24 Hours - Phan

5:00am

Phil POV:

I try to clear my head as I walk, but Dan never leaves my mind, he's always there. And if I'm going to be totally honest, he has been since the day we met. Sometimes it's just incomprehensible to me that it's possible to have such a mental and physical need for someone. In a world filled with chaos, he's the one stable thing that I so desperately need in my life. I've been in love with him for years, and I can't believe I've only just realized to what great extent. It's no longer something I can tuck away and ignore or pretend it doesn't exist. I refuse to believe that he actually wants us to forget what happened last night. He couldn't have meant it. I saw the pictures that he had been saving of the two of us, and those aren't the actions of someone who wants to forget. Those are the actions of someone in love.

I smile as I think back to all of the daydreams I've had about him over the years. Daydreams are such an odd combination of fantasy and nightmare. It's fantasy because you get a chance to get a glimpse of what life would be like if all your dreams come true, but whenever you wake up, you're stuck with the reality that none of it may ever happen. Sometimes the daydreams leave me feeling so hopeless. Unrequited love is by far the worst kind of love. It makes you destroy yourself from the inside out.  Maybe today proves that.

I'm still in shock over all of those pictures he saved of us together. Over time, Dan has managed to make his own reality out of memories from the past nine years. But am I any different? I've done the same thing, just in other ways. Every unoccupied minute has been spent imagining us in different scenarios: being a couple, holding hands and being affectionate in public, sharing the same bed. What happened tonight didn't change any of that. In fact, it made me want it even more because it was all almost within reach instead of just a distant dream. It was positively cruel of him to give me everything I've ever wanted and then take it back. The fact that he wants us to forget it ever happened just adds insult to injury.

The insecure part of me feels like I've done something wrong for him to change his mind like that. I gave him the option to stop before we kissed, but he didn't take it. Does that mean that he didn't like everything that happened after that point? Is it possible he was disappointed with the physical side of things? That would be beyond embarrassing, especially since I thought the entire experience was more phenomenal that I even thought possible.

I sit down on a bench for a quick break, physically and emotionally exhausted. All around me, the houses are mostly dark at this hour except for a few, including the one directly across from me where the curtains are open in a large window on the second floor of an old brick building. A woman walks up to the window and looks out onto the street below, swaying back and forth. I squint a little bit and realize that she's holding a baby all bundled up in blankets. She starts moving again, slowly pacing across the room trying to soothe the baby and presumably get it back to sleep. Her steady movements are almost hypnotic, and I start to wonder to myself how that baby is still awake since it seems to be making me sleepy from all the way across the street. She stops suddenly knocking me out of my trance. A man is in the room now and is approaching her to take the baby. She kisses him on the cheek and disappears from view before he starts walking in the same pattern as she did.

Feeling tearful all of a sudden, I look away and instead concentrate on my shoes and the sidewalk. I never really pictured us with kids, but I did picture us as being a family someday. The assumption was that in the end, we would end up together. Married even. I'd be lying if I said there was never a wedding in some of those daydreams I've had over the years. I thought that maybe we were ready for a breakthrough right after we moved into our new apartment. We made a video and he mentioned that this wasn't our 'forever home' yet and he didn't take out his comment when he did the editing. I hinted around and waited for him to say something more about it, but he never did. I wanted so badly to ask him if our 'forever home' involved a shared bedroom, but stupid me for thinking maybe he was ready to pave the way for us to start a relationship and eventually come out. I've been waiting for signs he might see me as anything other than just a best friend for years now. Every now and then it would seem as if he was alluding to something, but nothing would ever come of it. Just wishful thinking on my part I guess.

There have been so many of those 'is this it' moments over the years. A few months back we were sitting in the living room in the dark watching Netflix and I fell asleep while sitting up on the couch. When I woke up in the middle of the night, Dan was curled into my side and almost on my lap with his face nuzzled into my neck. My body was aching from sleeping in that position, but I was terrified to move and wake him up and have the moment be over. My arm was draped over the back of the couch, so I nonchalantly let it slide down so it was around Dan as if I was holding his body to mine. That could have naturally happened, right? I was trying to figure out if I should wake him like this or slip out from underneath him when he stirred and burrowed his face in even further, causing his lips to rest on my neck. I swear my eyes rolled back into my head when I felt that. I started thinking that if maybe if I leaned in his direction a little bit he would reflexively kiss my neck, but that's when I ungracefully leaped up, causing Dan to tip and land flat on the couch, startling him awake. Enjoying the snuggling was one thing, but trying to manipulate him into an accidental kiss while he was sleeping was another. I definitely draw the line at that.

I feel like I'm full of questions, but have no answers. The biggest problem, of course, is what will happen if Dan stands his ground and still wants us to pretend that last night didn't happen. That is the one thing I can't do. I refuse to try to disregard something that I never want to forget. I've always had hope to carry me along. He's never flat out said that he had no interest in any kind of relationship with me other than totally platonic, so what's going to happen if he says that now? I'm not sure how to live a life where there's no hope of being with Dan.

But even now, just as I have ever since I met him, I carry an overly idealistic view of our friendship and its potential for something more. Despite what happened tonight and even as I wander the streets by myself, I still have an irrational hope that I'll come home and he'll tell me he loves me and this deep but quiet love I've carried for so long won't have been in vain.

I silently sit on the bench with my head bowed, alone as London slumbers around me.