Finding Finley ✔

9

We walk in silence for a moment, our hands brushing as we walk side by side, neither of us moving to stop the accidental contact from happening over and over again. I focus on the sound of our footsteps and the brief contact of our hands instead of the conversation we're about to have. The further away we get, the easier it is to breath, and hopefully that means it will be easier to talk about. 

"So...you're dad, huh?" Darby asks, breaking the silence that's been hanging between us since I asked her to take a walk with me. 

"Yeah." I keep my eyes on the ground as I walk, stealing a look at Darby, who is looking straight ahead. "He Ieft when we were four and I've only seen him twice since then. It was a few years ago when Kit's tumor was at it's worst."

"He wasn't there for Kit's tumor?"

"No." I shake my head, "He wasn't there for anything." 

"So why did he come around when Kit was at his worst?" 

I stop walking as we approach a bench near the park. I sit down and gesture for Darby to do the same. "Let me start from the beginning."

So I start at the morning when I was four years old and my brother and I came downstairs to find our dad gone, our happy family no more. I told her how I didn't understand, how my mom was crying and I wanted to help her but didn't know how, how my brother was angry - even at four years old, he was full of anger and hate towards our dad. 

Darby doesn't say much while I tell her my story. She listens closely, giving me her full attention.

I tell her about how I looked my dad up two years ago, thinking that he would care Kit was dying and maybe want to be a part of our lives. How he had convinced me that he was sorry for leaving and how I had believed he was going to apologize and explain everything to us. I told Darby about how I had so much hope for that night, just to have it all crushed. 

She reached out and held my hand when I told her about the night I went to my his house and he couldn't tell who I was. I looked away from her eyes, her wide and sad eyes, when I told her  how our own dad didn't see Kit and I as different people. 

"Is that why it was so important that I could tell you apart?"

"It's not really important, it's just - our own dad can't tell us apart, but you and Ellie, even after only seeing us together for a few minutes, you can tell." 

"You're two very different people, Finn. Sure, you look identical, but you're your own person - an incredible person at that. I can tell because of the way you stand, the way you carry yourself, your facial expressions, and the simple fact that you are you and Kit is Kit." 

When we started this walk I wasn't sure if I was going to tell her about the nightmares or the fear of being left by everyone I cared about, but when I look into her eyes, I can see that she isn't judging or pitying me. She's just listening and being honest, letting me get it all out and proving to me that I can trust her.

So I took another deep breath and focus on the green flakes in her brown eyes, "I get nightmares. Sometimes they're about Kit dying or my mom, or Ellie. Sometimes they're about all three of them dying. Either they die or they just up and leave me like my dad did, they don't say goodbye or tell me why, they're just gone. I wake up in the middle of the night covered in sweat and feeling like I'm being crushed or suffocated. Ellie thinks I have some sort of anxiety that comes from unresolved issues with my dad leaving and Kit almost dying, but I don't know...maybe I'm just crazy or something." I turn my head and look over my shoulder towards an open field. 

I'm almost certain that she's going to get up and leave, shout a goodbye forever over her shoulder as she walks away from me. Instead, I feel her hand under my chin, forcing me to look at her. "Thank you for telling me." She gives me a smile, a rare soft smile that I've never seen from her. 

Fireworks crack above us, making us both jump and laugh as we sit on the bench and watch them light up the sky, her head on my shoulder and her hand still holding mine. 

Awhile later, once the fireworks are coming to an end, Darby and I walk in silence back to the house. Ellie is putting leftover food in my jeep as we approach and Darby releases my hand to go help her. 

I walk over to Kit, who is standing on the back porch waiting for me. "I'm sorry. I know I should have told you, but I know you feel guilty about the way I felt when you were in the hospital and stuff and I didn't want you to think it was your fault or anything."

He looks over to where Ellie and Darby are, and I can tell he's trying to think of a way to tell me that it's not true - that he wouldn't have put the blame on himself, that he wouldn't have tried to carry my weight and make it his own. But he knows that I'm right, so he just nods his head and looks back at me, "Will you come to me now?" 

"Yeah." 

He pulls me into a hug before we both go inside to say goodbye to our mom and grandma. Luckily neither of them saw me run away from the house, so there were no awkward questions about it. When they asked where Darby and I had gone, Ellie told them we went to watch the firework show alone -which started a whole other conversation about our relationship status.

The drive back was quiet and when I pull in to the parking lot, Darby makes no move to get out of the car. She stays seated in the passenger seat, twisting a loose thread on her shorts around her finger until her finger turns white. I watch as she holds it that way for a minute, then lets it go and repeats the process. 

Ellie catches on that Darby wants a minute alone with me, so she makes Kit help her get the food and carry it up the their apartment with her, making sure to tell Darby she can come over anytime to help them eat all the leftovers.

We watch them enter the lobby, and once they're out of our sight, I turn to Darby. She looks nervous and is still messing with the thread, wrapping and unwrapping it from her finger.

"Are you okay? Was it something I said earlier?" I'm still waiting for her to tell me that she doesn't want to be friends anymore, and I'm worried that this is going to be the moment she does just that. 

She opens her mouth to say something but stops herself. Instead she looks at me, as if the last five minutes didn't even happen, "Do you want to go to the movies?"

"Uh - sure."

"Okay, yeah. Lets do that. I'll buy the popcorn."

I put the jeep in reverse and drive towards the movie theater downtown. Darby buys our popcorn, as promised, and I buy the tickets to a rom-com that she picked out. When we get to our seats, we're the only people in the theater. Darby dumps a box of chocolate candy into our popcorn and the movie begins. 

I'm trying hard to watch the movie, but I can't stop looking at Darby's legs stretched out and propped up on the seat in front of her, her ankles crossed. I could feel her arm sharing the armrest with mine and I kept bumping her hand in the popcorn bucket. I've caught her three times now staring at me, and when our eyes meet she gives me a shy smile, which is exactly what I did the four times she caught me staring at her. 

There's only twenty minutes of the movie left when Darby slides her hand into mine. 

When I drop her off at her apartment door after the movie,she hugs me tightly. "Thank you for today." 

"You're welcome." I stammer, watching as she slips into her apartment and closes the door behind her, quietly so that she doesn't wake her roommate. I stand there for a moment, replaying the day in my head and trying to figure out what it all means, but as I walk up the stairs to Kit and Ellie's, I'm still confused. 

Ellie is waiting for me on the couch when I close the door behind me and toss my keys on the counter, "So? What happened? Did you kiss her? Is she your girlfriend?"

"What? No, Ellie. We just went to the movies."

She gets up from the couch and heads towards the bedroom, stomping as if she's throwing a tantrum. "Is this how it was for you when you were waiting for Kit and I to get together?"