Site hosted by Angelfire.com: Build your free website today!

"like sands through the hourglass... so are the...Days of our Lives"

Christyne's

"The Teens" Fan Fiction Site

 

Chapter 3



Without his knowing it, Philip was helping put Chloe’s plan in place to get him to eat. She had wondered how to distract him until she did an inventory of the table’s contents. Now, while he continued staring out the window of the suite, Chloe tiptoed to the rolling table and gently lifted the lids covering the food. Perfect - just as she had ordered. After looking over her shoulder to see Philip still not watching her movements, she stepped back from the table a few feet and walked toward the chairs that surrounded the conference table, pulled one out to place beside the dinner cart and prepared to try her hand at impromptu acting.

"Agh….," she groaned attempting to relocate the ornate, wooden chair. Philip turned and saw her struggling with the unwieldy piece of antique furniture.

"Chloe, do you need some help?"

"No…no….I can manage it…..just a couple more feet…..Agh! Ouch!"

Chloe had managed to drop the front right leg of the chair on her foot.

"Are you sure you don’t need any help?"

"I’m fine, really. The pain’s almost stopped."

Philip rolled his eyes, dropped the side of the curtain he had been holding back to view the street and strode toward her.

"Oh, for…..let me do it. Why can’t you just admit the chair’s too heavy for you to move? "

He lifted the chair in one movement and placed it before one of the two settings and let out a deep sigh.

"Do you want me to move another one?"

"I thought you said you didn’t want to eat."

"Oh,….right, I don’t. I just thought that…..well….never mind."

"What, Philip?"

"Nothing."

Chloe turned her back to him, smiling when she was positive he couldn’t see her and began lifting the covers from the food. Philip, seeing his services were no longer required, backed away, a trifle surprised to be so easily dismissed and forgotten.

"Oh, no! I don’t believe this!"

"What’s the matter?" Philip asked.

"They didn’t get the order right. Look at this."

Philip quietly came up behind Chloe and peered over her shoulder at the fare.

"Looks okay to me."

"There’s nothing wrong with the food…it’s just that…..I can’t eat this."

On one very expensive china plate, sat a cheeseburger, two dill pickles and a mound of French fries.

"I ordered a cheese sandwich……not a cheeseburger. I guess my French wasn’t as good as I thought it was. Somewhere, I goofed using ‘fromage’. Well, I guess that leaves this for my dinner." She lifted a lid to reveal a bowl of French onion soup and tea.

"Why don’t you just call room service and order again?"

"Because, Philip, it’s already after eleven. By the time it’s prepared it will be close to midnight. I don’t want to wait that long. I’ll just set it outside for them to take away. It’s a shame to waste it but you know I don’t eat meat."

"Suit yourself," Philip said and looked at the cheeseburger.

Chloe seated herself before her meal, daintily lifted an ecru linen napkin and began to remove the toasted cheese crust from the surface of the French onion soup with her spoon. After a couple of minutes observing her, Philip walked over to the table.

"Why don’t you just take the hamburger out of the bun and eat the cheese in the sandwich?"

"It’s all stuck to the meat," Chloe replied, lifting the top half of the hamburger bun to demonstrate how inextricably melted the cheese was to the meat. "Philip, would you keep me company?"

He hesitated for a few moments and nodded. He removed another chair with the same ease he had done Chloe’s and placed it opposite her and directly in front of the cheeseburger.

"I haven’t tried the French fries…but, where else would you expect to get good French fries than in Paris, France, huh?" Chloe smiled and took another spoonful of her soup. She purposely concentrated on the bowl before her, praying Philip would do what she remembered he always did when there was a plate of French fries to share at the Brady Pub. She held her breath as she saw him eye the plate before him. After what seemed an eternity, she saw his slender fingers reach for a French fry on the plate and nibble it….then, another…and another.

"I was just thinking…"

"About what, Philip?"

"Well, um……maybe, since you aren’t going to eat any of the cheeseburger, I’d just take a bite. I’m not really hungry but I …"

"Sure, go ahead…be my guest." Chloe’s heart practically leaped from the confines of her ribcage though she kept a disinterested tone in her voice. It had worked! Though he didn’t eat it with the same abandon he usually did, Philip slowly ate part of the cheeseburger.

"Who was that the phone earlier, when I was in the tub?" Philip asked wiping the catsup from his mouth between bites.

"Oh, that was the front desk. They’re bringing my things over tomorrow morning."

Philip looked up from his plate and turned his head slightly in puzzlement.

"Bringing what things and over to where?"

Chloe cleared her throat, took a sip of her tea and never took her eyes off the teacup.

"This needs a little lemon. Philip, could you hand me a lemon wedge from that plate next to your glass?"

He picked up the lemon wedge and started to pass it to her when he suddenly drew back his hand deciding to hold it hostage until Chloe answered his question.

"Chloe, you didn’t answer me. What things….where? Stop stalling by pretending to be reading tea leaves."

"Oh, Philip…you know I can’t do that….Tarot cards a little..but…."

"CHLOE!……. answer the question……..please."

Chloe, with head still bent, lifted her eyes and looked toward him over the top rim of her glasses.

"My suitcases are being delivered to your room tomorrow. I thought that you wouldn’t mind the company….."

"No…no…no….absolutely not. I don’t even think you should be here now."

"Philip," Chloe softly said his name, "where else would I be? There’s plenty of room in here. It’s once again the size of my room – that’s not a complaint, just a fact. There will be all sorts of phone calls tomorrow, arrangements to make before we go back to Salem and I can help you. Please, let me do this."

Philip stared at her for what seemed a lifetime.

"Chloe, your parents will not like you being in the same room with me…alone."

"Who’s going to tell them…certainly not me…besides, we’re not doing anything wrong."

"Chloe, I want to be by myself…can’t you understand that?"

"I’ll give you some space…..starting right now. I am freezing in these damp clothes. The soup warmed me up a little, but I think getting out of these and into a hot shower would be the best. Do you mind if I borrow something of yours to wear? I don’t want to go back to my room again."

Philip exasperatedly looked at Chloe and knew she already had made up her mind.

"Would it matter if I did?"

Chloe quickly rose from the chair, came to Philip and threw her arms around him giving him a hug and kiss. He tried to pull back from her but the more he did the tighter she held him. Dr. Peltier’s words about not letting him disassociate himself from affectionate gestures ever present in her mind and actions.

"Thank you, Philip. I really do need to take that shower. I almost feel as though I could get a cold if I stay in these wet things any longer. I’ll be about a half an hour….let you have some time alone, okay?" She kissed his right temple one last time and headed to his suitcase.

Philip stared at the unoccupied chair where Chloe had sat only moments before and tried to figure out how he had managed to lose another battle of logic to her. Chloe rummaged through his suitcase until she found what she wanted and headed for the bathroom, nearly closing the door but leaving it slightly ajar to release some of the steam. The vent in the ceiling designed for that purpose, proved to not be the most efficient as she had discovered with the one in her room. Minutes later the hissing sound of the shower could be heard. Chloe sang softly but not so quietly that Philip couldn’t hear her.

"Rubber ducky, you’re the one, You make bath time lots of fun."

For the first time in days a small, almost invisible grin appeared on his face. He looked toward the bathroom doorway and saw the steam wending its way through the slight opening just as Chloe’s love for him had found an opening in his grief to make itself known.

Chloe wrapped her body with the companion plush, royal purple bath towel Philip had used earlier. She combed out her hair and dried it with the hair dryer attached to the wall. She entered the bedroom some fifteen minutes later to find Philip with his back to her wearing his powder blue sweat pants and a many-times-washed "Habitat for Humanity" t shirt he had gotten last summer working on the Lockhart house. He was on the telephone with, Charlie, the pilot for the Titan corporate jet. She noticed the remainder of the cheeseburger had been eaten as well as half the order of French fries and congratulated herself on using her feminine wiles for the best of purposes.

Philip hung up the phone and turned around to see Chloe doing amazing things for his spare Salem High Panthers basketball tank top and a pair of blue and yellow plaid boxer shorts. She filled it in at places he never could. The slight swell of her breast was visible from the side view. With her hair parted down the middle, she was braiding the second of her long French braids. It reminded Philip of the first time he had seen her wear it that way – at Salem Place, the time he had asked her to go with him to a movie. She reached for her ever-present tote bag and removed a bottle of vanilla body lotion. Chloe sat at the foot of the king-sized bed, opened the top of the bottle and generously applied some lotion to her right leg. From the top of her thigh she languidly worked it into her skin all the way down to the ice blue painted toenails before repeating the identical process with her left leg. Next came the moisturizing of her arms and hands. Never had Philip watched something as simple raise such complicated, dangerous thoughts in him. She returned the bottle to the tote bag and rummaged around in it for several minutes as Philip breathed in the fresh fragrance of the vanilla and recalled every movement of her hands on her own skin.

"Philip?"

He lifted his eyes from her feet to look at her eyes.

"Do you have a safety pin somewhere in your suitcase?"

"I think so. Henderson usually thinks of everything….why?"

"Well, I have a small problem…actually, it’s a large problem," she said as she stood to demonstrate her predicament to him. "These are just a little too loose around the middle and I’m afraid I’ll slide right out of them during the night if I don’t put a safety pin in the waistband." With that she showed him how she could gather more than two inches of material in the boxers and still have them loose about the waist.

He stood looking at her bare midriff where she had raised the basketball shirt so he could see the problem.

"Philip?"

"Huh?"

"Do you have a safety pin?" she asked wondering why he seemed unusually distracted. Maybe she had interrupted another thought he had about his father and the carnage at the coronation.

"Oh, yeah……" he quietly answered. He walked to the bench holding his suitcase and returned with two safety pins. "Here, you can put one on each side to make it even."

"That’s a good idea. Wait….don’t go anywhere. If I hold the material, would you put the safety pin in it?"

"Oh, I don’t know, Chloe….I might accidentally stab you."

"Not if you put your hand inside the waistband and push the pin toward it. Please, Philip, I can’t see what I’m doing so I’m much more likely to jab myself than you are."

Philip shrugged his shoulders and took the opened safety pin from Chloe’s hand. She lifted more of the tank top and doing so, displayed more of her skin. She held the material and waited for Philip to push the safety pin through the folds. He slowly slid his hand along the skin that covered the side of her ribcage until he reached the waistband. His fingers dived below the one-inch wide elastic band into what he felt was forbidden territory under any other circumstances. He pushed the safety pin through the gathering and snapped it closed. Chloe pivoted until her left side was exposed and he repeated the same process. She seemed oblivious to the constant licking of his lips Philip did during the pinning – always a sign of his nervousness.

"Thanks, Philip," Chloe said as she lifted the waistband and dropped it to see if the pins were holding enough material to create a smaller circumference in the boxer shorts for her slender frame. "That’s great, Philip, …thanks." She leaned to him and kissed him lightly on the mouth before he could pull away.

"You’re welcome."

"That shower felt so good. I’m feeling relaxed now. Oh, do you have a spare toothbrush in your case? That’s something I didn’t put in my tote."

"You’re kidding, I thought you had an entire convenience store in there."

"It just appears that way. I can still taste the onion from the soup."

"Hold on…..I probably have one. Henderson…"

"…I know, thinks of everything."

"Yeah…..well, I’ll go look."

Chloe was concerned by Philip’s lack of emotion in his voice the entire time they had talked since she’d emerged from the bathroom. He said the words but didn’t seem to feel anything behind them. There was only one time when he seemed to genuinely be focused into the moment and what was while she was moisturizing. She wondered if the smell of vanilla had triggered a memory of his father for Philip. He seemed to be following her every movement….but….why? It was just a part of her ordinary bath routine.

"Here…..and I assume you want the toothpaste to go with it," Philip shoved the items in front of her face, breaking her train of thought.

"Oh, thanks. I can’t wait to get this onion taste out of my mouth."

Chloe went to the bathroom, brushed her teeth and returned to find Philip flipping through the cable guide booklet that listed what programming was available on the television in the room.

"Anything look interesting?"

"How would I know…it’s all in French," he said with a touch of exasperation in his voice and tossed the guide on the television with a tinge of anger.

"Let me have a look at it. Maybe I can interpret it for you."

"Don’t bother, Chloe."

"It’s not a bother," she replied attempting to keep a lilt in her tone. "It will let me see if I‘ve really learned anything this past semester in Miss Twiford’s French class. Hand me the booklet Philip, and I’ll give it a try."

"Will you just forget about the damn booklet? It doesn’t matter if you can read it or not. The programs will be in French, don’t you think? I don’t ‘parlez Francais’ so I wouldn’t know what was going on anyway. Just drop it, …leave it alone….for that matter LEAVE ME ALONE. GOD!!!!"

Philip’s sudden outburst of anger after he’d been so subdued most of the evening took Chloe by surprise. He grimaced as if in pain, mouthed a "damn" and brought his right hand to his forehead, chagrined at having been unable to control his emotions.

"Would you like me to get you an aspirin?"

"NO…..no….just,…..just leave me alone,…………….. please?" he now begged her in a quiet tone.

Chloe looked down at her hands clasped in front of her and worked on an invisible hangnail while the awkward silence grew between them. She furtively glanced up at him and saw the pain in his eyes. She took in a deep breath, exhaled it slowly and nodded her head. She walked around him toward her tote bag and removed a paperback novel. Philip stared straight ahead at the empty space where she had been moments before, wishing he could rewind the tape of the past few minutes and redo it differently. Chloe had the look of a reprimanded child who had displeased a parent in their enthusiasm of a deed not thoroughly thought out before they executed it. She lifted the book to her chest and turned it so Philip could see the title.

In a barely audible tone she said, "I …..I’ve been putting off finishing my literature assignment. I was going to read it on the plane ride home but I shouldn’t wait until the last minute if I want to give a decent report in class. Besides, I like John Steinbeck."

Again, she had that feeling the conversation was one-sided. Chloe dropped her arm that held the book and walked toward the king-sized bed. After turning on the small reading lamp that was built into the wall above the bed, she took two pillows and placed one on top of the other, got onto the bed without drawing back the bedspread, propped herself up and began reading "Of Mice and Men."


Philip hung his head, closed his eyes and tried to will the pounding in his head away. He glanced at Chloe to see her not looking at him….not even furtively as he’d seen her do throughout the evening. He walked to the suitcase, withdrew his Gameboy and began playing, determined to forget everything that had happened the past half an hour. He kept the sound muted to not interfere with Chloe’s concentration as she read and making the room loud in its silence.

Chloe shifted onto her right side away from Philip and turned the page of her book. Trying to focus on the story evaded her while her mind began to fill with doubts.

Maybe I was wrong to believe I could do this. What makes me think I can be the person to break through to Philip…get him to share his grief? God knows, I don’t have the reputation for being the most touchy-feely person in the world. Dr. Peltier just chose the wrong person, that’s all. I should have had her get Shawn. He’s been Philip’s best friend since they were little. Guys share better. I only seem to be making everything worse no matter what I do. I don’t want to hurt him any more than he already is but that’s all I seem to be doing. Dr. Peltier could be wrong -leaving him alone the way he wants might be the right thing. I should never have forced my way into his room. The bubble bath and all the other things I tried were just….stupid. It’s amazing he hasn’t thrown me out in the hall. The one person who could make him stop hurting is dead and I am so dumb for ever believing I could even begin to fill that void. Tomorrow….first thing….I’m taking the next available commercial flight home. That’s what Philip wants and that’s what I’m going to do because I love him and I want what he wants.

Philip glanced at his watch and saw it was just after two in the morning. Chloe was still lying on her side apparently reading. He got up from the chair and replaced his Gameboy in its carrying case. He noticed Chloe was not turning the page. She was a fast reader and it struck him as odd she kept pouring over one passage for so long. He walked to the bed, leaned over her and realized she had fallen asleep. He walked around the other side of the bed, bent down and softly called her name. There was no response. He removed the book from her hand, lifted her glasses from her face and looked at her once more before placing the two items on the nightstand.

He walked to the entry hall of the room and turned off the switches that controlled various lights in the suite. When he had finished the only lights remaining were the small table lamp and the reading lamp above the bed where Chloe slept. He walked back to the bed and gazed on Chloe’s face in her slumber. Visible to him now were the small tracks of tears on her cheeks. He knew then….she hadn’t been reading….she’d been crying, which is why she had turned her back to him. He shut off the reading light wishing he hadn’t learned how hurt she really had been by his tantrum.

He placed a knee down on the bed and lowered himself into its softness. He propped himself up on his right elbow and gazed over Chloe’s shoulder watching her rhythmically breath in and out until at one moment she drew in a shuddery breath. It was the kind he had heard before when she’d finished crying. He reached his left hand out and ran his fingers along her shoulder and down her arm repeatedly. She was warm, soft and so near. Philip placed his right arm beneath her neck and felt her body mold against his like two spoons in a drawer. Philip brought his lips close to her ear.

"Chloe" he whispered, "I’m so sorry I yelled at you. You didn’t do anything wrong. I just couldn’t seem to stop myself. It’s scary because I don’t know why I’m like this. It’s like you were just handy for me to take everything out on. I feel so angry and I’m taking it out on you. Want to know something? I really liked the bubble bath. You were right…I did fall asleep in the tub. I felt loved and cared for when you bathed me, washed my hair….stayed beside me….especially the last part. Chloe, please…..no matter what I do….no matter what I say…please,….please, don’t leave me. I can’t get through this without you…please. I love you…..know that I do even though I don’t seem to be able toshow you just now. You’re the only one who matters to me any more."

Chloe moved her head slightly and murmured his name.

"shhhhh……go to sleep….." he coaxed, pulled her toward him and drifted asleep.

Chloe opened her eyes to a darkened room and felt unable to move. Struggling to make herself more awake, she realized an arm,…not hers, was draped across her shoulders just below her chin and another rested lightly on her left breast. She could feel warm breath on her neck and turned her head as far as it would go to the left. In the room’s faint light she could identify the tousled mop of blond hair that was Philip’s. His face was lowered into the crook of her neck and a soft, purring type of snore was coming from him. The last thing she recalled was reading her book through her blurred vision until she had given in to crying silently.

She removed Philip’s arms from her and reached down to pull the blanket at the foot of the bed their feet. The chill of the room and the scantiness of Philip’s basketball jersey and boxer shorts made her shiver. She pulled the blanket over both of them. She laid back down but put a few inches of distance between Philip and herself. She remembered he’d been playing his Gameboy in his attempt to shut her presence out….or so, she thought. Sometime after she had gone to sleep….he had crawled onto the bed with her. It was large enough he didn’t have to be close to her if that’s what he wanted. Yet, he had been holding her so tightly it had awakened her. As an experiment she closed a bit of the gap between them. In less than a minute Philip reached his arm around her and placed it across her breasts while the left one held her about the waist. It made her feel warmer than any blanket could…from the inside out.

Philip took a deep breath and nuzzled her neck before resting his mouth near her ear. She could feel his warm breath blowing in it, caressing it almost until it made her involuntarily shudder.

"Chloe………..don’t go" he whispered faintly before resuming his first, long peaceful slumber in two days.

Chloe laid her hands on top of his, leaned back to close the gap even more between them until they seemed to be one.

"I won’t, Philip, not ever………I love you". With that declaration she returned to an equally well deserved sleep.

to be continued...

Home Page   Chapter 4      Lakota's Fan Fic Page    Fan Fics by Others

My Fics    Guestbook