NOT ME.

“I need your pants.”

It’s strange waking up to a line like that.

“Dave, I need your pants. Now. Please.”

What’s stranger is realizing that in order to comply with the request (read order), I was going to have to take off the ones I was wearing and hand them over, and then either get to washing the others or hang around in my boxers until Matt returned.

“Dave! I’m not getting younger dammit! Christie is leaving, I need those pants!”

Her name jolts me awake finally.

“What?”

“I messed up man, and Christie is leaving. She’s on some flight taking off in a couple of hours and I need to stop her.” I’m finally on my feet dropping the pants, and handing them over. He puts them on.

“What happened, Matt?” I try and ask as calmly as I can.

“I said something when I was drunk. She got upset. She said she would leave, but who really goes through with it? I thought she was kidding and just needed some time!”

He rushes out; I stare out the door after him. My ass of a flatmate. I catch myself thinking about how he should try learning treating his girlfriend better. That’s when I hear his footsteps on the staircase again, and he reappears.

“Dave, what should I tell her?” An ass indeed.

“That you’re sorry? How hard is it to figure that out?”

“No not just that, I need something more, something fancier. You’re the one with the words, tell me something!”

“Say something like ‘All the stars would lose their lustre, if I am unable to muster, the courage to ask you to stay.’”

“That’s lame man. Poetry and all that. We’re a century past that, and I can’t screw this up. Seriously, something practical.”

“Matt, practical is exactly what she doesn’t need. Trust me, it’ll work.”

“Lustre and mustard?”

“Muster.”

“Right. Okay. Bye.” He runs off again, repeating lustre and muster to himself. Ass.

I find myself thinking about his girlfriend. Christie. Matt’s girlfriend, not mine. I wonder what will pass when he meets her at the airport. She will know that the words are mine, as are the pants, courtesy the fact that there’s a line of verse written above the knee which she notices when I'm wearing them.

I know she will stay back. I know she is dying to stay back. I know that Matt will think he’s the king of the world when he brings her back home tonight. I know that she and I will exchange perhaps even less than a look, and share a small truth. For I know she looks for something more than Matt in this house.

The painful part is, that something is not me.