Well, it's Complicated...

Chapter 13 - Phil

Chapter 13 – Phil

It was about two weeks after Emily and Amber had walked in on me and Dan kissing in the lounge, and I still felt a little weird about it. Even though the girls had said that we could still kiss if we wanted to, we haven’t. Neither me nor Dan said anything about it, but we’re both afraid that a little peck on the lips could go out of control, like a single lit match dropped on the ground could start a huge, uncontrollable fire. It had already happened before, on more occasions than either of us would like to admit. And at least one of those times, we both had cat whiskers drawn on our faces. But I digress.

I laid in my bed, staring at the ceiling, deep in thought.

Dan and I had been together on and off since 2009. Well, “together” probably isn’t the right word. We were never officially “together” or “broken up”, we just sort of had “on” days and “off” days.

And during one of those “off” times, which had lasted about three weeks already, we met Amber and Emily. Emily seemed to take an instant liking to both of us, but her liking of Dan was more than platonic. Amber fell for me (almost literally), Dan took a much-more-than-platonic liking to the both of them, whereas I fell for Emily. When Emily and Dan started going out, I was doubly jealous. I was jealous of Dan dating the woman I loved, and I was jealous of Emily dating the man I loved. When Amber asked me out a few days after Emily started dating Dan, I accepted. By that time, I had started to notice a crush on Amber that I hadn’t noticed before.

After about a week or two, things started turning sour. One night, after I got home from a date with Amber, I gave Dan a kiss on the cheek goodnight, and before I knew what was happening he turned his head, held my head in his hands, and started kissing me passionately. I knew I should stop, but I couldn’t. When he came up for air, he gestured towards his bedroom, a cheeky grin on his face.

I should’ve said no. I should’ve just went to my own bedroom and fallen asleep. But I didn’t. I just nodded and followed him to his room.

Luckily for me, I topped that night. Unluckily for Dan, he bottomed. And he had a date with Emily the next day.

I could go on and on about it, but let’s just say Dan didn’t do a very good job of concealing the pain he was in.

Anyway, after that our “off” period became an “on-but-we-can’t-let-Amber-and-Emily-find-out” period, and we did pretty well at concealing it. That is, until the girls caught us kissing in the lounge…

I opened my eyes which I hadn’t realized were closed and looked around. My room was darker than it was when I went in there. I reached over to my bedside table and looked at my phone. 10:50 pm.

“Dan’s probably still up,” I muttered to myself, thinking out loud. “Maybe I can talk to him about all this, and see what he has to say.

I got out of my bed and tiptoed quietly towards Dan’s bedroom. I knocked on the door gently. I heard a slightly muffled “Come in”, and I opened the door.

“Hey Phil, what’s going on? You look like you have a lot on your mind.” Dan gestured for me to sit down on the bed next to him. I sat.

“Yeah, I do. I just feel—I don’t know how to explain it, but..ugh!” I flopped back on the bed, exasperated. “I’m not sure what to do and think.”

“I think I understand,” Dan said, running his fingers over the back of my hand.

“It feels—I guess sort of like writer’s block, but in real life. Like there’s something blocking my path and I don’t know how to get around it. You know what I mean?” I turned my head to face Dan, and he looked down into my eyes.

“Yeah, yeah I do. I kinda feel like that right now too.”

“Really?”

Dan nodded. “Yup. I have a new appreciation for people who say they have writer’s block.”

I smiled. “Me too. But what should we do? We can’t just go back and re-write a chapter of our lives.”

“No, we can’t,” Dan agreed. “But what we can do is decide how we can go forward from here. We can decide what we can do from this point forward that will be the best choice for us in the long run.”

I nodded. “And…what would that be?”

Dan looked me straight in the eye and said, “I have absolutely no idea.”

A/N I know this was a short and kinda crappy chapter but at least it explains Dan and Phil's side of things right? .. ... ........