Blossom

Part 4

In the morning everything seemed much brighter for Phil. That was always how it seemed to work for him. The dark would bring out all the crushing hard to bear thoughts, and by morning they would be completely wiped away, replace with the promise of a new day.

It was Friday and Phil had purposefully arranged his schedule so that he had the day off. As long as he got through a few emails in the morning, he should be able to take the rest of the day off.

He called for one of the maids to bring some coffee and cereal upstairs (cereal would forever be better than any fancy breakfast to him) and settled down to work right away.

Only a couple hours later he was done with everything that needed to be finished and was ready to enjoy his weekend. Except he didn't really know what he wanted to do.

He couldn't call anyone he knew from the city as they all still had work (and he didn't really have anyone to call), so it had to be something he could do alone. Maybe he could walk through the woods and explore those. The Wilsons had said that there were a few trails towards the back of the property and it seemed like a perfect time to check those out.

But Phil had no idea where the trails were. He decided that he would have to ask one of the workers, they would definitely know. And if he had an excuse, he might as well pick Dan as his person to ask.

As he wandered out into the gardens, Phil became a little worried that he wouldn't be able to find Dan and that he would have to ask someone else instead. Not that asking other people would be a bad thing, but now that he had had the idea to talk to Dan, Phil couldn't get it out of his head.

Luckily Dan was just a couple flower beds away from where Phil had run into him the other day. And there were no other workers in sight.

"Dan?" Phil said cautiously as he approached the gardener from behind, not wanting to startle him. But as he got closer he could see that Dan had earbuds in and evidently couldn't hear past whatever music he was blasting. So Phil tapped him lightly on the shoulder.

Dan immediately jumped up, completely startled. "What the-I mean oh my god, you really frightened me." He quickly changed what he was saying once he saw that it was Phil.

"Sorry," Phil smiled in apology, "You couldn't hear me so-"

"Yeah, no don't worry about it. I get startled really easily." Dan didn't seem annoyed at all actually. "What's up?"

"Well I finished all my work a little early and I wanted to go on a hike but I wasn't sure where any of the trails would be. I was hoping that maybe you would know." Phil explained.

"Oh yeah, PJ and I go exploring on them during the weekends a lot of the time. I could definitely show you a couple."

"Good," Phil grinned. Dan was being so friendly, it was almost like he had forgotten that he was supposed to be moody and distanced. Phil quite liked this other version of Dan. "Do you want to come with me maybe?" He asked as a spur of the moment decision. Phil knew he was already fucked, he had known that since he had first laid eyes on Dan, it wasn't as if he could really make things worse. "I might get lost without a tour guide."

"Doubt that," Dan laughed at Phil's excuse. "Besides," he looked at all the flowers around them, "This stuff isn't going to get done by itself and unlike someone, my weekend hasn't actually started yet."

"Well as your boss I say that helping me is much more important than these flowers right now. I think they can wait until monday." Phil kept his tone light so Dan knew not to take him too seriously. He didn't want Dan to feel like he was forcing him into anything.