.:Pulling Petals:. .:Phanfic:.

.:CHAPTER EIGHT:.

Dan arrived at school the next morning, excited to see Phil. He was still a bit in shock. The boy he'd had a crush on for years was his boyfriend. It was like something straight out of a fanfiction.

He made his way across the lawn to where Phil and Louise stood by the front of the school. That was odd, he thought. The two were polar opposites, the last two you would expect to be within a ten foot radius of each other. But there they were, talking.

As he got closer, he heard a few of the words they were saying.

"Well you sure moved quickly," Louise was saying to Phil. "You being the person you are, I would have expected you to wait until the last minute, but no, you did it the same day the bet was placed."

Phil laughed a bit. "Yeah. I just sort of decided to get it over with."

Louise pulled a bit of money out of her bag and handed it to Phil. "Here's your money, loser. But honestly, you should have heard him, he was ecstatic."

By now, Dan had begun piecing the events together. He had stopped dead in his tracks, still a good distance from the two.

It was a bet.

That's all it was. No love, no feeling at all, just Phil trying to get money.

A bitter taste coated Dan's tongue. Of course that's all it was. He was a fool to think anyone, especially Phil, would have actually liked him back. He had so much hope, he really believed for a short period of time that Phil loved him, but it was gone in a second.

He began to cry.

The tears were burning and came like a waterfall, but he made no effort to stop it. Years upon years of pining and watching from afar, and as soon as he finally got his one wish, it was too good to be true. He always tried to be nice, he always tried to smile at people in the hallways or help them if they dropped something. Little things that he hoped might make him a good person. But apparently that didn't work, seeing as he never managed to get anything good in life.

Phil turned and saw Dan standing within earshot, and judging by the tears on his face, he knew what he and Louise had been talking about.

"Dan, it's not what it seems like," he said, starting to approach Dan. "I just–"

The boy recoiled in what seemed to be a combination of hurt and disgust. Phil stopped when he saw, not wanting to make the situation any worse. He opened his mouth to try and speak, to explain the situation, but before he could, Dan turned and fled off the school grounds and down the street. 

*Yo sorry we forgot to upload last Friday!! We've run out of prewritten chapters so we were a bit frantic to get a new chapter written. Now that we have some momentum again though, we'll upload the next chapter tomorrow and hopefully get in a new chapter or two beforehand. Ciao!*