Paper Hearts (Phan)

173 days

I'd sat there with him all night until he'd eventually tire himself out so much that he fell asleep, still gripping my shirt for dear life.

PJ had come by a couple hours ago, wondering where I'd been for the past 2 hours. I heard him near sprinting down the hall and crashing through the door like a football player 10 yards away from the end zone.

"It's literally been 2 hours-" he barged in with his eyes shut and yelled at the top of his lungs, and as soon as he opened them he stopped, realising why I was still sitting on the couch and why I didn't dare move. And his eyes scanned over the mess of a living space, the sleeping mess on my chest, and he didn't even want to check the bedroom for the fear of the situation becoming worse than it already was.

The only thing still untouched or thrown across the room was the mint blue Polaroid camera and all the photos Cat had insisted on taking. They were all scattered on the counter like he'd been flipping through them. I could see them from where I was stuck; the first one where he fell asleep on me, another when he insisted he needed to be carried to class, and my other favourite where we'd drawn on his face with a neon pink sharpie. When Dan woke up, he loved the crudely drawn moustache and whiskers for some reason and didn't try to take it off until we forced him to go to the bathroom and wash his face. Even then he didn't do it right and still left the dorms with it only slightly faded across his upper lip.

PJ eyed the Polaroid, and then looked back at us with a glint in his eyes before picking up the camera and loading it with another picture template.

"Why in the world are you taking a picture right now?" I whisper yelled at him, and he shushed me with a finger to his lips.

"Looks like you were sleeping. I'm gonna use all these pictures," he pressed a button on the side causing the flash to go off, and lowered the lens to the floor, waiting for the photograph to develop. "To show him that he got better. Because he's going to get better."

__________

"I need to go to the store. I broke literally everything." Dan sighed, passing me, of all people, the list of replacements. It was filled to the final line of the paper with the tiniest readable print.

"Even the espresso machine?" PJ gasped, reading over my shoulder and tying off a garbage bag containing the sad little plastic chair broken in two. Dan claimed he had swung it against the wall and it cracked in half and flew across the room, but PJ and Cat doubted it. 'No matter how bad you want to be the Incredible Hulk, it's not gonna happen'

"Especially the espresso machine."

He told us more than once his 'tantrum' could've been worse, and I guess that was true for the few surviving appliances teetering on the brink of destruction, but it could've been better. According to Cat, everyone needs to break something every once in a while. Understandable, but the espresso machine didn't deserve its untimely fate.

"I need to go to the store." Dan said again and started wandering out the door, no car keys in his hand. I guess he assumed we were going to follow him out, and if so, he was right because Cat grabbed the list of things that needed to be replaced and PJ snatched Dan's credit card off the desk. And there was nothing for me to take along, so I shut the door behind everyone and stayed in the back for the wild ride.

__________

"Next up is the pet shop."

"Dan, we came here for more plates."

"Yeah, and now we're here at the pet shop." He smiled cheekily and took off for the entrance to a small building with a dog sticker in the window. He smushed his face against the glass and called us over to check out the tiny cats.