"Hey, Keely!" Tia called, waving to get her friend's attention as she walked dazedly down the path in front of her house. She tightened her grip on the thick envelope nervously.

The blonde blinked twice before showing any real response. "Yeah?" She seemed to notice Tia only after a while, and then smiled suddenly. "Hey, Tia!"

Tia nodded, then frowned a little bit. "Are you okay?"

She seemed to hesitate before she replied, "I'll tell you later." She then smiled again, and added, "Nothing too big, anyway."

'Right,' Tia thought, watching Keely as her mind seemed to drift off again. "Uhm, hey," she restarted, "You know when Phil - " she noticed that Keely snapped back to attention at the sound of his name and smiled inwardly - " - had that, uh, date with the Mayor's daughter?"

"Alice? Yeah, I remember," Keely replied, looking slightly confused as to the sudden mention of the date that had happened over a year ago. "Why?"

She also remembered that she had hardly mentioned much to Tia - in fact, the only way Tia actually knew about it was because she had suggested, jokingly, 'karate-chopping a fly' that had landed on Phil's nose - only a week after the incident. His reply had also been teasing, 'Only if I get a dance afterwards,' adding a sly wink and a squeeze of her hand. Of course, Tia got neither head nor tail of this statement and said so. For this, Keely gave her a short summary of it all, rather slyly forgetting some of the unimportant details of the ''j' word' and the dance.

Tia still hadn't understood Phil's remark, but she kept quiet about it. And soon it was believed that Tia had forgotten about it as a whole - which, truthfully, she had.

Until Alice had met her after school that day. She had provided a much more in-depth explanation of the happenings, and pressed into Tia's hand copies of the pictures she had found in her camera the day after that - only saying that she wanted Keely and Phil to see it, and realise what they had.

Tia accepted it, feeling curious, and flipped through the pictures as soon as she had gotten the chance.

She was thoroughly satisfied with what she had found.

And she thought that Phil and Keely would rather enjoy her find, as well.

"Why?" Keely repeated, bringing Tia back to the present.

"Uhm," the brunette began, "Alice - she wanted me to give you this. You guys, I mean. You and Phil."

Keely took the envelope from the stammering girl suspiciously, as if it would explode any moment. Taking notice of this, Tia sighed. "Relax, Keely, it ain't a bomb."

She blushed, and snapped back immediately, "I know it isn't!" She examined it keenly and nodded to Tia, not taking her eyes away from it. "I'll go check this out."

"Yeah. Do that." Tia grinned as she walked away. It was only after she disappeared from view when she remembered she had forgotten to ask her what Keely had been thinking about at the beginning of their conversation. Sighing, she turned away, and thought resignedly, 'I guess it'll have to wait.'

They both stared at the envelope as it lay on his desk.

"Open it."

"No, you do it."

"No - " Phil let out a sigh. "This is ridiculous! It's just an envelope, for crying out loud!"

"We don't know what's inside," Keely reminded. "And Alice wasn't very happy with you the last time you talked to her."

"Yeah, well..." he trailed off and finally picked up the envelope, taking a deep breath. "I say we go for it."

"Fine." She shrugged.

There was a loud tear heard, followed by the ruffle of paper as he tore the envelope and took out the pictures.

"Hey - that's me," he observed as he looked at the first picture.

"Yeah, that is," she confirmed, leaning towards him to get a better look at it. She let out a gasp as she realised where that was from. "It's from your date with Alice!"

"But I thought you were taking pictures of both of us."

Keely blushed as she remembered what had actually happened. "Uhm, was I?" she lied, and quickly changed the subject. "It's a great picture of you."

He stared at her for a while, as though searching her, then smiled. "Thanks."

"N - no problem."

The next few pictures all included him with Alice, as Alice had given Keely the duty of taking photographs of the two of them throughout the evening. They looked through those fairly quickly.

"This one's of you."

"Oh, I didn't know that," she commented sarcastically, hitting him upside the head.

He laughed in reply and rubbed the back of his head. "Okay, okay..." He didn't take his eyes off the picture. "Who took it?"

"I gave the camera to Manny after a while," she explained.

"Oh." He glanced up at her, grinning slightly. She felt his gaze and looked up. Their eyes met and she smiled. "What?" she asked.

"What what?" he replied.

"What're you looking at me like that for?"

He looked down at the picture again quickly, breaking their eye contact. "You look..."

"Messy? Ugly? Terrible? Witchy? Horri - "

" - beautiful," he cut in, chuckling. He seemed to have just realised what he had said and tried to correct himself. "I mean - I - you - "

"Your eyes need checking," she said with a brief smile.

"What?" He scoffed. "Of course you're beautiful."

"Yeah, in this extremely bad shot of me looking totally and completely and without a doubt messy?" she argued.

"That just shows that you look great no matter what," he declared. They looked at each other simultaneously and their eyes met once more. Her breath caught in her throat and she opened her mouth to speak. "Phil - "

"Your mom wants to know if you're planning on staying over."

"What?" Keely questioned, turning around.

"Your mom wants to know if you're planning on staying over tonight," Pim repeated, leaning against the door she'd just opened. "She says it's okay because tomorrow's a Saturday."

Keely looked back at Phil as if asking if it was okay with him. He gave a half-smile and nodded.

"So I'll go tell her, then?"

"Yeah." Keely turned back to her. "Yeah, you can tell her I'm staying over."

"Okay." Pim smiled slightly and, without giving her usual wry comment about Phil, she left.

"That's odd - first time she didn't say anything bad about you," she said with a laugh. He nodded again wordlessly, looking down at the pictures and frowning in what looked like deep concentration.

"Phil - about what was happening - what we were - " she started hesitantly, only to be interrupted by him.

"You wanna see the rest of the pictures?" He held up the stack of photos in question abruptly.

She looked just a bit worried when she agreed.

What was going on?

Okay - a new chapter. Well to tell the truth I was hardly very confident about this chapter - too mushy? too out-of-character? too unreal? But Mr.1080 convinced me to put it up, so...here it is.
I'm planning on putting up another chapter after this that continues with this one - especially since I want Phil and Keely to look through some of the other pictures in the pile. The main reasons I've left it off like this are because I think this chapter is rather long as it is I think it's the longest I've written so far and also because I want to know what you guys think about where this small branch of the storyline is going. Yep.
So I'd really appreciate it if you reviewed, and I really really appreciate all the reviews you've already sent. D
Thanks,
-( moofoot