If I Found Finn (#Wattys2015)

seven/ sting

When I was in the seventh grade, I met Finn Romans. And I hated him.

He was the type of person who fit in too easily, who made friends with anyone and could get away with anything.

I was someone who didn't like most people of my age. This hasn't changed much, actually.

But it's kind of hard to ignore someone who has the same initials as you, especially when alphabetical order means everything in middle school.

Finnian Romans

Fiona Rothfield

It couldn't have been helped.

But one day, he came up to me and started to talk. For reasons I still don't know.

"Hi, I'm Finn! Nice bag, by the way."

He glanced at my Captain America backpack seventh-grade-me was so proud of lying haphazardly on the ground.

I got to see his toothy smile and finally realized why people like him were so easy to love.

From there on, we had slowly abandoned our previous friend groups, and started hanging out together. It was nice.

The year after that, he got a girlfriend.

Her name was Jess.

She was very pretty, with strawberry blonde hair. But equally annoying. They had lasted a month before they awkwardly parted ways.

His second girlfriend was Cassie. She was nice enough. It was two years after the Jess incident, so Finn had been quite nervous in the romantic department. They had broken up after realizing they were distantly related. The poor kid.

A year ago, he started dating a girl named Angela. I didn't like her that much. Not at all, actually. She had long dark hair that she would braid into two plaits and was too opinionated for my taste. But she made Finn happy, so I didn't interfere and tried to get long with her.

They were together until just a few weeks before he... yeah.

A couple days ago she came up to me when I was sitting on a bench, trying to write about the trees or some shit before I started to write about something vaguely depressing, which would have only resulted with me crying on a public park bench.

She didn't have her hair in plaits that day.

I assumed she wanted to talk about him because it was so blatantly obvious. She didn't. She just sat down next to me.

It was quiet for a moment, and next thing I knew, she slapped me hard across the face. Her eyes widened into surprise. I don't think she realized it, but she looked close to crying.

Her: I-I- I'm sorry.

Her: I don't even know why I just did that.

Her: Gosh, I'm an idiot.

And then she did it. She started to cry. She grabbed onto my shoulders and I let her cry as the winter air stung the place where her hand met my face.

I'm an idiot I'm an idiot I'm an idiot She said in between sobs.

She looked up at me for a second, her tear stained face red and blotchy.

"I just miss him, you know?"

Yeah. I knew.

I just tried to hold her tighter, before we both fell apart.