Stray Cat

Chapter Twenty-Three

Martyn told Phil that he was welcome to stay longer, but Phil needed to be doing something, even if it meant facing the space that now felt so much like it belonged to Dan. He went home that afternoon after picking up some empty boxes from a store, which he could use for packing.

As he entered his apartment, he felt the weight of the truth that he had told Dan – there was no way that he could return to the way things were before he met Dan. Dan had been firmly rooted in Phil's life, and then he had been ripped away, leaving a gaping hole. He hadn't brought anything with him when he moved in but a black t-shirt and jeans, but somehow his presence had transformed the apartment into a place that Phil thought of as 'theirs'.

Maybe it was his way of tidying by dropping stacks of paper behind tables. Maybe it was how Phil now thought of half of his mugs as Dan's because he knew they were Dan's favorites. Whatever the reason, Phil looked around the place where he had lived for over a year and he had no emotional attachment to it. He had turned on the lights when he walked in, but there was no glow to it anymore. The heat was on, but the room felt cold. This wasn't home.

Then Phil realized what would make him feel better. He started setting up empty boxes in the living room, and then he started tossing things into them – collectibles, DVDs, videogames. A couple hours and a half-dozen packed boxes later, the room was looking different and Phil felt something ease in his chest, feeling like he was making progress. He sat on the sofa, which he had been avoiding because of the obvious signs of Dan in this area. Everything was here the way he had left it – the laptop, the headphones, and the CDs he had been listening to. If Phil had wanted to fool himself, he could almost believe that Dan had just stepped out of the room, and he would return at any moment to listen to more music.

Phil's chest was starting to ache again. There was something that would probably make it worse, but Phil couldn't resist. He turned on his laptop and pulled up the files from the video he recently filmed. There was a scene he had cut from the video, but he hadn't deleted it yet. It only took him a few minutes to find the first take of him announcing Draw Phil Naked, which was followed by Dan laughing uncontrollably. He played the sound back a few more times as tears started rolling down his cheeks. He hugged a pillow against his chest, which helped a bit.

On impulse, Phil published the edited AmazingPhil video on his channel. He didn't care about it at the moment, but Dan had wanted him to film it, so he felt like he was fulfilling an unspoken promise by completing the video. He hopped onto a ticket resale website and listed the Muse tickets for sale, and then he turned off his laptop, feeling ready to tackle the rest of the room. He started with the CDs that Dan had left out.

He continued packing for the rest of the day, only stopping to eat some leftover pizza from the fridge for dinner. His muscles were sore and he knew he couldn't keep going any longer tonight, so there was only one thing left to decide: was he going to sleep on the couch or in the bed? He eyed the couch, but all he could think about was kissing Dan after he said that he liked him, and there was also the fact that the couch was a bit too short for him to stretch out.

He walked to his room and collapsed on his bed, holding his breath for a moment, but it didn't help – as he finally inhaled, all he could smell was Dan's musky scent. Tears pricked in his eyes again and he buried his face in a pillow. As he did, his hand brushed against something under the pillow. Curious, he lifted the pillow and found the turtle notebook that he had given Dan. Phil turned on the bedside light so that he could take a look.

He flipped through the notebook. On one page, Dan had just doodled a 's'-shaped pattern a few times. Even if this was all Phil found in the notebook, it made Phil smile fondly as he ran his hand over where the pen had indented the paper with the design Dan traced. On the next page though, Dan had written something. It was a plan for a series that he had titled 'reasons why Dan's a fail' and there were a few video ideas bulleted: butterfingers, procrastination, mumbling. He had put some talking points beside the ideas, too. It looked like he wanted to include sketches in the videos.