Dreaming Of More Than Just A White Christmas {Phan} (Book Four)

🎄Two🎄

"Phil, where on earth are you going?"

Phil jumped and let out a gasp as he placed his hand on his chest as I asked him this. He then looked over at me and replied, "Nowhere. I'm just going out on a walk."
"Can I come with you?"
"No." Phil replied hastily as he basically threw open the door.
"Why?" I asked as I raised an eyebrow in confusion.
"I'm not going to be gone for very long." Phil tapped his foot, obviously anxious that I was questioning him about wanting to leave so suddenly. "Besides, it's my birthday, so I can therefore do whatever I please."
"But don't you want to open your presents and spend time with me?" I asked sadly as I looked over at Phil's unopened presents, which were lying unopened by the TV. "You've been avoiding me all day."
Phil sighed softly as he opened the door, muttering out, "I won't be long very long," and completely avoiding my statement and also not even giving me a chance to respond as he stepped outside, quickly closing and locking the door behind him.
I let out an extremely heavy and sad sigh as I looked at the door, part of me hoping that he was going to walk back inside, say that he was just joking, finally open the presents that I spent quite a long time picking out and wrapping, and tell me something that he would like to do for his birthday so that we could actually spend time together for once.
What the hell is happening to him?
That thought couldn't help but cross my mind, even on a day like today.

Phil was always excited about celebrating his birthday. He always looked forward to me waking him up and leading him out to the kitchen where the birthday cake I had made for him laid in wait on the table with candles and a party hat next to it. He was like a child in a man's body, but it was okay with me since it was one of the many things that I loved about him.

But now, the birthday cake was resting on the table, unopened and uneaten, the candles were still in their original packaging, and the party hat was still in its original packaging as well. Even the presents remain untouched, still lying in wait wrapped with Phil's favorite wrapping paper for the birthday to open them and squeal in delight.
Unfortunately, the birthday boy was anything but happy.
Even on his birthday, the guilt and sadness over losing Ellie was unrelenting and continued consuming him.
It seems as if a part of Phil Lester left with Ellie that day.

~~~~~

Leaving was much harder than I thought it would be.

Almost as soon as I walked out, every part of me ached to go back, to go back and desperately try and get my husband's attention and beg him not to go out yet again, to go back and try just one more time to put Phil Lester back together.
But I knew better.
There was only person that could fix Phil, and that person was Ellie.
That's why I had to leave and go and find her, regardless of how difficult it would be not only to find where her new family lived, but to convince both of them to come back and live with Phil and me, especially after the pain the two of us inflicted onto Ellie after deciding against adopting her.

*****

Even though I knew exactly where Ellie's new family had lived and how to get there since I had done a fair amount of research on them before choosing them as the perfect candidates to adopt Ellie, I ended up getting a room at the hotel that was closest to where Phil and I lived and just sitting alone in the room while thinking about how everything had deteriorated over the past eleven months, how Phil had gone from his normal, cheerful self to hardly ever genuinely smiling and choosing to drown his sorrows in a bottle of beer rather than allowing himself to feel them and/or talk to me about how he was feeling, how Phil and I were so stupid to think that allowing another family to adopt Ellie was the best possible decision we could've made for her, and how because of that decision, we may have lost Ellie forever.