Author's Notes: We're going to start this out pre-Sonny. I apologize Sonny fans, she'll be here before long.
It wouldn't have hit her so hard if the timing hadn't been just right.
Unfortunately, if James Conroy had one thing other than his bad boy image, it was his gift for dramatic timing.
It hadn't been a whirlwind romance, mainly because at first, Tawni refused to have anything to do with the tall boy. Tawni's initial attempts to ward away the playboy had only fueled his ardor. The blonde had found that even throwing things at him didn't do the trick. She had started with food, moved on to books, and ended up with potted plants. No matter what it was, he had the nasty habit of catching and calmly placing down the projectile; and looking amazingly cute while he did so.
So she had agreed to a date. Tawni had sat frigidly throughout the entire outing, eyeing James suspiciously in between frequent glances at a nearby clock. Even under those conditions, the brown haired action star played the part of a gentlemen so perfectly that it only took a week of badgering and three, hurled, potted plants before she agreed to a second date.
That time Tawni still played it cool, but deigned to answer his questions (albeit monosyllabically). And again, through an entire evening of "Yes", "No", and "Maybe" answers he maintained the mantle of a gentleman. And that was probably why she agreed to go out with him immediately after the next time he asked her out. That eagerness had been the beginning of her undoing.
Their third outing would have been considered a normal date by anyone's standards: dinner and a romantic comedy followed by coffee in an outdoor cafe. Anyone's standards except for those of a girl who had gotten into the habit of keeping men at arm's length. Tawni's mother had indoctrinated her in the evil ways of men, backing up her training with the real life example of her deadbeat father.
James had managed to slip past that impenetrable, emotional barrier with the cat-like grace of one of his action characters. His foray into uncharted territory had made every word, every laugh, every brief touch of their hands infinitely more potent than it should have been. With each second that passed, Tawni felt her trust towards the boy deepening. And then, at the end of the date, as they had stood outside of her dressing room door she had allowed herself to remain perfectly still while his lips drifted downwards to tease her own.
After James had disappeared down the hallway, Tawni danced into her room with her face on fire and her heart threatening to fly out of her chest. She dove directly into her red sofa and buried her growing smile into one of her fluffy, pink throw pillows.
She was in the middle of wondering when he was going to ask her out again when her phone began to buzz. A quick glance at its gleaming cover promised a text message from the boy she had just been daydreaming about. After nearly breaking her flip-phone in half due to her rush to read the text message, she immediately regretted her action. She wished she had allowed herself to bask in the glow of her first crush for a little longer before he dumped her via text message.
Tawni wasn't really surprised with the sudden, cold ending. Her mother had warned her that boys were really only interested in the chase and that the moment she gave in they would move on to the next challenge. James was even beginning to develop a reputation for being a playboy. What had she really expected?
She knew she should feel indignant. She was Tawni Hart, the cutest, most talented child actress the studio had ever seen. She was so amazing that the studio executives had created a comedy sketch show just for her to star in! … but she just couldn't summon the rage that normally came to her so easily.
The blond girl wanted to be angry at James for playing a classic game with her heart, but she couldn't summon the strength. Instead she allowed her head to fall back into her pillow, obscuring her face as the sobs began to wrack her body.
Tawni got up hours later, unsure if she had fallen asleep or not. The only thing she knew was that she felt severely dehydrated. The small refrigerator underneath her vanity mirror was empty. Well, it was always empty, but that didn't stop her from kicking it shut. It closed with a satisfying, bombastic slam.
As her gaze drifted back upwards, Tawni was shocked to see an image of herself smiling in the mirror. Mere hours ago, a similar image had smiled back at her from the same position. Only its makeup hadn't been smeared down the sides of her face. Its clothing hadn't looked like it had been slept in. Its eyes didn't look like they were about to cry.
When she noticed her vision beginning to blur, the blond teenager ripped her eyes away from the mirror and began to systematically remove all of the things that reminded her of the date. She huddled over the sink and scrubbed the makeup off of her face, then tore off her clothing and tossed it into and around the closest garbage can.
This time when she looked into the mirror, she found herself clad in only her underwear. After running through a handful of glamorous poses, she came to the obvious conclusion that … she was hot. Who the hell did James think he was to dump her?
There was that indignant feeling she had expected earlier. Tawni was moved by the urge to break something, but nothing around her seemed to be suitable for the task. After all, everything around her all belonged to her. She quickly reached into her closet and pulled out a fistful of clothing. After tossing on a random top and pants, she moved towards her exit with her mind beginning to turn. Where could she go in the middle of the night to privately break someone else's stuff?
On her way to the prop room, Tawny lamented briefly that the only way she could vent was by demolishing inanimate objects. There just wasn't anyone she could talk to anymore. Her "friends" back home had stopped communicating with her once she became famous. Her mom would just take the opportunity to bash on men for another week. Her current dressing roommate was a stuck-up know it all. Nico and Grady were practically gay lovers. And Zora was just … weird. Why couldn't Marshall hire some nice, down-to-earth girl her age who Tawni could unload all of her problems on?
Before the blond girl could begin to imagine what her dream friend would look like, the prop room door stood before her. Gathering all of her rage into her leg, she kicked at the door with all of the force she could muster.
It didn't budge.
Stubbornly ignoring the pain shooting up her leg, Tawni flung the door open … and found herself standing face to face with Grady.
The cast mates shared a pure moment of stunned silence. Neither of the two had expected to find the other at the other side of the opened door in any capacity, let alone these rare forms: Grady not attached at the hip to Nico; Tawni without make-up and dressed in mismatched, loose clothing. The door was slammed shut on Grady's face as the blond teenager regained her senses. The closed door signaled Tawni's brain to start moving. What the hell was the Wonder Klutz doing here? Did that mean Nico was in there too?
Grady was in the process of rubbing feeling back into the nose that Tawni had just slammed a door on when the nose-assaulter herself re-opened the door and breezed past him. The boy turned to find Tawni scouring the room, including some of Zora's favorite hiding places. After shutting the sarcophagus door, Tawni turned her narrowing eyes towards Grady. "You're alone?" she demanded sharply, turning the question into a verbal jab.
The husky boy responded with a nod, not trusting his voice to be below a nervous falsetto.
"Where's Nico?"
"Da … date," squeaked Grady, grimacing at the high pitch of his voice.
"Oh, that's right. He actually has some female fans," said Tawni, her voice trailing off as she walked towards the couch. Now that she wasn't searching for people she noticed the paused video game on the big screen television, the opened bag of potato chips, and the half empty 2-liter of Coke. It felt like she was interrupting some kind of ritual. Aiming a smirk at Grady, she asked, "Do this a lot, huh?"
"Friday is kinda Nico's date night," answered Grady, his voice pitch thankfully under control.
"Stupid date nights," cursed Tawni under her breath. The blond girl fell backwards onto the couch and began to devour the chips one at a time, making sure to completely swallow the chewed up chip before placing a new one in her mouth.
The boy stood fixed in place as he attempted to figure out what he should be doing at the moment. After flirting briefly with the idea of telling Tawni his newest joke about the naked chihuahua and the dancing monkey, Grady narrowed it down to two options. The first was that he could open the door behind him, enter the hallway, and escape screaming at the top of his lungs. The other was that he could calmly walk next to Tawni, making sure to avoid eye contact, sit down as far away from her as he possibly could, and attempt to continue his paused game. While the first option appealed to the non-confrontational core of his being, he realized that he hadn't saved his video game in hours, and leaving the video game system on overnight could have dire consequences.
A life without video games wasn't something he was willing to endure, so he began to creep towards the couch taking small, hopefully inaudible steps. Grady had made it halfway towards his controller when Tawni looked up and hit him with a potent glare. She didn't say a word, but that look's meaning was hardwired into the male psyche. It meant go away. Now.
Grady was on his way out of the room with his tail between his legs lamenting both the loss of hours of work and the possible damage to his gaming system when he heard Tawni call out, "Wait."
She wasn't entirely sure why she didn't want him to leave. If she had tried to rationalize it, it had been most likely due to the fact that she was beginning to feel more lonely with every step he took towards the door. The girl seemed to be experiencing something similar to empathy with Grady, who always seemed like a lost puppy without Nico by his side. When Grady turned to look at her, she pointed towards the reclining easy chair next to her with the same commanding presence of her glare. He had no choice but to lumber into the designated spot.
Once he sat down on the chair seat, the ranting floodgates were opened.
The floodgates closed hours later for reasons unclear to either of the teenagers. There were still plenty of supplies, considering Tawni had stopped at around 5 chips and hadn't touched the Coke bottle at all, and the girl certainly hadn't run out of things to talk about. It almost felt like he had attended a planned out seminar. She had begun ranting about James, but had branched out into a general dissertation on the evils of men. Tawni seemed to know the subject extremely well, and by the end of her speech Grady was even starting to hate himself a little.
There was no real announcement that Tawni was done speaking. She could have very easily segued into the average male's general lack of refinement. Instead, she merely stopped speaking and looked at Grady oddly. She hadn't really expected him to stay throughout the entire lecture, but he had; and she realized that she was feeling a lot better right now because of it. And she hadn't even broken anything.
Tawni tended to avoid feelings of gratitude thanks to a peerless sense of entitlement, but she found that she just couldn't dodge the emotion in this instance. Still, it left a bad taste in her mouth to feel that way towards the most gross, least attractive of her cast mates. Suddenly finding her gaze averted away from Grady, she warned, "If you tell anyone that you saw me like this," her hand swept from her head downwards to indicate her disheveled state, "I'll take one of Zora's axes to your face." Tawni then exited the room wrapped up in a convincing, fake huff of anger that felt more like embarrassment.
After Tawni had stormed out of the room, Grady finally allowed himself to peek at an overhanging clock. He felt like some of Nico's essential "Tips for Dealing With the Ladies" had just saved his life. Take for instance the "Don't fall asleep while the lady is talking. And no, you can't watch television or play video games either. Man, just listen when the lady is talking, okay?" rule. Grady had a feeling that if he had broken that rule at any point, Tawni would have come at him like a multi-fisted, blond whirlwind of pain and screeches. Instead she had just sat there and talked to him nonchalantly, almost as if they were equals. He said almost because she had been the only one speaking for over two, uninterrupted hours. Still, it was a definite improvement over her usual act of outright ignoring him.
Grady moved to his game controller to hopefully find a save point. It was getting late, and even though it was a Friday night, his parents, and everyone else he knew, knew he wasn't out on a date. If he didn't head back home, they would start worrying about him. And yet, even though he had lost half an evening's worth of his private video game time, he didn't feel cheated at all. It probably had something to do with what Nico told him after he had left his best friend waiting for him at an arcade for an entire afternoon. When you're talking to a beautiful lady, time doesn't seem to matter anymore.
The boy hadn't even been able to lay his hand on his controller before the door flew open, revealing a narrow-eyed Tawni. The shiftiness of her gaze belied some kind of internal struggle. Finally she looked directly at Grady, barked out a word, and marched out of the room feeling better.
After watching the door close lazily, Grady fell backwards into the couch. His eyes rolled back into his head as he checked and re-checked his memory. That couldn't be right. Did Tawni Hart just thank him?
Author's Notes: Yep, that's right. Tawni and Grady. Many of you are probably wondering why. I saw an opening, and I went for it! It's going to be a while before I can start pulling the romance out of this particular couple, but I suspect that the end result is going to be painfully sweet. In all honesty, I believe that these two characters have the greatest potential for emotional growth in the show. Hopefully I can use my words to highlight that potential for you.
See you next time,
Falling Further