Grady didn't sleep well that night. The boy had prepared perfectly for a good night's rest though. He had gotten into bed on time (roughly around 2 am), and even managed to sneak in a late night snack before heading to his room. Yet even after feeling the softness of the pillow against his cheek, his mind remained occupied with what Tawni had let slip before leaving the room ... the second time. After turning the sound over and over in his mind, the teenager was now convinced that she had said, "Thanks." After all, spanks, shanks, thunks, and tanks just seemed out of context. And hilarious.

After chuckling heartily into his pillow, he flipped around and stared at the ceiling. Did this mean that Tawni was going to start treating him like a human being during rehearsals and shows? If it did, then he needed to prepare some good jokes to share. After all, what did a guy like him have to talk about with a girl like her?

He spent the remainder of his waking moments thinking up different things that a unicycling priest could crash into.

Zora's gloved hand waved dismissively, signaling Grady to shove Nico towards the stacked cardboard boxes. This time, after four re-sets of experience under his belt, the spry teen tumbled directly into the boxes, sending them flying in many directions, but most importantly towards Grady's head. After feeling the impact of the box, Grady took a dramatic pratfall onto the safety net hidden behind the boxing ring. All that was left was for Zora to throw her hands in the air and complain, "Oh NOW he can box!" That was when the sound of flatulence ripped through the air.

There was no need to look around. There was only one man in the set capable of ruining a perfect take with a fart. The infamous cameraman immediately placed his shoulder-mounted camera on the ground and began to run as an enraged Marshall charged at him at full speed.

It took two rounds of laughter before Nico was able to start breathing again. As he wiped at his tearing eyes, he snuck a peek at his best friend. The rest of the mirth entirely drained from his system when he found Grady looking off into the distance, his face expressionless. After picking himself up off of the ground, he walked towards his best friend and jabbed him in the arm with one of his boxing-gloved hands. Even after the punch, it took a couple of seconds before Grady acknowledged his presence. "Hey, what's wrong man? Fartin' Franky just ruined a shot and you didn't even crack a smile."

"Oh man, I missed that?" grinned Grady, his right hand shooting up to scratch the back of his head.

"Er, yeah," said Nico suspiciously. "Are you okay?" After Grady nodded, Nico shrugged it off and moved to help the stage crew gather the cardboard boxes for another run.

Once Nico's attention was off of him, Grady's gaze drifted back towards the main studio entrance. Tawni was close to thirty minutes late. That in itself wasn't that unusual, but Grady had been rehearsing his new priest joke endlessly in his head since completing it during breakfast. He was anxious to show off his new familiarity with Tawni to the entire set by sharing his joke with her. His door staring was soon interrupted as everyone around them prepared for another shoot.

Tawni didn't stroll into the studio for another 10 minutes. The blond teenager was immediately bum rushed by Marshall who gave her a quick lecture about her tardiness. The lecture happened so frequently that it was a shooting ritual of sorts, and the producers had gotten into the habit of pushing Tawni's scenes later in the shoots. After it was over, the girl walked towards the make-up area behind the set.

When she passed by Grady, the husky boy asked cheerfully, "Hey Tawni, wanna hear my newest joke about a unicycling priest?"

Tawni breezed past him without batting an eyelash.

"Oh, she's cold as ice!" chuckled Nico, throwing his arm around Grady's shoulders.

"Like usual," replied Grady, his tone only slightly more subdued than it should have been. He allowed his joke to roll out of his mind with his surprising feeling of disappointment. He didn't know what he was expecting, but it looked like that Friday night hadn't really meant anything at all.

Grady carefully laid out his armload of snacks. It was his standard fare plus a few uncharacteristic additions. The half-liter of diet soda stood out like a sore thumb next to his 2-liter of the normal stuff, and the platter of vegetables appeared out of place surrounded by potato chips and a hoagie sandwich.

As he bent over to turn on the video game system and grab one of the controllers, he allowed himself to acknowledge that he had no intention of touching the unusual foodstuffs. They were just there in case he happened to have some company. Whoever that may be.

The larger boy spent the first hour of his Friday night gaming marathon with his attention split between the television screen and the door behind him. Every time he thought he heard a noise behind him, he would turn around expectantly. And find nothing happening.

A couple of hours after that, he had given up on turning around every time he thought he heard a noise, instead tossing a glance over his shoulder every time he hit a lull in his video game. It turned out to be a fruitless exercise. At some point he realized that he was running out of snacks at an accelerated rate.

By the end of the night, he figured he must have turned around at least a million times. His neck would be reminding him about it tomorrow. She … no one had showed up all night. Grady shrugged it off. It wasn't like he had been expecting anyone. The extras he had brought hadn't even gone to waste. Once he had run out of his normal snacks, he had moved on to them. And now they were no more. Grady stood up and trashed the empty containers of food and drink.

Even though he felt good that a question he had been asking himself for a week had been answered, he walked out of the room making a disgusted face. Diet soda was a crime against humanity that someone had to pay for.

Oh, that would make a good sketch.

Tawni sat in front of her vanity mirror, tracing an imaginary circle on the counter in front of her with a random make-up brush. She was bored out of her mind. It was another Friday night, and that meant another evening spent silently brooding to herself.

She tried to remember what she had done on those Friday's maybe a month ago, before James Conroy had started leading her towards a doomed relationship. They had been remarkably similar to the one she was experiencing right now, only the mirror image of herself had been smiling a lot more. She would be trying on different types of make-up and costumes, reminding herself of why the world loved her. Well, it was worth a shot.

It didn't take her long to slide a good looking dress over her body, but she couldn't find a matching set of shoes. Whatever, if she used the vanity mirror to look at herself, it wasn't like she could see her feet. She stepped out of the closet and in front of the reflective surface. After catching sight of herself sashaying around the room in the form-fitting red dress, Tawni stopped and turned away from the mirror. It just didn't feel the same. Something was broken. It was almost like she didn't feel the world's love for her.

That was it. She hadn't felt that feeling since she received the fateful text that had forced her to smash her cell-phone into pieces. After allowing her eyes to drift guiltily towards the trash can that had served as her formally beloved cell's final resting place, she realized that that wasn't an entirely true thought. After all, she had felt that seemingly lost feeling one time. On that same night, when she had held Grady's devoted concentration just by saying whatever came to her mind.

That had been a Friday night too, and it had felt like she was walking in on a weekly ritual. He couldn't be there every Friday night, though. A teenager who was a "star" in a television show would have to be an astronomical loser to spend every Friday night alone, playing video games. Tawni's right hand covered her mouth as she began to analyze her memories of Grady. She remember his doughy physique, his frequent laughter, and his stupid jokes.

It was possible.

The girl padded towards the prop room, drawn more by curiosity than anything else. Or so she told herself. If there hadn't been anything else, the girl would have surely taken the time to put on something at least resembling shoes.

The heavy metal door opened, unleashing a cacophony of multiple, revving engines into the hallway. There he was on the couch, hopping left and right along with the screen in front of him. Because the television was blasting at such a loud volume, Grady didn't even notice that someone had entered the room until the door closed loudly.

This time he was surprised, not startled, to find Tawni standing behind him, looking at him questioningly. Somehow, even though it had been weeks since that last time the girl had said anything directly to him, he knew she would come back. Still, her last wardrobe of an oversize sweatshirt and polyester pants hadn't prepared him properly for the sight of Tawni in a tight, red dress. As he felt his face beginning to burn up, he realized that he wouldn't be able to keep his voice under control this time either. Fighting hard to keep his eyes from bugging out of his head, Grady paused the video game and shakily pointed towards the table in front of him.

Tawni recognized the effect her dress was having on him with a smug smile. This was the world as it should be. She was Tawni Hart after all. Approaching the table revealed a pile of snacks that were more healthy than they were the last time she had been there. Well roughly half of them were healthy, and subsequently untouched by Grady's hands. "Are you on a diet or something?" asked Tawni as she sat on the edge of the reclining chair and reached for a stick of celery.

"So, something like that," squeaked Grady, too embarrassed to reveal that he had been bringing the more wholesome snacks specifically for her.

After finishing the celery stick, Tawni asked suspiciously, "There's no one else here, right?" A brief nod from Grady was all she needed to start complaining about Zora's surplus of mechanical contraptions and to signal the start of an infrequent weekly ritual between the two cast mates.

While Grady was just staying the course by spending his Friday nights playing a random assortment of video games, he would occasionally have a blond visitor who would talk non-stop for hours on end. It was an arrangement that left both of the teenagers feeling better about themselves afterwards, and it remained a perfect secret. Now that the rules had been established, neither even looked in the direction of the other outside of their private meetings. Judging solely on how the two interacted, or rather did not interact, in public, no one would have been able to figure out that they were slowly beginning to depend on each other.

That is, until someone figured it out.

Author's Notes: The story is progressing according to plan when I manage to get into the writing mood. Most of this, roughly 80%, was finally written today. This means a couple of things. One, I need to find some way to get into the writing mood more often. Two, I'm most likely going to come back and edit the hell out of this one at some point.

I'm putting it out so quickly after it was finished because I know that any editing I'm going to do to this are going to be detail related, and I wanted to give my reviewers something to chew on while I think up the next chapter. I hope the story is progressing the way you guys want it to. The way it's moving right now, I'm predicting at least four more chapters for this short story.

Thanks for reading guys, and I hope you continue to enjoy the story!

Falling Further