that the dog was a girl. Her and Troy were sitting in the pizza parlor; enjoying the pizza that Troy had persuaded his uncle to make for them. His uncle was part Italian (as was Troy's mother), getting his pizza-making skills from his own father.

Trying to get the stringy cheese to separate from the pizza, Troy pulled away, causing a longer strand of cheese to emerge. He rolled the string around his tongue until the cheese was once again tugging. Gabriella watched the scene intently, laughing at the silly faces Troy made in his futile effort to bite off the cheese.

Finally, he put the pizza down, took the long string in his hands, and pulled it apart. While swallowing down the pizza, a look of victory crossed Troy's face. He didn't know why he didn't feel embarrassed in front of Gabriella. But, ever since they 'started over', he felt like he could do or say anything around Gabriella and not feel like a complete idiot.

"You know," Gabriella took another small bite of her pizza. "I understand that frustration. I pulled off the entire top of my pizza off when I came here the other day with Taylor."

"At least you didn't do that in front of your prom date," Troy cracked an amused grin, getting another round of giggles from Gabriella. "Oh, and for senior prom, I tried that spaghetti trick from Lady and the Tramp. Yeah, well, I thought I had found part of a noodle that she was slurping. I took that end, slurped it really hard, and the other end came shooting out of the pasta, smacking across my face. Turned out it wasn't the same noodle."

Gabriella was sipping her soda, nearly choking on it in her laughter.

"Did it leave a spaghetti sauce streak across your face?" Gabriella gulped down the remnants hard, trying to not start laughing again.

"It didn't get on my face near as much as it had splattered across my date's dress," he took another bite of pizza with a smug smile, being much more cautious about the thick cheese. "Needless to say, prom was one of the last times I did that."

"Well, my senior prom date didn't understand the concept of dancing," Gabriella chuckled. "The only two words he knew of were 'make' and 'out'. That's why I left the prom early."

"So you missed out?" Troy asked curiously. He felt a bit of resentment towards himself – he hadn't even noticed that she'd left. The prom had been years ago, but he could remember it clearly. Gabriella hadn't crossed his mind once that night.

"Not really. Taylor had the same problem, so we went to my house and piled on the sweets while watching movies," Gabriella shrugged. "It was really no big deal."

"But don't most girls consider their senior prom the time of their life?" Troy finished his first slice of pizza, wiping his mouth off.

"Only if you plan on... indulging in activities that your parents would be astonished at," Gabriella replied, quoting what Troy had told her back at the coffee house.

"Oh," Troy instantly got the point Gabriella was trying to get at. "Sorry about that."

"It's fine," Gabriella nodded, getting her next slice of pizza. "I needed a distraction that night, and there you were."

"By the way, I don't think that you had just work going on that night," Troy pointed out. It was tearing him apart inside knowing that she had no idea that Baskethead was him. "Were you meeting someone?" He raised his eyebrow, wanting to know exactly how Gabriella would explain it.