The Phan in Our Stars

V

EPILOGUE

Dan did leave the next day to stay with his family for a few weeks. He didn't say goodbye to Phil; he didn't even see him. They'd kissed each other goodnight only hours before for what the both silently knew was the last time. And that was enough.

Dan wasn't afraid to admit that he cried for most of the train journey home. He did cry and he told everyone in the seats around him about his beautiful, dying best friend named Phil Lester.

Phil died three weeks later in a hospital bed, unable to move on his own at all. When he got the call from Phil's parents, Dan didn't even answer his phone. He just lost it.

It was a difficult feeling to describe, the way Dan felt after that. Like everything was a little bit darker. In a universe without Phil Lester, the stars didn't shine quite as bright and the sun didn't have any reason to come out from behind the clouds. In a universe without Phil Lester, the air seemed a little harder to breathe and the bed a little harder to get out of. A universe without Phil was much harder to laugh in, much harder to be positive in, and much harder to smile in.

But Dan did smile again.

Dan smiled when his family helped him move out of the apartment and there was still half a box of Phil's favorite flavor of poptarts in the cupboard. He smiled when Peej opened the door to their new apartment, already talking Dan's ear off about film ideas. He smiled every time he saw a young couple in love and every time he made a friend and every time a stranger smiled at him in public. 

Because over time, Dan realized something: he wasn't living in a universe without Phil Lester. Phil's happiness and smile and peace and calm and quirkiness were manifested in every friendly stranger, every awkward moment, every inside joke, every star in the sky, every happy memory. Losing Phil was the hardest thing Dan ever had to do, but he managed. Because he had had Phil in his life, if only for a little while, and that was reason for a lifetime of happiness.