Shared Spaces. phan

2

Dinner that day was awkward. Sophie and Beth arrived at the same time and bought Thai takeout for the four of us. They attend the same university but Beth is doing her second year bachelors and Sophia is finishing her masters. It's a habit when their schedules meet that they buy takeout for us.

They were very busy in conversation with each other about lectures whilst Phil ate in silence, not exactly there with his head. I stared at him from the corner of my eye, his face wasn't as pale as before, he looked normal but that classic smile of his wasn't there.

"You're alright?" Sophie asked, turning one-eighty to face Phil, who snapped back from the daydream and nodded.

"Just tired that's all, we had an introduction day at work and I had to walk like hundred flights of stairs." He sighed, sinking down the chair. Sophia smiled, brushing her hand, chopsticks between her middle and pointing finger, through his thin, raven black hair and I just sighed.

"It's still crazy to me that you're going to work on actual movies. Remember when we used to make movies at home? When I made the costumes and you filmed them?"

Phil's mood seemed to pick up, as the previous half frown changed into a genuine smile, his smile. "Of course, we used to make remakes of our favorite movies."

"And because we were the weird kids we remade candyman, scream and the blair witch project instead of Disney movies." Sophia filled in after Phil, beaming at the reminiscence of their shared childhood.

"I would give thousand pounds to see it." I admitted jokingly, both Sophia and Phil laughed.

"In the middle of filming blair witch Sophia got scared of the witch we made up and forgot that she wasn't real. The scenes were priceless though."

"Dear god, to think that your parents let you watch those films." Beth noticed.

"They hadn't." Phil and Sophie said in unison.

"Phil's older brother let us watch them with him when he babysat us. Those were the times."

I know it was stupid of me to be jealous, but I was. Phil was a special person in Soph's heart, she shared with him her whore childhood. She only knows me for three years, and didn't even like me for the first two. How could I ever compete with the old soulmate she will probably, inevitably fall in love with.

Suddenly a loud slam of the door made us all jump two feet in the air. I almost covered Phil in rice the second time.

"I cannot believe you did it!" We heard Flo's high pitched shout, at what we quickly assumed was Garrett.

"What did he do?" Beth was first to react. She stood up from the table and went over to the front door where furious Flo stood in a red raincoat and damp hair.

"He, your fucking ex-boyfriend, decided to invite all of our friends to a halloween party." She shouted, pointing her finger at the embarrassed Garrett trying to take off his boots in the corner. Beth crossed her arms and stared in confusion.

"That's why you're angry?"

"Yes, because guess where he's inviting them? Yes you guessed it, our house! He wants to have a party here with over forty people!" We all went silent.

"Well, it can be fun, right? Good opportunity to meet new people?" Phil asked Sophia quietly, but didn't get an answer.

Because he doesn't know that we haven't had a (planned) party at this house for months, maybe even years.

In fact, we used to host parties all the time at this apartment, to the point where each weird holiday on the calendar was a reason to celebrate. It had it's up sides, one of those was a massive group of friends and new people we met every week. We then saw those people again, and again, and again... eventually they practically lived here. The measures had to be made when one of them threw in Sophia's very enormous and expensive house plant and stole Flo's beloved cat 'bowtie'.