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Finn
Finn
I yawned, stretching luxuriously in the bed, sleepily wishing I wasn’t one of those wake-with-the-sun people. Flipping over onto my side, I grinned once I recognized the sight before me.
There he was. Finn. My Finn.
My angel.
He was snoring slightly, curled up on his side with the tips of his wings brushing the ground. Dark brown hair fell across his eyes, one arm thrown across them to block out the harsh, unforgiving light of the sun.
The blue comforter wasn’t even covering him, giving me a nice view of his rubber ducky pajama pants. My grin widened, remembering how I had given those to him last summer. It was his birthday, or at least the day we decided was his birthday, and he was finally seventeen. Two months before I would be, since we both knew he was older than me anyhow.
I didn’t feel ashamed, watching him in the early morning’s light. I never had.
He was my guardian angel, after all, and had seen every awkward and embarrassing moment of my life. Every heartbreak. Every tear that feel down my face.
It just happened that he ended up stuck in our world, and had enough energy to make his body mostly mortal so he could actually interact with the one person he knew.
That was when I was sixteen. Almost two years ago.
We’d spent practically every moment since then together.
It was strange, how easily I accept what he was. He could hide the wings when he needed to, but when it was just us he felt comfortable enough to leave them out. I loved that he trusted me that much.
I ran a lazy finger along his jaw line, tracing the contours of his face. He rumbled awake, giving me one of his heart-stopping smirks through sleep-hazed eyes. “Hey.”
“Hey yourself, sleepy head,” I whispered. “I didn’t want to wake you up, but we have to get down to school and…yeah.” I finished lamely. I couldn’t find the words to say what I wanted to, like usual.
“But you wanted to talk to me, and get a kiss or something?” he chuckled. “It amazes me every day that you take it all so in stride, Riana.”
“Yeah, well, it amazes me every day when I wake up and you’re really here. That you’re not just a dream.”
“Well, it’s been,” he paused a moment to think, doing calculations in the air, “one thousand and thirty some mornings, and I’ve been here every single one of them, so…I’d say you really don’t have a lot to be worried about. Me, on the other hand? Well, I have to be prepared that any day you’ll wake up and decide ‘This is ridiculous. It can’t be real’ and either throw me out or try to rip my wings off.”
“I would never do that!”
He grinned. “It’s always a possibility.”
I smacked his arm, rolling my eyes. “For someone else, maybe. Now, do you want breakfast or not?”
That was one of the perks, he had told me once. He didn’t need to eat, but he could if he wanted to. And he never gained any weight. Lucky bum.
“Sure. What are we having?” I could practically see the gears working in his head as he contemplated all the wonderful things we could have. “Biscuits and gravy? Waffles? Cinnamon rolls? Bacon?”
I laughed. “Considering I have maybe fifteen minutes to get ready and eat, how about some cereal instead?”
His face fell.
“Oh, fine! We’ll make a good breakfast tomorrow, okay?” I promised, since the next day was Saturday.
The childish happiness returned to his eyes the moment I said that. “Okay!”
Sometimes dealing with Finn was a lot like dealing with my little brother.
School was another thing entirely, though. Senior year of high school, in a little school that liked to pretend it was big money. If you went to Wesley High, you were one of three things: a theater geek, an English nerd, or just lived in district. The vast majority, though, filled the first two categories.
Us, though? We were part of the small population that filled the third slot. Naturally, the few of us in the same year stuck together and had since starting freshmen year and figuring out the social structure.
It really wasn’t that bad, don’t get me wrong. It’s just that being in an Arts School when you’re mediocre at artsy things? Sometimes it’s tough.
It’s especially tough when you’re overly “gifted” boyfriend is perfect at anything he tries. And is the star of the theater department. And the best tenor in the history of the school’s choir.
And you’re just…there.
I love that Finn’s been so easily assimilated into the school, really I do, but sometimes it gets on my nerves. Mostly because it takes up our time together, but a small part is jealousy.
Because he’s perfect at everything. And full of light, and usually always some degree of happy and peppy and…perfect. I mean, yeah, it’s because he’s an angel and everything, and he’s pretty much the exact definition of one, but still. It’s like, no one can really be that perfect, even if they are an angel.
After chowing down on some of that awesome chocolate cereal that turns your milk into chocolate milk, we made it into my Jeep and to school. Waiting by our usual parking space was our group of friends.
Jared and Mason sat on the hood of someone’s car, talking, heads bowed close together. Emma, Carol, Nadine and Hanna were talking next to the boys, Emma and Hanna’s latest boyfriends at their sides. With the addition of Finn and me, our little group was complete. This was one of the few times throughout the day it was like this, as we all had separate classes. But before school, homeroom, lunch and after school were ours.
“Hey, look who finally showed up!” Nadine crowed, slapping the trunk of my BMW. “Get up late or something? There’s only like ten minutes until bell!”
I slid out of the seat, Finn doing the same, and grabbed my bag. “Yeah, something.”
He threw a smile across the top of the car that only I could see. “Yeah. I slept in a bit late, sorry everyone.”
All the girls immediately rushed to reassure him that it was fine; we were only a little late after all. Typical behavior for them. And the boys, too, since it seemed everyone in our little group was interested in boys like Finn except for Finn.
I hung back a bit, content with just standing there and listening to my friends’ excited chatter. They were posting the cast list for the musical, and we were all sure that Finn had landed the lead role. As usual. And that the rest of us would do our “scholarly duty” as part of stage crew. As usual.
The day passed without much excitement. Finn did indeed get the lead role in our school’s rendition of Bye, Bye Birdie, and the rest of us got landed with stage crew. We were the ones that did it every show, so I guess by now it was just a given. Vaguely I wondered what they were going to do without us the next year.
We got home and I collapsed onto our huge circle bed. The one that he had let me design, and had built for me, that rested inside the floor.
It was the three year anniversary, to the day, of when my whole life changed, and I was pretty stressed out.
You know how people can look back at their life and tell the exact moment when their lives changed for the better? I can, too, but mine was for the better and for the worst. It was the day that Finn came into my life, and the day my parents left it.
It was a rainy day, and they were racing home for some reason or another along the curvy highway that ran alongside the lake. They spun out of control and plunged straight into the water.
I didn’t know for hours. All I knew was that, all of the sudden, this guy appeared in my living room and told me to shut up, he’d handle it all. So when the cops came and told us what had happened, he told them I was his little sister and that he was of age and could care for me.
And I just sat there, mutely, trying to process what was going on. At first I thought it was a nightmare, or some alternate reality. But then it sunk in. They weren’t coming home. And this guy that I should have been terrified of – he appeared in my house, for crying out loud, and I wasn’t even bothered by it – was the one taking care of me, holding me as I cried.
I felt comfortable around him. Like I could let down all my defenses and just be me. Not like how I could around Emma and Carol, who I considered my best friends. It was something different then that. Some kind of even deeper connection.
Naturally, none of my friends believed he was my brother. They had known me for far too long to have overlooked something like that. But they did believe that he was some family friend sent to stay with me.
I laid back on the bed, curling myself into a ball and burrowing underneath the covers until I was completely covered. It might seem childish, but I always hid before I cried. I didn’t want people to know I had weaknesses, that I wasn’t always the strong person they saw me as. So I hid, thinking somehow that if they couldn’t see me, they couldn’t hear me either.
It never worked. At least not with Finn. He knew me too well, and he remembered this day just as vividly as I did.
After a moment, I felt him crawl into bed with me. “Raina?” he asked, peeking under the covers. “Can I come in?”
****
Some distant part of my mind wished I could take a picture of us as we were right then. So I would have some sort of proof it actually happened, he wasn’t just a dream, we had really been this close to making it work.
But I couldn’t.
He placed his hands on my hips, tracing patterns into my sides with his fingers, mesmerizing me, tricking my eyes into falling into his. “It’s a map of where I’m going so you can always find me,” he whispered into my hair, fingers’ trails now marking roads, towns, countries. “I can never decide what I think you want me to do, so I’m leaving he clues. It’s only a matter of time.”
I pull back from his embrace, staring into eyes just as green as mine and just as filled with tears. “You’re crying…” I wipe a tear away, awe-struck by it. He couldn’t cry. It meant I was too late. He was too human.
“And you are, too. It means you’re afraid to lose me. It’s a good thing, Riana. It is,” he reassured me, the scared little thing I’ve always seemed to be. “We’re one of a kind, Riana. That’ll never change. I’m not going to forget you just because I’m leaving for a little while.”
“I love you,” I mumbled.
“I know.”
“…Finn…please don’t leave me.”
“I never truly will.”
But we both knew he would. And that I would have to find a way to find him, save him, from where ever it is that angels are sent to be punished. To be condemned for holding someone above God in their eyes.
For that moment, though, I pushed the thoughts from my mind and held him close, breathing him in and stashing away every little detail. Listened to his heartbeat.
Until it all disappeared from beneath my fingertips.
He was gone.
There he was. Finn. My Finn.
My angel.
He was snoring slightly, curled up on his side with the tips of his wings brushing the ground. Dark brown hair fell across his eyes, one arm thrown across them to block out the harsh, unforgiving light of the sun.
The blue comforter wasn’t even covering him, giving me a nice view of his rubber ducky pajama pants. My grin widened, remembering how I had given those to him last summer. It was his birthday, or at least the day we decided was his birthday, and he was finally seventeen. Two months before I would be, since we both knew he was older than me anyhow.
I didn’t feel ashamed, watching him in the early morning’s light. I never had.
He was my guardian angel, after all, and had seen every awkward and embarrassing moment of my life. Every heartbreak. Every tear that feel down my face.
It just happened that he ended up stuck in our world, and had enough energy to make his body mostly mortal so he could actually interact with the one person he knew.
That was when I was sixteen. Almost two years ago.
We’d spent practically every moment since then together.
It was strange, how easily I accept what he was. He could hide the wings when he needed to, but when it was just us he felt comfortable enough to leave them out. I loved that he trusted me that much.
I ran a lazy finger along his jaw line, tracing the contours of his face. He rumbled awake, giving me one of his heart-stopping smirks through sleep-hazed eyes. “Hey.”
“Hey yourself, sleepy head,” I whispered. “I didn’t want to wake you up, but we have to get down to school and…yeah.” I finished lamely. I couldn’t find the words to say what I wanted to, like usual.
“But you wanted to talk to me, and get a kiss or something?” he chuckled. “It amazes me every day that you take it all so in stride, Riana.”
“Yeah, well, it amazes me every day when I wake up and you’re really here. That you’re not just a dream.”
“Well, it’s been,” he paused a moment to think, doing calculations in the air, “one thousand and thirty some mornings, and I’ve been here every single one of them, so…I’d say you really don’t have a lot to be worried about. Me, on the other hand? Well, I have to be prepared that any day you’ll wake up and decide ‘This is ridiculous. It can’t be real’ and either throw me out or try to rip my wings off.”
“I would never do that!”
He grinned. “It’s always a possibility.”
I smacked his arm, rolling my eyes. “For someone else, maybe. Now, do you want breakfast or not?”
That was one of the perks, he had told me once. He didn’t need to eat, but he could if he wanted to. And he never gained any weight. Lucky bum.
“Sure. What are we having?” I could practically see the gears working in his head as he contemplated all the wonderful things we could have. “Biscuits and gravy? Waffles? Cinnamon rolls? Bacon?”
I laughed. “Considering I have maybe fifteen minutes to get ready and eat, how about some cereal instead?”
His face fell.
“Oh, fine! We’ll make a good breakfast tomorrow, okay?” I promised, since the next day was Saturday.
The childish happiness returned to his eyes the moment I said that. “Okay!”
Sometimes dealing with Finn was a lot like dealing with my little brother.
School was another thing entirely, though. Senior year of high school, in a little school that liked to pretend it was big money. If you went to Wesley High, you were one of three things: a theater geek, an English nerd, or just lived in district. The vast majority, though, filled the first two categories.
Us, though? We were part of the small population that filled the third slot. Naturally, the few of us in the same year stuck together and had since starting freshmen year and figuring out the social structure.
It really wasn’t that bad, don’t get me wrong. It’s just that being in an Arts School when you’re mediocre at artsy things? Sometimes it’s tough.
It’s especially tough when you’re overly “gifted” boyfriend is perfect at anything he tries. And is the star of the theater department. And the best tenor in the history of the school’s choir.
And you’re just…there.
I love that Finn’s been so easily assimilated into the school, really I do, but sometimes it gets on my nerves. Mostly because it takes up our time together, but a small part is jealousy.
Because he’s perfect at everything. And full of light, and usually always some degree of happy and peppy and…perfect. I mean, yeah, it’s because he’s an angel and everything, and he’s pretty much the exact definition of one, but still. It’s like, no one can really be that perfect, even if they are an angel.
After chowing down on some of that awesome chocolate cereal that turns your milk into chocolate milk, we made it into my Jeep and to school. Waiting by our usual parking space was our group of friends.
Jared and Mason sat on the hood of someone’s car, talking, heads bowed close together. Emma, Carol, Nadine and Hanna were talking next to the boys, Emma and Hanna’s latest boyfriends at their sides. With the addition of Finn and me, our little group was complete. This was one of the few times throughout the day it was like this, as we all had separate classes. But before school, homeroom, lunch and after school were ours.
“Hey, look who finally showed up!” Nadine crowed, slapping the trunk of my BMW. “Get up late or something? There’s only like ten minutes until bell!”
I slid out of the seat, Finn doing the same, and grabbed my bag. “Yeah, something.”
He threw a smile across the top of the car that only I could see. “Yeah. I slept in a bit late, sorry everyone.”
All the girls immediately rushed to reassure him that it was fine; we were only a little late after all. Typical behavior for them. And the boys, too, since it seemed everyone in our little group was interested in boys like Finn except for Finn.
I hung back a bit, content with just standing there and listening to my friends’ excited chatter. They were posting the cast list for the musical, and we were all sure that Finn had landed the lead role. As usual. And that the rest of us would do our “scholarly duty” as part of stage crew. As usual.
The day passed without much excitement. Finn did indeed get the lead role in our school’s rendition of Bye, Bye Birdie, and the rest of us got landed with stage crew. We were the ones that did it every show, so I guess by now it was just a given. Vaguely I wondered what they were going to do without us the next year.
We got home and I collapsed onto our huge circle bed. The one that he had let me design, and had built for me, that rested inside the floor.
It was the three year anniversary, to the day, of when my whole life changed, and I was pretty stressed out.
You know how people can look back at their life and tell the exact moment when their lives changed for the better? I can, too, but mine was for the better and for the worst. It was the day that Finn came into my life, and the day my parents left it.
It was a rainy day, and they were racing home for some reason or another along the curvy highway that ran alongside the lake. They spun out of control and plunged straight into the water.
I didn’t know for hours. All I knew was that, all of the sudden, this guy appeared in my living room and told me to shut up, he’d handle it all. So when the cops came and told us what had happened, he told them I was his little sister and that he was of age and could care for me.
And I just sat there, mutely, trying to process what was going on. At first I thought it was a nightmare, or some alternate reality. But then it sunk in. They weren’t coming home. And this guy that I should have been terrified of – he appeared in my house, for crying out loud, and I wasn’t even bothered by it – was the one taking care of me, holding me as I cried.
I felt comfortable around him. Like I could let down all my defenses and just be me. Not like how I could around Emma and Carol, who I considered my best friends. It was something different then that. Some kind of even deeper connection.
Naturally, none of my friends believed he was my brother. They had known me for far too long to have overlooked something like that. But they did believe that he was some family friend sent to stay with me.
I laid back on the bed, curling myself into a ball and burrowing underneath the covers until I was completely covered. It might seem childish, but I always hid before I cried. I didn’t want people to know I had weaknesses, that I wasn’t always the strong person they saw me as. So I hid, thinking somehow that if they couldn’t see me, they couldn’t hear me either.
It never worked. At least not with Finn. He knew me too well, and he remembered this day just as vividly as I did.
After a moment, I felt him crawl into bed with me. “Raina?” he asked, peeking under the covers. “Can I come in?”
****
Some distant part of my mind wished I could take a picture of us as we were right then. So I would have some sort of proof it actually happened, he wasn’t just a dream, we had really been this close to making it work.
But I couldn’t.
He placed his hands on my hips, tracing patterns into my sides with his fingers, mesmerizing me, tricking my eyes into falling into his. “It’s a map of where I’m going so you can always find me,” he whispered into my hair, fingers’ trails now marking roads, towns, countries. “I can never decide what I think you want me to do, so I’m leaving he clues. It’s only a matter of time.”
I pull back from his embrace, staring into eyes just as green as mine and just as filled with tears. “You’re crying…” I wipe a tear away, awe-struck by it. He couldn’t cry. It meant I was too late. He was too human.
“And you are, too. It means you’re afraid to lose me. It’s a good thing, Riana. It is,” he reassured me, the scared little thing I’ve always seemed to be. “We’re one of a kind, Riana. That’ll never change. I’m not going to forget you just because I’m leaving for a little while.”
“I love you,” I mumbled.
“I know.”
“…Finn…please don’t leave me.”
“I never truly will.”
But we both knew he would. And that I would have to find a way to find him, save him, from where ever it is that angels are sent to be punished. To be condemned for holding someone above God in their eyes.
For that moment, though, I pushed the thoughts from my mind and held him close, breathing him in and stashing away every little detail. Listened to his heartbeat.
Until it all disappeared from beneath my fingertips.
He was gone.