Adumbrate || Phan

Confoundment

Seeming as it was illegal for me to drive my car without a wing mirror, we agreed Phil would come to my house to fix it. I was pretty reluctant to give him my address, but I couldn't see any other way past it. I hadn't told my mum about him coming, so when a smashed up orange car blasting out heavy bass music pulled up to our drive on a quiet Saturday morning, her face was one of utter shock of confusion. The face shone off even more so when a 21 year old boy with an almost identical fringe to mine dressed in a Pokemon t-shirt stepped out of the driving seat.
She turned and looked at me expectantly.
I just muttered "That's Phil," then went outside to greet him. She followed me.
"Hi." I mumbled, walking over to his car where he was currently adjusting the stereo. He turned his head round to look at me, and then saw my mum. He smiled widely.
"Hi Dan! Hello Mrs Howell." He said cheerily, his northern accent strong as nails. He went over to shake her hand.
"Hi... Phil is it?" My mum said. Phil nodded. "Nice to meet you, Phil. And please, call me Jane."
"Phil's just here to fix the wing mirror. He won't be long." I said, a little confused at the way Phil was acting. He was being so polite and weird.
"I hope I'm not at any inconvenience to you." He said, looking at my mum guiltily.
"Oh, no, of course not! It's a very lovely thing for you to do Phil! I was just going out shopping anyway. Do you boys need anything?" We both shook our heads. "Okay. Bye love." She said, kissing me on the head. She then got into her car and drove off, Phil smiling and waving after her. As soon as she was out of sight, I turned on him.
"Okay, what was that about?"
"What?" He said innocently.
"Why are you being so nice and polite?" I said.
"Maybe I'm a nice person and you've just had the wrong, judgemental view on me." He said, prodding my chest cheerfully. I rolled my eyes and pushed his hand down.
"Drop the act Phil."
"What act?"
"The 'I'm your sons best friend and I'm perfect and we get along so well and it's a pleasure to meet you Mrs Howell, I'm always doing nice, good deeds for your son, I hope I'm not at any inconvenience!' act." I mimicked his accent as I said this, making him smile slightly.
"Fine, you don't want me to be nice? You want me to be rude and disrespectful to your mum? Okay." He said, producing a cigarette out of his coat pocket and putting it between his teeth. He didn't light it, he just let it hang out of the corner of his mouth for a while. "Wheres this monstrosity of a car then, kid?"
I never should have said anything. I sighed loudly and beckoned him to follow me into our garage. I lifted the large, square door and it opened to reveal my red vauxhall corsa. And other random bits of crap my family had hoarded for the past seventeen years of my life. Phil seemed to smile slightly as he looked around the garage, the cigarette still hanging out of the side of his mouth. He then walked over to the car to examine the place the mirror had once been. He narrowed his eyes slightly and wrinkled his nose.
I think that was the first time I could have ever described Phil as looking anything near 'cute'.
"Give me half an hour," He said. I nodded. "And a cuppa." I rolled my eyes and said,
"You're so northern."
"Well, I am from the north."
"Where abouts in the north?"
"Lancashire."
"Is everyone's accent as strong as yours?"
"Yep. Probably stronger."
"Really?"
"Yup. Can I get my tea now?"
I widened my eyes slightly as I suddenly remembered.
"Oh yeah, of course, sorry." I said quickly before dashing into the house.

5 minutes later when I got back outside, I found Phil wondering about my garage, looking through some old photo album.
"Yeah, just go through all my families possessions, that's fine!" I said, placing the mug of hot tea on a bookshelf filled with old children's books. Phil looked up at me and then back to the photo.
"Is this you?" He asked, turning round the album so I could see the photo of 2 year old me on a beach in Sicily. Completely naked. I blushed a little and pulled the album away from him, shutting it.
"Yep." I said, placing it back in the cardboard box which had the word 'PHOTOS' written on it in thick, black marker pen.
"I like it in here." Phil said, running his hand along the stone wall. I furrowed my eyebrows at him.
"Erm, why?"
"I like the feel of it." He looked up at me and I gave him another confused look. "I don't mean literally. I just mean, like, you can tell it holds a lot of family memories. Good and bad. I like that." He said, smiled slightly, then shoved past me to get his tea.
It was so weird, Phil had so many different sides to him. He could just change so quickly. Most of the time he was an arrogant twat, but then he could suddenly turn into this sentimental inspiration who believes everyone should find love and gets good vibes off of photo albums.
"Right, go into the boot of my car and get the cardboard box on the left hand side." Phil said. I didn't move. He looked at me irritatedly.
"Magic word?" I asked, raising an eyebrow. He rolled his eyes.
"Please Daniel." He replied, mimicking my middle class accent. I sighed and walked over to his car, tried to pull open the boot, and ended up pulling the whole door off.
"That always happens." I heard him shout from the garage.
I wasn't surprised at what things he must of put this car through. Also, the boot of his car was packed with junk. There were plastic bags, empty beer bottles, food rappers, CD's, cigarette butts, I swear I even saw a pair women's pants amongst it all. I finally found the box and nearly fell to the ground trying to pick it up.