love at lost sight (phan)

CHAPTER 13

Phil sits across from me on my bed and places the tiles out between us. "I'll try to spell something out and you can tell me if it makes any sense or not?" He suggests.

"Sounds good," I say and watch as he begins to arrange tiles. I get distracted by watching the way he seems to furrow his brow in concentration and frown whenever he seems to realize that he has misplaced a tile. I have no idea why I find this so captivating.

"Done!" Phil exclaims and I see what he has spelled out.

"Goats are cool," I laugh. "Creative."

"Thank you," he smiles. "Your turn."

After a few minutes of searching for the right tiles I am finally satisfied with my sentence. "Done," I tell Phil. He then runs his fingers along the tiles and reads them aloud to me.

"That's an m, then an e, and another- meme?"

"You're on the right track," I tell him.

"Memes, a- r- are, c- is that an o? Yes, that is. You said 'memes are cool', wow Dan," he laughs.

I grin and pass the tiles for him to spell out next.

"You are a giant meme," I read once he is finished. "Gee, thanks," I grin.

"You're welcome," Phil smiles.

We continue to play the game for another half hour until we decide to finally leave. I call an uber and we begin to make our way down to the lobby. Phil takes his cane and I grab on to his arm, but he quickly pulls away.

"I- I want to try to get around on my own today. Just with my cane, I mean. O-of course I appreciate your help and all, but you're not going to always be there. I just figured I should get used to doing things on my own," Phil says.

I nod. "Alright. I understand," I tell him. Truthfully, I'm a little let down by his request. I've grown to really like being close to Phil like that. I also think that it has become a comfort for both of us, somehow.

I make a mental note to sign him up to get a seeing eye dog tonight so that he can get one as soon as possible. The drive to the Franklin institute is only a few minutes. The museum is a large stone building with pillars in the front. It looks like most of the buildings back in Washington D.C look.

"There you go," our driver says as she parks out in front. We thank her, pay her, and then exit the car. Despite Phil telling me earlier that he didn't want my help getting around today, I take his hand in mine as we walk across the street. There is no way I'm going to let him cross the street on his own after the incidents in San Antonio and Mount Rushmore. He doesn't protest as we make our way across. I reluctantly let go once we reach the other side, just in case of wandering phans. We reach the steps and I walk next to Phil as he moves his cane on them.

"Do you-" I start to offer my help to him, but Phil waves me away.

"I'm fine, it's just a slow process," he tells me. I continue to walk slowly by his side as he ascends the steps. I instinctively reach my hand out to him every time he stumbles, but he always waves off my help. We finally make it to the top without any traumatic incidents. I notice a few people giving us weird or annoyed looks for walking up the stairs so slowly, so I give them all death glares in response.

Once we walk into the building, I am very thankful for the heat. There is a metal detector right in front of the entrance.

"Please place all items in a box and move through the detectors," an officer instructs us. Phil puts his cane in one of the boxes, along with our phones. Someone comes over to help Phil through and we get to the other side smoothly.