Chapter 15
Chapter Fifteen
FINN
Finn stood nervously on Elena's porch. He didn’t think he would be here again.
But now he was, and she would leave soon to go on a date with another man.
Before he could talk himself out of it, he knocked on the door.
After a few moments, the door swung open.
Elena stood framed in the doorway, still wearing her work clothes but with her hair down around her shoulders.
"Finn! Right on time." She stepped back, gesturing him to come inside. "Thanks again for doing this. You're really saving me."
He nodded, following her into the living room. "It's no problem," he said, dropping his bag beside the couch. "I brought some work to do after Miguel goes to bed."
Elena smiled. "Always prepared. Okay, let me walk you through everything.
" She guided him through the house, pointing out the critical items as she moved.
"Emergency numbers are on the fridge. Miguel needs to finish his science homework, but he'll claim he's already done it.
That is not true. Bedtime is technically ten, but it's Friday, so eleven is fine if he's not being a monster. "
Finn mentally cataloged everything as he followed her.
"Snacks in this cabinet," she continued, opening a pantry door. "Miguel knows what he's allowed to have. There's thirty dollars on the counter for pizza. Miguel likes cheese. But when he’s trying to act cool in front of his friends, he asks for supreme."
“Noted.”
Elena paused in her flurry of instructions, studying his face. "Are you sure you're okay with this? You seem... tense."
"I'm fine. Just making sure I don't miss anything important."
"Miguel's not a complicated algorithm, Finn. He's just a kid who needs to be fed and supervised for a few hours." She glanced at her watch. "I should finish getting ready. Miguel's in his room. Could you let him know you're here?"
Finn made his way down the hall until he found Miguel’s room. He knocked on his door. There was some shuffling on the other side, and then silence.
“Enter,” was the only word that came through the door.
Finn opened the door to find Miguel waiting for him in his desk chair. “Hello Miguel,” he said awkwardly.
Miguel analyzed Finn for a moment. “Why are you here?”
This was going to be a very long night.
Miguel was twelve years old, so not exactly a baby that couldn’t care for itself.
If Finn told Miguel that he was here to babysit him, it wouldn’t go terribly well.
Before Finn could respond, the sound of a door opening drew both their attention.
Elena emerged from her bathroom, and Finn had to make a physical effort to avoid staring.
She wore a simple burgundy dress, and Finn tried not to notice how different she looked outside of her normal work clothes. She looked... hot. Fuck. He couldn't help but admit it. Hot for someone else.
"What do you think?" she asked, a note of uncertainty in her voice as she smoothed her hands down the front of her dress. "Too much? Not enough?"
Finn realized he'd been staring silently. "You look..." He should have learned how to answer this question from the previous train wreck. Instead, he was struggling to find the right word again. "Great." He decided on.
A faint blush colored her cheeks. "Thank you," she said, then turned to Miguel. "Mijo, I won't be too late. Eleven at the latest. Be good for Finn, okay?"
Miguel shrugged. "Whatever. It's fine."
Elena gave Finn an apologetic look. "He's being difficult because he's twelve, not because of you." She gathered her purse and a light jacket. "Call if anything comes up. And thank you again. Seriously, this means a lot to me."
Finn nodded, not trusting himself to speak as she checked her appearance one last time in the hallway mirror. She looked happy, excited even, and the knowledge that this anticipation was for David was painful to digest.
"Okay, I'm off," she said, giving Miguel a quick hug that he pretended to resist but didn't actually pull away from. "There's ice cream in the freezer if you finish your homework," she added, pressing a kiss to the top of his head.
"Mom," Miguel protested, but Finn caught the flicker of a smile.
And then she was gone, the door closing behind her with a soft click. Just as Finn was about to exhale, the room took on a new type of tension. Miguel turned to Finn, crossing his arms over his chest. "I will not be doing homework tonight."
The declaration was clearly a test. Miguel watched him, waiting to see what kind of authority figure Finn would choose to be.
Finn considered his options. He could insist on the homework, establishing himself as an extension of Elena's rules. He could negotiate, offering homework first and then fun. Or...
"On a Friday night?" Finn raised an eyebrow. "Fuck homework."
Miguel's eyes widened, his carefully constructed defiance crumbling into startled amusement. "Did you just say 'fuck'?"
Finn held back a laugh at how Miguel whispered ‘fuck’ almost two octaves lower than his normal volume.
"I did," Finn confirmed. "I'm not your teacher or your parent. And it is Friday night."
A grin slowly spread across Miguel's face, transforming him from moody teen to the child in those photographs. "Cool," he said, then hesitated. "So... what do we do instead?"
Finn glanced around, his eyes landing on the entertainment center where a gaming console sat. "You have an Xbox?"
Miguel nodded, animated. "Yeah, you play?"
"Sometimes," Finn admitted, following as Miguel led him to the living room and began pulling out game cases.
"I've got Fortnite, Minecraft, some racing games..." Miguel rummaged through the stack before pulling out a case triumphantly. "And I just got this one."
Finn examined the game. Zombie Apocalypse 3.
"There's endless waves of zombies that try to kill you," Miguel explained, eyes gleaming with the excitement only inappropriate entertainment could inspire in a twelve-year-old. “My mom doesn’t know about it. Let’s keep it that way.”
Finn looked from the game to Miguel's hopeful face, thinking of the thirty dollars on the counter and the empty evening stretching before them. "I got four words for you," he said. "Pizza, zombies, Mountain Dew."
Miguel's grin was answer enough.
"What kind of pizza do you want?" Finn asked, picking up his phone.
"Supreme," Miguel said quickly.
Finn remembered Elena's words - when he's trying to act cool, he orders supreme. Miguel was trying to impress him. There was something enormously satisfying about that.
"Supreme, got it. Mind if I order half cheese? I’m boring and like it simple."
Miguel offered a simple nod, deftly concealing his inner excitement.
Finn spoke into the phone. “One large pizza, half supreme, half cheese. And a two-liter bottle of Mountain Dew.” Finn hung up. "Forty-five minutes until the food arrives. Show me how this zombie game works."
Miguel scrambled for the controllers, tossing one to Finn. "It's co-op, so we're on the same team. The zombies come in waves, and they get harder each round. You collect gold to upgrade your weapons."
Finn studied the controller. It had been years since he'd played, but the button layout hadn’t changed much.
The game loaded, dropping them onto a post-apocalyptic battleground.
Miguel's character began running in circles, providing instructions to Finn.
Finn fired his pistol into a zombie, killing it.
That felt pretty good. They got through the first five rounds pretty easily, but then it started getting noticeably harder.
"So what's our strat this round?" Finn asked, his character already moving toward a supply cache.
Miguel took a calculated risk: he took his eyes off the screen for approximately one second to face Finn in ‘real life’. "Did you just say 'strat'?"
"Strategy," Finn clarified, eyes on the screen as he collected ammunition. "We should decide how we want to take on the next wave."
"How do you know gamer vocab, dude?" Miguel asked, watching as Finn's character mowed down a pack of zombies.
Finn shrugged. "I wasn't born a lab assistant, you know. I went through a gaming phase in college." The next wave of zombies appeared on screen. Finn was lighting it up. Headshot after headshot after headshot.
"Holy shit," Miguel breathed. "You're actually good."
Finn reveled in the praise, grinning. "Yes, I am good at this."
Miguel turned toward him again. “Jeez dude. Don’t get weirdly happy.”
They quickly developed chemistry as a zombie-killing duo. As the zombie horde grew, they established a position in a slim hallway. The zombies could only come from two directions.
"Behind you!" Miguel yelled as Finn's character reloaded. "Use the shotgun!"
Finn switched weapons, blasting a cluster of zombies that had flanked his position. "Good comms. You saved me."
Miguel beamed at the acknowledgment.
“How much gold do you have?” Finn inquired.
“Uhhh, ten,” Miguel said sheepishly.
“Ten!? I thought we agreed we were collecting all our gold so we can afford to buy the cannon?”
“We did agree to that, yes. But then I spent all my gold to upgrade my machine gun to max level.”
Finn shook his head. “Unbelievable.”
The game continued, growing more intense with each wave. They were deep into round seven when the doorbell rang.
"Pizza!" Miguel exclaimed, not taking his eyes off the screen.
"Cover me," Finn said, carefully setting down his controller. "I'll get the door."
He extracted himself from the couch, digging Elena's cash from his pocket as he made his way to the front door. Behind him, Miguel's game character was spinning in frantic circles, trying to cover both their positions.
"You're gonna die!! You're gonna die, Finn!" Miguel shouted, voice rising in panic. "There's too many of them!"
Finn pulled open the door to find a young delivery driver holding their pizza, eyes widening at Miguel's increasingly frantic shouts.
"They're all over me! Shit! SHIT!" Miguel's voice carried clearly through the house.
The delivery driver took a half-step back, pizza balanced in one hand. "Uh... is everything okay in there?"
"Video games," Finn explained, reaching for the pizza.
"I'm surrounded! I’M INFECTED! FOR FUCK’S SAKE!" Miguel wailed from the living room.
The driver's expression moved from alarmed to relieved. "Oh, man, is that Zombie Apocalypse 3? That game is sick."
"Yeah, we’re addicted," Finn agreed, handing over the cash. "Keep the change."
He closed the door with his foot, balancing the pizza and Mountain Dew as he returned to the living room. Miguel was slumped on the couch, controller abandoned.
"We died," he announced solemnly. "It was a massacre."
"A noble sacrifice in the name of pizza," Finn said, setting the boxes on the coffee table. "Plates?"
"In the kitchen," Miguel replied, already flipping open the pizza box. "Second cabinet."
When Finn returned with plates and napkins, Miguel had already claimed a slice of cheese. "I thought you wanted supreme?"
Miguel shrugged. "Thought I would switch it up."
“Switch it up with some basic cheese, huh?” Finn said with an eyebrow raised.
They ate in companionable silence for a few minutes. The only sounds were the zombie groans from the paused game screen.
"My dad used to order pizza every Friday," Miguel said, staring at his plate. "Before he left."
The unexpected admission caught Finn off-guard. He set his slice down, giving Miguel his full attention.
"He lives in Boston now," Miguel continued, still not looking up. "Has a new family and everything. He sends birthday cards sometimes, but mostly he's just... gone. It kinda sucks."
Finn considered and discarded several possible responses. "Yeah," he said finally. "That does suck."
Miguel glanced up, maybe surprised by the simple acknowledgment.
“And I bet it doesn’t help that your mom has been so busy with work lately,” Finn added, hoping he wasn’t overstepping.
Miguel shrugged, still picking at his pizza crust. “Yeah, I give her a hard time about it sometimes.” He paused. “But I know she’s doing it for me. Since Dad left and everything. It’s… a lot I guess.”
Finn nodded. He found himself respecting this side of Miguel he hadn’t seen before.
“But why do you do it?”
Finn looked up to find Miguel looking up at him expectantly. “What, work so much?”
Miguel nodded back.
Finn took a sip of his soda, considering how much to reveal. “The work we’re doing could have helped someone very important to me,” he said finally.
Miguel looked at him with new understanding, a respect that hadn't been there before. "That’s pretty cool," Miguel said simply.
With that, the emotional talk was over. They housed the pizza with urgency and chugged Mountain Dew. There was no time to waste.
Finn wiped his hands on a napkin. "Zombies?" he asked, reaching for his controller.
"Yep," Miguel replied, grabbing his own. Only word needed.