I'm not going to bother you guys with a super long note this time. However, you should know that, although I'm done with school, I'm heading into a pretty busy summer. The rest of May should be pretty easy going, but I'm heading to Texas in June to visit my brother and sister-in-law (and to babysit my beautiful nephew!) for a few weeks, Pennsylvania for a couple days in July, and work and friends the rest of the time. Luckily, the trips I'm taking do allow time for me to write, so I will be cranking out new chapters for ya'll.
I hope you enjoy this interlude (a break between arcs that doesn't really contribute to the main story but offers some insights as to what will come). I had a blast writing it and I'm hoping it will leave you with questions.
Enjoy!
Summary: The cast of Mackenzie Falls and the paparazzi: two things you don't want in your relationship when you're dating Chad Dylan Cooper. The cast of Mackenzie Falls and the paparazzi: two things you will have in your relationship when you're dating Chad Dylan Cooper
Disclaimer: Me no own, you no sue. (Anything you recognize is not mine. Anything you don't recognize probably is mine. Probably.)
Four Seasons
By EmbracingRain
Interlude One
Goodbyes
Zora
Textbooks of varying colors and sizes were packed into a bright red backpack, a schedule of advance classes was written neatly in a planner. Zora smiled to herself as she wedged her cold cut catapult and a Gassie lunchbox into the bag as well, officially overstuffing it to the point where it was almost unable to zip. Her friends (especially Tawni and Grady) all thought she was crazy for spending her summer at an advanced academics camp, but Zora had a thirst for knowledge that refused to be quenched and the program was allowing her to skip a couple of grades. If she played her cards right, she wouldn't have to go back to class with Miss Bitterman when filming for next season started up. And that was something the pint-sized genius was looking forward to. Immensely.
Looking around to make sure she hadn't forgot to pack anything, Zora then headed for the door, waving to Sonny and Chad on her way out of the prop house.
"Bye, guys!" Zora called, edging closer to the door. She was well aware of the fact that Sonny was a hugger and she didn't want to risk missing her flight out of California just because of a hug.
"Aw. Bye, Zora," Sonny replied with a bright smile. "Have fun!"
"How will she possibly have fun?" Chad asked, not looking away from the TV (a promotion for the Mackenzie Falls season finale was on. Of course he wasn't looking away). "She's spending her summer learning. That's just…" The drama king trailed off but shuddered theatrically to make his point.
Sonny's smile faltered and Zora rolled her eyes.
"You might benefit from a few college courses, Chad," Zora suggested.
He snorted. "Nope. Huh-uh! I done did my learnin', wee one."
"And apparently your grammar teacher was stellar."
"She might be right, Chad," Sonny put in. "I'm taking a few online once I finish Bitterman's courses in the fall."
"Let me explain something to you, Sunshine," Chad began condescendingly. "My face and college do not mix. I'm too handsome for it."
There was a long, uncomfortable pause during which Sonny and Zora both gaped at Chad in obvious disbelief. Zora had read about people saying education was for ugly people, she'd seen it on TV, but never had she actually witnessed it being said in real life. For a while, it had seemed like the saying was just a myth.
"You are unbelievable!" Sonny finally exclaimed and Chad looked at her, bewildered. "Education is not for ugly people, Chad Dylan Cooper! It's for people who…"
Zora didn't hear the rest of Sonny's lecture as she had quickly sprinted out of the room as fast as her bulging backpack would allow her; she didn't want to be around for the impending argument. Passing Tawni as she exited the prop house, Zora called out a goodbye over her shoulder and the blonde replied distractedly but in kind. She stopped by the commissary on her way out of the studio, knowing Grady and Nico would be there eyeing the new, pretty cashier.
"Hey, Zora," Nico said as said girl sat down at the table he and Grady had claimed. "Gettin' ready to leave?"
"Yup," Zora said with a pleased grin. "Three months with my fellow S.T.A.R.S… Can't get better than that."
"We're your fellow stars," Grady reasoned. "You're not spending three months with us."
"S-T-A-R-S," Zora spelled aloud. "It stands for 'Students That Are Really Smart.'"
"Yeah…" Nico said with a raised eyebrow. "You have fun with that."
"I will. Are you two still watching that Shelly girl?"
"We're not watching her!" Grady exclaimed.
"It's called observin'," Nico said with a hushed voice. "Now keep yo voice down!"
"Either way, it's really creepy. You should just talk to her. I guarantee you she'd be more interested in one of you. Maybe," Zora said pragmatically before leaving the commissary with her heavy backpack, excited for her break from filming. The prospects this summer camp opened up were enticing and very nearly once-in-a-lifetime. And maybe she'd make some friends who understood her mad genius.
Grady
"Okay, then…then who gets GI John for the summer?" Grady demanded, holding the action figure under Nico's nose.
"I don't know, man," Nico said, sidestepping his friend and continuing to pack random things he'd brought to the studio from his apartment. Several unwashed shirts and a couple of dog-eared comic books found their way into the duffle bag in Nico's hand.
"Doesn't it matter to you where GI John spends his summer?"
"Dude, it's an action figure," Nico said. "Quit actin' like we got shared custody of it. We ain't a divorced couple!"
"I can't believe you aren't taking his feelings into account!"
"Grady, man, I don't have time for this. I gotta get back to my apartment and finish packin' so I don't miss my flight."
Grady watched as Nico sped around their shared dressing room, gathering his things. Truth be told, Grady had been trying to pick fights with everyone this week to make saying goodbye easier. Tawni had been the easiest. All he'd had to do was tell her that her dress made her look fat and she'd freaked. Zora didn't care enough to argue. She was more concerned with her summer camp that saying goodbye to her friends was in the furthest recesses of her mind. Sonny was the most difficult. In fact, she had seen his goal straightaway and told him that she wouldn't be arguing with him. It was hard to pick a fight with Sonny. She was always so perky and chill. Maybe Grady would have to start taking pointers from Chad. He somehow always managed to tick her off temporarily.
"Fine," he pouted. "Fine, you go off and have your fancy adventure trying to revamp your one man show. Me and GI John'll just…sit at home and listen to my brother rag on me all summer."
"Would ya quit tryin' to pick fights with everyone? It's only a few months," Nico said, zipping up his bag. "And it's not like we won't talk. You're bein' more dramatic than Chad." He shook his head and scoffed.
Grady gasped overdramatically. "You take that back!" he exclaimed, pointing a finger at his best friend and dropping GI John to the floor.
"Exhibit A," Nico said. "Look, have a good break and ignore your brother. I'm gonna be late for my flight if I don't leave now. I'll talk to you later man." And with that, he was gone.
Grady sighed and flopped down on the couch after picking his action figure up off the floor. "Well, John," he said forlornly. "Looks like it's you, me, and my brother. You ready for that?…Yeah, me either."
Nico
"Hey, Nico."
Said teen looked around at the sound of his name, finding nobody near him until he looked down at the curb. Chloe was sitting on the pavement by herself, cell phone in hand. She was actually kind of cute, Nico thought as he sat down next to her. Chloe wasn't like the other Mackenzie Falls girls, she actually had a personality and she was genuine. Which was more than he could say for Portlyn.
"Hey, Chloe. What's up?"
"Just waiting for my mom. She's taking me home."
"Where's home?"
"Denver."
"You're a Colorado girl," Nico said with a smile. "Very nice."
Chloe's cheeks turned a bit pink. "Thanks," she said, fiddling self-consciously with the bow in her hair. "What about you? What are you doing for the next few months?"
"I'm tryin' to breathe new life into my one man show. Goin' back to my comedic roots. I kinda figured that now that I've got some sort of celebrity what with bein' on So Random! maybe it'll do better. Hope I'm right," Nico replied, laughing half-heartedly.
"I bet it'll be great," Chloe said with a reassuring smile.
"Y'know," Nico said slowly as an idea dawned on him, "I'm gonna be in Denver with the show for a weekend. Maybe I could get ya a ticket. I mean, only if ya wanted to see it…" He let the sentence trail off into oblivion uncertainly and Chloe's face lit up.
"I'd love that!"
"Really? You'd wanna go?"
"Absolutely," she said. "If you have time, maybe we could hang out or something, too."
Nico stared at the girl next to him in disbelief for a few seconds before realizing that she was now looking at him in a highly embarrassed way. "That'd be great," he said quickly, just as a sleek, silver SUV pulled up to the curb.
"Okay! Um…I guess…text me?" Chloe asked as she stood up and shouldered her purse.
Nico followed suit. "Definitely. I will definitely be in touch."
"Alright. Well…bye, Nico," she said before getting into the lingering SUV with an awkwardly adorable wave.
"Chloe, huh?" a male voice said, and Nico felt someone clap him on his back. He looked around to see Devon standing there with an approving look on his face. "Nice, dude."
"She's cool…right?" Nico asked, unwilling for a repeat performance of a girl like Portlyn.
"Much better than Portlyn, if that's what you were thinking. I mean, you might be a little geeky for her but y'know. To each his own, I guess."
Tawni
"Guess where I'm going!" Tawni shrieked as she burst into the dressing room she so unwillingly shared with Sonny.
Sonny glanced up from her magazine with an unenthused look that her blonde costar conveniently missed. "Gee, Tawni, I don't know."
"Morocco with Kyle, my Teen Gladiator hunk," Tawni gushed, sinking onto her chaise lounge with a lovesick sigh. Visions of her boyfriend's glorious muscles glistening with water from the ocean swam through her head. "We're going to Casablanca, Sonny."
"Really? I mean, you guys just got back together a week ago," Sonny said, setting her magazine aside to focus on her semi-friend. "Are you sure you're ready to go on a trip to a different country with him?"
"I love him, Sonny!" Tawni insisted. "How dare you question that! We're going to be like Humphrey Bogart and Ingrid Bergman in Casablanca. It's going to be so romantic!"
"You do know what happens in the end of that movie, right?" Sonny queried with a raised eyebrow. "I mean, they don't get a happy ending. He ships her off to Lisbon with her husband and he's stuck with his friend. Not to mention the fact that Ingrid Bergman almost shoots Humphrey Bogart… Their relationship just had 'disaster' written all over it from the beginning."
Tawni "humph-"ed and stood up from her chair with a toss of her hair before stomping over to the door. "You always ruin everything, Sonny! I hope you have a terrible, terrible time in Wisconsin!" she exclaimed as she stormed out of the room.
Chad and Sonny
"I can't believe you're spending your entire break from shooting Mackenzie Falls in Italy and Florida. We're not gonna see each other for, like, three months."
"It's not like I'm going on vacation, Sunshine," Chad said, pressing a kiss to the top of Sonny's head as he added another shirt to the suitcase that was sitting next to her on his bed. "I'm working."
"On a movie," Sonny said gloomily. She began to refold the clothing in Chad's suitcase. His haphazard way of packing really bothered her. He was one of those secretly messy people who always had an immaculate apartment on the surface, but when you looked in his drawers and cabinets…talk about a disaster of epic proportions!
"I'll be back before you know it. And it's not like you're not going anywhere."
"I'm going to Wisconsin, Chad," Sonny said flatly. "That's like spending three months in a box compared to Italy."
"You get to see your brother and your nephew, though. And your sister-in-law. You can go shopping with her and Lucy or something," Chad said with a shrug before disappearing into his walk-in closet.
Sonny sat there on his bed, picking at a thread on one of the t-shirts Chad had tossed into his suitcase. Her boyfriend was going out of the country to film a movie with three drop-dead-gorgeous girls and it didn't even seem like he'd miss her one bit. Of course, given the fact that he was Chad and sometimes he just didn't think about stuff that until it was staring him down, Sonny wasn't really surprised.
"It's just…" Sonny began when Chad finally emerged from his closet with more clothes and began packing them. "I'm gonna miss you," she admitted, keeping her eyes on the shirt in her hands.
"Oh, Sunshine," Chad said quietly, prying the article of clothing from her hands gently. "I'll miss you, too, babe."
Sonny snorted. "Please. You're going to Italy with the Boobie Triplets. You won't be thinking about me."
"The Boobie Triplets?" Chad repeated, amused by Sonny's rare showing of jealousy and immaturity. He moved the suitcase off his bed and sat down next to Sonny.
"What?" Sonny asked defensively. "They're always walking around with their boobs hanging out. It's a logical nickname."
Chad shook his head, choosing to ignore the comment in favor of solving the problem before him. "Of course I'm gonna miss you, Sonny. Those girls don't make me laugh. They're not as amazing as you. I can't be just Chad around them, y'know? I have to be Chad Dylan Cooper. You're smart and beautiful and funny; you'd better believe I'm gonna miss you." He was veering into dangerously cheesy territory and he knew it, but he also knew that nine times out of ten cheesy speeches made Sonny laugh.
This, however, was the one time where Sonny didn't laugh or even smile. Instead, she flopped back on the bed with a large sigh and muttered, "I'm being stupid," to the ceiling.
"Everyone's allowed an insecure moment or two in a relationship," Chad reasoned. "Especially after what we just experienced."
Sonny finally smiled. "I don't deserve you."
"Yeah," he replied with a slight laugh dripping with sarcasm. "You deserve better."
He felt like it was true. Of all the girls in Hollywood, Sonny Munroe was probably the only one who didn't deserve to put up with his ego and his pompous attitude. Most days, he honestly didn't understand how she liked him.
"Don't be so down on yourself, Chad. You're a much better person and boyfriend than you give yourself credit for," Sonny said. "As long as you trust yourself, I trust you."
And that's the end of Interlude One! I've already started working on the next chapter which introduces Arc Two, the next main storyline in this story. I'm very excited for the introduction of a new character who should be bringing an interesting twist to the plot. It is a character we've never seen before, though they were mentioned in Twelve Months. I'd love to hear your guesses!
As always, reviews are much appreciated. I adore hearing from all of you and will definitely be making more of an effort to reply to reviews now that I'm done with college for the summer. Questions, suggestions, requests, constructive criticism, praise…I love any kind of review but the flame-y kind. Those ones are the ones I just point and laugh at.
Love,
EmbracingRain
