Enchanted; A Finnick and Annie Fanfic ♥ (Currently Revising/Editing)

Chapter 3: A Really Bad Feeling About This Year

[5 Years Later]

I never thought that I would enjoy going to parties. For most of my childhood, Finnick was the only real friend I had, and I was really antisocial if I wasn't around him. But he enjoyed them, as did his family, so when they invited me to this year's Reaping party, I felt like I had to say yes. I stood in the corner as far away from everyone else as I could be, twisting my thumbs around each other and singing the song that shook the house quietly to myself. 

Finnick's family had had Reaping parties every year since his oldest brother had turned twelve. I was always invited to come, but I had never felt right about it since I wasn't at risk for the Hunger Games. Now that I was twelve, I felt a little better about going, so I decided to give it a shot--to try and have a good time--to no avail. I was just about to give up trying to enjoy myself and head home when I saw Finnick coming through the crowd towards me, his bronze hair shimmering ever so slightly in the party lights.

"Annie, I can't believe you actually came!" He wrapped his strong arms around my waist and squeezed me tight.

"Well of course I did, silly. You invited me."

He laughed and broke our embrace but stayed close enough to me that I could feel his body heat radiating. "What are you doing all alone back here?"

I shrugged a little. "Just not one for parties, I guess."

He smiled a crooked smile, and I swear I could feel my heart melt. "Well, let's go somewhere else then."

"Where?"

My heart skipped a beat when he suddenly grabbed my hand, and I had to remind myself to breathe. If it wasn't obvious enough, I had developed a huge crush on Finnick as childhood turned to adolescence, but I was always too nervous to say anything to him about it because I was afraid it would ruin the friendship we already had. That, and from the time he was twelve he had all kinds of girls following him around all the time. Maybe that's why it was so difficult for me to make other friends, because all of the girls hated how much Finnick enjoyed my company.

"You'll see," he said, and with a slight squeeze of my hand he led me through the party crowd and out a glass door in the back of the room.

When Finnick and I first met, his family had been going through a hard time financially. They had so little money that they made Finnick's older brother sign up for grain rations whenever he could. Just a couple of years ago, however, one of Finnick's aunts passed away, and she was filthy rich. She lived by herself in the giant mansion his family lives in now. And if Finnick's house weren't large enough, the coast line was only a minute's walk from his backdoor. Miles and miles both ways showed nothing but soft white sand and water that was illuminated only by the moon and stars.

Finnick pulled me outside and onto the beach. We stood in front of the water and I glanced out at the waves that calmly swept up the sand then disappeared back into the darkness. The moon looked huge from here, sitting right over the water. It was the only night of the month when it would be completely full. And just above it, stars. Millions and millions of stars lighting up the sky, twinkling, some brighter than others.

"Wow," was all I could bring myself to say. I'd seen the night sky, of course, but from my small house halfway across town, the stars never would never shine that bright, and the moon was never that big. It wasn't until that moment that I really noticed how beautiful it all was, and how much I usually take it for granted.

Finnick laughed at my lack of words and I couldn't help but laugh too. Who would have thought it possible for two people to laugh the night before the Reaping?

The two of us chose to sit on a narrow strip of sand that was both near a patch of thick grass and only a few yards from the sea. The grass followed the beach for miles, the same way the beach followed the ocean, with flowers of all of the colors of the rainbow growing from it. Once we had sat down, Finnick leaned over slightly and grabbed a purple one, my favorite color, and gave it to me. I couldn't stop myself from blushing, so I took the flower and looked down at the sand.

That's when I noticed that his hand was still intertwined with mine. I glanced back up at him and he was still looking at me, smiling wider than I'd ever seen. I blushed deeper but I couldn't look away--his eyes held me captive. All I could do was smile like an idiot and stare right back at him.

I had a weird feeling running through me, something that I couldn't explain and something that never happened when I was around anyone besides Finnick. I felt warm and happy, the way you would feel when you're wrapped in blankets on a cold day, but it was even greater than that. It was a different kind of happiness entirely. My stomach was in knots and my heart felt like a puddle of goo, but I loved it.

The feeling surged stronger when Finnick leaned in closer to me. Closer and closer, until our lips touched. His lips were warm and soft, like nothing I could describe. It was a long and tender kiss, like neither of us ever wanted it to end. In that moment, it was as if nothing else in the world existed--there was no Reaping, no Hunger Games, no death or sadness in the world. Just the two of us in blissful ignorance.

When he finally did pull away, he gently placed his forehead against mine. All I wanted to do was kiss him again and again, but the thought suddenly occurred to me that it could've just been a one-time, caught-in-the-moment sort of thing. So instead, I whispered, so quietly that I didn't even know if he would hear me, "Finnick, I'm scared."

"About the Reaping?" he asked. When I nodded, he wrapped his arms tightly around me. I rested my head against his shoulder and he planted a gentle kiss on the top of my head. "You shouldn't be. It's only your first reaping, your name's only in there once. It's extremely unlikely that they'll pick you."

"It's not me that I'm worried about," I mumbled into his shoulder. "It's you."

He pulled away slightly so that he still held me close but could look down at me. "You are?"

I nodded. "I...well, this might sound kind of crazy, but I just have a really bad feeling about this year."

We sat in silence for a while, and I assumed he was thinking about what I had said. After a few minutes, he suddenly smiled and said, "Well, we shouldn't worry about that while we don't have to. We should do something else."

I smiled, too. "Like what?"

"Like..." He pushed off the ground and stood, pulling me up with him by my hand. I quickly tried to wipe some of the sand off of my legs while Finnick took his shirt off and threw in onto the beach. Then he grabbed my hand tight and pulled us both into the ocean.

The two of us played in the water like a couple of children. It's not like we weren't still young, we were, but we were old enough that we had already been feeling the weight of the world around us. In that moment, the way we laughed together resembled two young children without a care in the world. Splashing each other, falling into the water. Just the two of us. Neither of us were worried about the terror that they next day could've brought.

I'm not sure how long were out there, but it was long enough for us both to get drenched. At least Finnick had had the sense to take his shirt off--my clothes were completely soaked through.

After a while, we ran back up to his house. Summer hadn't even begun yet, so it was kind of cold outside, especially at this time of night when you were soaking wet. Finnick knocked on the front door, but his mother wouldn't let us back inside until we were dry, so we walked back to the grassy field beside the beach and sat there for together.

My body started shaking from the cold. Finnick grabbed his shirt from the beach and put it around my shoulder, along with keeping his arms wrapped around me. We sat together, keeping each other warm, watching the stars and the moon and listening to each other's breathing while the rest of the world around us closed their shutters tight, fearing for what the morning could bring.

Once we had dried off enough to not be dripping, we went back to his house. FInnick kept his arms around me the entire walk there. When we went inside, the party had died down for the most part, and I caught a glimpse of the clock in the room. 11:48.

"I was supposed to be home over an hour ago." I sighed and took his shirt off my shoulders, reluctant to give it back to him. He pulled me close to hug me. I mumbled into his chest, "Thank you, Finnick. Tonight was...sorta perfect."

He smiled at me before giving me a quick peck on the cheek. I ran home, wishing I could relive this night over and over again. I tried to focus my thoughts on everything that had happened today, but for some reason, I just couldn't shake the feeling that something bad was going to happen.