Phil was sitting in a coffee shop, waiting for PJ. He had on sunglasses and a hooded jumper in case anyone would recognize him; which he hoped wasn't the case. Finally, just as Phil was about to give up, PJ wandered in. PJ scanned the crowd until his eyes fell on Phil who waved him over.
"Are you Phil Lester?" PJ asked, sitting down across from Phil.
"Yes, but please don't make a scene." Phil muttered as PJ's eyes grew wide.
"Okay, no right, I won't. So, um, what did you want to talk to me about that someone else couldn't?" PJ wondered, now finding it very hard to sit still when his favorite actor was sitting right in front of him.
"This is going to sound crazy, but I'm not the Phil Lester you think you know. You see…" And Phil went on to explain to him everything that had happened. But Phil was beginning to wonder if it even had happened at all, since the memories of Dan and his previous life were beginning to lose their shine.
"So, in a different universe we're best friends and that's why you tracked me down to talk to me?" PJ managed to get the thought out but it was very difficult for him to process everything.
"Yes." Phil agreed.
"Wow." PJ breathed, not believing his luck.
"Is there any way I could get back to my own time and world that you know of?" Phil asked, desperately.
"No, I'm sorry." PJ shook his head and all was quiet as Phil's only lead turned out to be a dead end. "So, since we're friends in an alternate universe, would it be weird if I asked for your autograph?" PJ drew out the question because it was both awkward and nervous for him to ask. Phil was taken a little aback but agreed to sign a napkin for PJ and took a selfie outside when PJ was leaving. "Thanks, and I'm sorry I couldn't have been more help!" He offered to which Phil only nodded, distracted with what he should do next.
Maybe this was the new reality or perhaps everything before was just a elaborate dream? But it seemed so real. Then a thought occurred to Phil that terrified him but made sense: he was in Purgatory. He went to sleep, died and now here he was, in his own personal hell. No Dan, no PJ, no Chris, (he couldn't find him on the internet anywhere) nothing the same, everything different, forced to hide himself and become a new person, the type of person he didn't like. He was now a famous, unfeeling, uncaring, actor that acted all the time and was never himself because the cameras were always rolling. Purgatory, Hell, whatever it was, Phil wasn't happy.
He wandered for awhile, adrift in this new and terrible extensional crisis. And there was no him for the Dan that was now controlling him. He finally came to a small, dilapidated park. It was too cold to play so it was abandoned but judging by the poor, broken swing sets and slanting slides, the cold wasn't what was keeping the children away and they had been gone for a long time.
Phil sat on a bench none that far away, looked towards a metal slide that was painted red with a rusted out bottom, then bent over and cried. He felt like that slide. He felt like nothing would be okay again. With his elbows on his knees, he let the rust erode himself away until his was nothing. He felt, by all definitions of the word: broken. He recalled back to when he lost his best friend in UNI. It was like that, but this was so much devastating.
He had lost Dan.
Dan. His best friend, his boyfriend, his everything.
Gone.
He, for the first time in years, possible ever, he was completely, crushingly alone.
He was thinking if this world was even worth the effort as tears and snot streamed down his face, steaming from the cold air, when someone called his name.