Missing Moments

Piper Worries About Finn

7x21

"Hey, it's Finn. It's me, Finn. Leave a message."

With a huff, Piper did not leave a message and hung up once again. Her foot tapped anxiously against the bottom step of the stairs. Finn was supposed to pick her up to head to the airport twenty minutes ago, but she had yet to hear anything from him. He hadn't responded to any of her texts and calls, which was incredibly unlike him.

Piper felt sick to her stomach. Her boyfriend was MIA. They were running horribly late for their Dancemania flight. This trip was already a disaster, and it hadn't even started yet.

Opening her contacts again, she scrolled past Finn's and selected the one above it instead. A few seconds later, Amy answered.

"I know I'm late, but I'm on my way, I promise. The Starbucks drive thru is ridiculously slow this morning."

Not hearing a word of Amy's greeting, Piper told her in a frantic voice, "Finn's not answering his phone, and he's supposed to pick me up, but he's not here, and we're already supposed to be at the airport, and my parents already left for work, and—" She cut herself off to take a shaky breath before crying, "I don't know what to do, Amy."

"He's not answering at all?"

"No." Piper's voice was about three octaves higher than normal as she blinked back tears of despair. She was already nervous about performing on live television. Finn was supposed to be calming her down, not adding to her worries. "What do I do? We're supposed to be at the airport right now, and I have no way to get there. I'm going to miss the flight."

"Okay, take a deep breath," Amy told her calmly, and Piper did as instructed. "There's still plenty of time to get to the airport before the plane takes off. I'm almost to the window, and then I'll swing by and pick you up, okay?"

"Okay," Piper agreed quietly, gripping her phone tightly in her hand.

"Do you want anything from Starbucks?" Amy asked, and Piper shook her head even though she couldn't see her.

"No, that's okay. Thanks."

"Okay. I'll see you soon."

With that, they ended the call, and Piper closed her eyes, taking a deep breath in through her nose and slowly letting it out. She anxiously opened her text messages with Finn as if he might have texted her while she'd been on the phone with Amy, but there was still radio silence from him.

Was it possible that he had slept in? After she had gone to the trouble of setting all of those alarms on his phone yesterday? Would he have turned them all off? Deleted them all completely?

Piper huffed just at the thought. The entire point of all those reminders was to avoid something like this from happening.

Finn had never exactly been a punctual person. He had been putting in more of an effort to be on time for things ever since they had started dating, and Piper had taken notice of that and appreciated it.

But this week, his old habits were appearing worse than ever. First he'd been an hour late for their brunch date, and then he forgot about the lunch date yesterday that was his idea to make up for brunch the day before. And now this.

Old habits died hard, and Finn was trying. Piper just wished he could have picked any other week to let his lateness make a reappearance.

Piper tried calling him one last time before Amy arrived, but once again, the call went to his voicemail.

She was starting to hate his voicemail.

When Amy finally arrived at her house, Piper was sitting on the front steps with her luggage. She wasted no time in grabbing her suitcases and running down the walkway to throw them haphazardly into Amy's backseat before hopping into the passenger seat.