Finding Finley ✔

3

Breathing hard, I slow my run to a walk before coming to a complete stop and placing my hands on my hips. I tilt my head back and focus on getting my breathing back to normal as my heart rate does the same. When my lungs are no longer burning, I look down at my phone and the app that was tracking my run.

Two miles in 14 minutes. Not bad.

As soon as I'm about to start making my way back to the dorms, Kit face times me. Seconds after I accept the call my brother and sister-in-laws faces appear on my screen.

"Hey guys, how's the honeymoon?" I wave at the screen, jealous that while they're currently sitting on a beach in bathing suits and eating fresh fruit, I'm covered in sweat with an empty water bottle.

"Hey man, it's great. Honeymooners get all kinds of free stuff around here." Kit is the one to answer me, but I can see Ellie poking him in the side as she whispers "Show him now".

"What's going on?"

Ellie takes the phone from Kit's hands and turns the screen around so that it is no longer using the front facing camera. Instead of seeing Ellie and Kit's faces I am now looking at a tall blonde sunbathing on the beach in a two piece.

"Can you see her?" Ellie asks before turning the camera back on herself, "She works at the resort and is really nice. I overheard her tell her friend that she thinks Kit is hot, so she-"

"Ellie." I roll my eyes and sigh, "You're on your honeymoon, stop scouting for girls to hook me up with. Besides, she's in Hawaii what are you going to do drag her back here as your carry on?"

Being the mature adult that she is, she sticks her tongue out at me as Kit takes the phone back from her. "I told her that you were going to say something like that." He laughs as Ellie rolls her eyes and mumbles something about just trying to help. "But we really did have a good reason to call you."

"Oh yeah? What's that?" I stop by the coffee cart in front of the library and buy a water.

"Ellie forgot to pay our rent."

Kit and Ellie got an apartment two blocks from campus last summer, and they even offered to let me be their roommate since it was a two bedroom, but I decided to let them have their own space and stay in my dorm with Parker.

"Well, you know what they say, it's hard to find a girl with brains and beauty."

Kit almost drops his phone as Ellie snatches it from him, her blue eyes shooting daggers at me through the screen. "Finley Kennedy, I am going to kick your ass so hard when we get back that you can't - What are you laughing at?" She turns towards Kit, who is trying and failing to stiffen a laugh.

"Ow, El. That hurt." He rubs his arm in the spot where Ellie just punched him before turning back to me, "So can you swing by and drop the check in the mailbox at the leasing office? It's on the counter by the sink."

"Yeah, no problem. When is it due?"

"Uh, in like two hours." They're both look at me apologetically, and I roll my eyes as I turn around and head in the opposite direction of the dorms, towards their apartment. "You guys owe me."

"Thanks, man."

"We love you!" Ellie adds before I wave goodbye and end our call, taking a drink of water before I take off running towards the parking lot. After the run I just had, there's no way that I can run to their apartment and back, so driving it is.

---------------------------------

I use my spare key to enter the apartment and I head straight to the kitchen to get the check from the counter, deciding that as soon as I drop it in the mailbox I will head back upstairs to take a shower, borrow some of Kit's clothes, and use their WiFi since it's a hundred time faster that the WiFi on campus.