Disclaimer: I do not own Sonny with a Chance or Twitter.
IMPORTANT: Please do not skip the author's note at the end of this chapter.
That was the day when he had actually looked at those flowers closely. That was the day he had begun appreciating their presence.
And ever since that day, those flowers were reminders to Chad of all things beautiful. More than anything, they brought back the memories of the dance that had taught him romance. He smiled reminiscently.
"I knew it!" Portlyn's triumphant voice broke through his thoughts. He looked at her startled.
"Knew what?"
"Knew that you associate these flowers with Sonny. See, you're in love with her"
Chad finally understood what Portlyn was trying to say. Being in love enhanced the beauty of and brought appreciation to otherwise subtle things like flowers.
Ok, so maybe he was in love. Most probably.
Chad had spent more than one night, tossing around on his bed, wondering what was happening to him (he would do something nice, something highly image-damaging for Sonny on a whim and then in hindsight he would realize how idiotic he must have seemed, but would then revert to feeling happy anyway because Sonny would have smiled); wondering why Sonny had suddenly become the primary focus in his life; wondering what people meant when they said that he had changed.
Now he knew the supposed one-word answer to all these questions: love.
His love for Sonny had not been a spur of moment realization. Rather, it had been coming on for a few days. But he had to give Portlyn credit, because, had it not been for her prodding, he might not have reached the penultimate step of admitting it to himself for several months.
"So when are you going to tell Sonny?"
"Tell Sonny what?"
"That you're in love with her"
"I never said I was in love with her"
"You are unbelievable Chad! You know that you're in love, I know that you're in love, you know that I know that you're in love. What's the point in denying it?"
It wasn't as easy as Portlyn made it out to be. He had never been great at dealing with emotions, let alone having light-toned conversations about them.
It was so ironic that it was virtually comical, that he worked on Mackenzie Falls, where love happened in almost every episode, where he, Mackenzie, articulately, fluently confessed his love to Penelope or Chloe every other episode and yet, when it was happening to him in real life, he felt like he was lost in some alien land, left all alone to find his way through vast expanses of unknown terrains.
"Why do you girls like talking about emotions so much? The more uncomfortable I feel, the more you seem to want to talk about it. Why can't you talk about something cool like soccer or cars?"
"Come on Chad, I never really imagined even for a second that you would fall in love before me, that you would get to tell me all this. I always thought that it would be the other way round: me telling you about the whole falling-in-love experience and you nodding your head, totally clueless. So this is just so exciting… come on, tell me when you're going to tell her"
"Portlyn"
"Yeah?"
"Stop talking. Or else…or else your job will be in jeopardy"
She laughed.
"Empty threat Chadford"
"Don't call me Chadford and seriously, the only topics you're allowed to talk about from now on are Mackenzie Falls, how awesome I am and how cool my new Ford Mustang is. If you don't have anything to say about them, then do me a favor and just shut up"
Portlyn glared at him and said, "Stupid boys! What do you guys have against romance?"
Chad didn't answer her. He badly needed a respite from the intensity of the subject. Maybe he could go see Sonny. He strolled out towards the So Random! sets.
As he approached the prophouse, he could see two girls standing in the corridor, apparently in serious discussion. The girl with her back towards him was clearly Sonny, her beautiful hair bouncing because of all the nodding she was doing. He would recognize those red tinged brown waves anywhere. The other girl seemed vaguely familiar too. Who was she? Oh yeah… she was Leslie. He wondered what business Sonny could possibly have with her.
Just then, Sonny waved to Leslie and turned, Chad assumed, to head towards the prophouse. The discussion seemed to be over. Leslie lingered there for a second, apparently absorbed in thoughts, then turned around and headed towards where Chad stood, perhaps to go to her sets.
Chad quickly slipped into a smaller pathway, hoping Leslie wouldn't notice him. Portlyn had already used up his tolerance quota for the day. He did not have enough endurance left to manage Leslie too. He wanted to see only Sonny.
Thankfully, he reached the prophouse unnoticed by Leslie.
Sonny was seated on the couch. There were several photos scattered on the table in front of her. A huge album lay open on her lap. Her sight flickered back and forth between the photos and the album.
"Hey Sonny"
"Chad" she looked up and gave him a smile.
"Looks like somebody remembered the way to the prophouse again", she muttered, her eyes back on the album.
Chad smirked.
"Looks like somebody missed me"
Sonny's cheeks turned a baby pink. She crossed her arms and determinedly looked the other way.
"Nobody missed anybody"
Her words said something, but her body language said something else altogether. Her demeanor was defiant and expressed a trace of anger. Chad smiled. She must have really missed him if she could get angry at him for bringing it up.
"No, but Sonny missed Chad", he said.
Sonny smiled. Something about the way he linked their names together in a single sentence tugged at her heart.
"No, she did not", she said, looking at him. Her heart skipped a beat.
"Yes, she did", he replied, without breaking the eye contact.
"Did not"
"Did too"
"Did not"
"Did too"
"Did not"
"Did too"
"Did not"
"Did too"
"Did not"
"Okay fine, drop it…so…what are you doing with all these?", Chad asked gesturing to the scattered photographs.
"Actually, I was going to make a scrapbook of all the good times I had in Wisconsin; but then I just got caught up in looking at the photographs and reliving all the memories and couldn't get anything done."
"So then show them to me, tell me about your life before Hollywood"
Sonny was pleased that Chad seemed genuinely interested in her life. She opened her album and gestured Chad to sit next to her.
He sat down and looked at the photos. He was amazed by the measures Sonny had seemingly taken to make the album look good.
All the pictures had hand-drawn abstract patterns as backdrops.
"See…this is Lucy …my best friend…the girl who had attended your 16th birthday party, remember?"
"Ahh, yes, the one because of whom you refused to attend the bash. Yeah, I remember", Chad replied a little icily.
"Aww Chad, I am sorry about it"
"Fine"
"Fine"
"Good"
"Good. And see, this is a picture of my glass painting. It now hangs in daddy's room because he liked it so much", Sonny said proudly.
Chad simply shrugged and said, "It's alright"
Sonny glared at him.
"Fine, its kind of nice. Happy?"
"Not if you didn't really mean it"
"I did mean it, it actually is quite fine-looking. It's just that I'm not much into arts, Sonny. But I am impressed by this artistic side of yours" Sonny nodded, unsurprised.
"And by the way, what's with you and flowers?", Chad asked, alluding to her painting.
Sonny laughed.
"Chad, I am a girl. And girls like flowers"
"This is my full-family", she continued, pointing to a picture on the left. Chad looked at it closely. There was the brown-haired guy in it!
"Hey, who's this guy?"
"Oh I forgot to introduce Jake to you, right? He's my brother"
"Brother?", Chad asked, shocked.
Meanwhile, at Sonny's house:
Jake Munroe was getting increasingly restless. He peered into the kitchen and silently watched his mother cooking for thirty seconds. Then,
"Mom, I am bored"
"Read, go watch So random!, browse the internet. Just stop pestering me every other minute so I can make lunch before tomorrow"
Then Jake remembered about his Tawni Diary. It had been a long time since he wrote in it. And he could do it only in Sonny's absence. So why not now?
He switched on his laptop and logged in to his Twitter account. He looked at Tawni's latest tweets and the number of followers she had. He took out his diary and checked it against the number he had predicted for the month. It was off merely by 278. He smiled to himself. He knew that it was an exponential curve from his careful observations of the number of followers she had each day. He calculated next month's number and wrote it down.
Then, he turned his attention to her tweets.
The latest one said, "Bought a terracotta show piece yesterday. It looks almost as lovely as me :)"
So she liked terracotta works? He added 'terracotta' below 'Prada shoes' on the page titled 'Tawni's likes'.
He then googled for news on Tawni. A particular one caught his eye 'Tawni Hart still looking for the man of her dreams'. He smiled. She would find him soon.
A/N:
This is about the next update. There's an examination result release right around the corner. It is a huge thing for me. I will be affected by it, one way or the other. So I don't think I'll be able to write for a few days. So I don't know when the next update will be. Most probably not in the next week. Sorry guys :(
For those of you who skipped the previous author's notes, I suggest you go back and read them because you might have missed the background information on some characters. It'll help you understand the story better.
Review please :)
