LOVE, CHAD
Chad could not have put his excitement into words for a million bucks the morning after he'd had Tay deliver the note to Gabi. It was a decisive choice. If she despised him, she would say no once and for all. The prospect of closure was both exhilarating and frightening. Gabriella Montez had more class than to tell anyone about the note if she didn't respond to Chad's feelings, which meant he had nothing to fear – if she rejected him, he still had Tay to fall back on. If she didn't, Troy had always said Taylor was a cute girl.
He imagined himself kissing Gabi in parks instead of Troy, standing on her porch embracing, smelling her flowery perfume, feeling her silky hair. He could practically have fainted from joy when he saw Gabi coming in alone, sans Troy, completely free. He hid behind his locker door until she came and playfully rapped on it. She was smiling, such a good sign, grinning, actually, her cheeks rosy and her eyes lively. He couldn't wait to hear how she was going to phrase her acceptance of his love. Would she say something about her long-living desire, her covert dreams…?
But Gabriella did not pronounce undying love to Chad as students began to filter in through the doors and towards their lockers. Instead, she said brightly, "It's so great that you and Taylor are back together, Chad!" she kissed his forehead and went away, leaving behind a cloud of perfume.
Chad was frozen; he felt his eyes well up and impatiently brushed away sissy tears. She had rejected him. She had totally ignored his note, acted like he didn't exist, completely flicked him off and…
The bell rang, startling him. He grabbed all of his books and fled down the hall, ignoring the laughter around him, sure that the laughter was directed at him…
Gabriella Montez had rejected him. He no longer had any hope, any chance, of ever being with her…
Chad was still puzzlingly grumpy after he got back with Tay. He acted the same, but nobody seemed willing to notice; everyone was too busy pretending that it was all over, it had never happened, everything was perfectly normal. They were too happy that things had gotten set back in their place to notice that Chad was just as unhappy as he'd been before breaking up with Taylor.
She was acting irritatingly clingy, which bugged the heck out of him, but he didn't say anything; he was too busy gazing at Gabi as she lapped her affections on Troy and he responded in kind. He thought he would, but he ended up not resenting Troy. It wasn't his fault; if Chad had Gabi, he'd hang on to her just as tightly, maybe even more.
He had figured by then his frustration would never mend. He would always wonder what Gabi had thought of the note. Well, obviously she'd hated it because she hadn't even acknowledged it. But what if she had? Would she have understood where he was coming from?
He almost broke up with Tay several times. They were barely even dating anymore; he no longer had any romanticism left in his weary heart. He contributed their lack of dates to the fact that he had no car. He decided that, come summer, he would get a job and pretend to be saving up for the car, but never really actually buy it. It was a clever carry-on ruse that he was pretty sure had Tay convinced. He instead took her to fifteen-minute to-go coffees at the Jolt and a bunch of other very unromantic things that seemed to satisfy her. She seemed to be perfectly happy just to be back with him.
After a while, Chad decided on putting on an act. Around everyone else he acted like Taylor was his one true love, cozying up to her, laughing with her, treating her like a princess. She seemed very pleased with his newfound "love". Everyone settled back to normalcy; Chad watched with increasing bitterness. Nobody could ever know except for Gabi, and her in her love for Troy had completely and totally let go of it, acted like it had never happened, like she didn't know his feelings, didn't know about the aching passion in his very soul.
He scared himself with his overly sappy thoughts, terrified himself with his outpourings of sudden emotion, which came like seizures – sadness, anger, a bunch of extremes that terrified him. Luckily, nobody witnessed him at his saddest or angriest or sappiest; he was usually safely holed up in his bedroom, where he wrote a thousand more letters to Gabi, none of which he sent.
School drew to a close, but it flew by for him almost like a couple of days. As the seven weeks came speeding up, so did the end-of-school dance, to which Chad, obviously, took Taylor. They barely danced; she danced more with some anonymous football teamster than she did with Chad, who sulked in a corner drinking too much punch. By the end of the night, Chad had decided to break up with Tay at the start of the next school year unless by some strange miracle, during the summer he came to realize he really did love her.
Which he didn't think was going to happen.
And that was how Chad Danforth dealt with his unexpected and undesired crush, but I guess you need to know the rest of the story to fully understand how it all ended and how it came to the Lava Springs Country Club. So read the next chapter…
