Remember, Everything Will Be Alright

IV

5 August 2019

Every morning, Phil made sure to be out of bed, or at least awake, by 5:00am. There was nothing more satisfying to him than being able to watch the sunrise. It took him a few weeks of waking up five minutes earlier every day in hopes that he would see it before he remembered that he could just Google what time the sun rose each morning. Phil had to hide idiosyncrasies like that to maintain his reputation. Everyone at home, and even Dan, loved to go on and on about how smart Phil was.

"Yes, Phillip, my son with a graduate degree in mathematics." The words of Phil's mum always lingered in the back of his head. In a single sentence, she managed to reduce Phil to his academic achievements. In one breath, she placed Phil at the top of the family pyramid; above Martyn and all of their cousins that didn't realize that their mere existence was a competition among the other unsuspecting children of brothers and sisters.

Phil hated being "the smart one," because he didn't think that label was fair. As talented as he was at data analysis, he sometimes needed to use his fingers for basic arithmetic. When no one was looking, he even snuck out the old TI-84 to crunch some numbers. GASP!

What most people didn't realize about Phil was that he was great at his job not because he could work the numbers, but because he knew people. He could take a step back from a graph and make calls that his associates with less experience than he and even the EEN's AI wouldn't have the wherewithal to make; decisions that actually made a difference. Aspects of a website and policies in place that Phil could look back at and say, "I did that!"

As he stood out on the balcony, mug of coffee in hand, watching the first golden rays of sun painting the city, Phil relished in the knowledge that he was one of his department's most invaluable assets. That thought had comforted him during his shower. It even instilled him with the confidence to wear one of the bolder tops in his closet: his royal blue button-down with little, black heart print. He would usually save such an exciting and inadvertently feminine shirt for a night out with friends or Dan. But that day, Phil just had to be the peacock of the office.

Once he had finished his coffee, Phil turned around to head back inside. He jumped at the sight of Dan who had been leaning against the doorframe, bed-headed and tired-eyed. Phil cursed to himself as he set his mug on the balcony's ledge. "You scared me half to death," Phil said as he reached for Dan and pulled him into a hug. It was the least he could do given that Dan had only been wearing his pajama bottoms and the tank top he had worn to bed the night before. If Phil didn't intervene, Dan would have had to deal with the morning cold by himself.

"You're up early," Phil said, fingertips gliding over the ridges of the goosebumps that formed on Dan's speckled arms. He rubbed his warmth into Dan's flesh as Dan's arms settled around his back.

"I wanted to see you before you went to work," Dan said. Once Phil let him go, he walked over to the chest-high balcony and rested his arms on the edge. Phil followed, taking a spot beside Dan.

"I can't tell you the last time I saw a sun rise," Dan said, taking in the sight of the half-born sun spilling upwards from the horizon. It made Dan regret going back to sleep every early morning that Phil asked him to join him outside when the noise of his before-work routine woke Dan up. "If only I had remembered how beautiful they were sooner," Dan said. "This whole time I've spent complaining about losing our nights together. I didn't even think that we could have been having mornings instead."

Phil smiled. "We can have every morning together for the rest of time if you'd like."

"I guess I can wake up with you, and then fall back asleep when you leave," Dan said.

"Sounds like a plan."

Dan snickered. "It's a good thing we can handle our early mornings and late nights" He leaned over, reaching into his pocket for the box he had brought with him. He placed the box on the ledge for Phil to take.