4. In Which We Realize Its the Pants

4

In Which We Realize It's the Pants

D espite indigestion, heartache, and utter confusion, I have to return to work the next day and smile at all the people who come up to my counter at the bank. Every second I’m in my business casual outfit, I’m thinking about Matthew, the sweatpants, and the weird dreams. It has to be the sweatpants, right? I mean, if it’s indigestion, then I’m screwed—I’ll be dreaming about Matthew until I’m old and gray.

I race home after work and change into the sweatpants immediately. I’m not taking any chances of falling asleep without them on. Next, I text Dale, but he doesn’t message back. I check his location and see he’s at home, so I order his favorite meal from Luigi’s for delivery, hoping he’ll at least answer the door for the driver and get to work on his next outfit, hoping to distract myself as the minutes slowly tick by towards bedtime.

But of course, when it comes time for bed, sleep is impossible. I toss and turn, trying every technique I can think of to fall asleep. But nothing. I check my phone for the millionth time at four-thirty, then again at four-thirty-three, and again at four-thirty-eight. Nothing.

Five rolls around. Just two hours left before I need to be up. I close my eyes and sigh. I’m never going to fall asleep. Stanley jumps on the bed beside me and curls up, purring against my back. His purr, or the fact that it’s so close to time for me to get up, does the trick.

I open my eyes to find myself back in the same room next to Matthew.

This time, instead of sleepily launching straight into the deed, he apparently has learned to check first. He gently brushes his fingers along the outer edge of my ear. “We meet again, other Kaitlyn,” he whispers groggily. His arm is across me, but he doesn’t move away—not that there’s anywhere to go in his twin bed—but he doesn’t make it weird either. I manage that all on my own.

“It’s the pants,” I whisper back. “At least I think it’s the pants.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Every time I have this dream, it ends with me putting on your sweatpants. There’s something about your sweatpants.”

“My sweatpants?” he huffs a laugh.

I sigh. “I’m not saying it makes sense, but neither does this dream. Where is your Kaitlyn? Why do you think The Princess Bride just came out?”

“Because it did. In October. Kaitlyn and I went to see it.”

“Matthew, that movie came out in 1987. It’s 2025.”

“Now I know this is really my subconscious. It’s what I get for going into physics.”

“I’m not a figment of your subconscious. I have a life and a cat and a job. I spent last night working on a dress for my friend Dale. What did you do last night?”

He is silent. “I–I’m not sure.”

“Do you live here?” I whisper.

“No, I’m just visiting. I wanted to introduce mom to Kaitlyn before I proposed.”

“So you’re telling me you’ve been here two weeks?”

He shakes his head against my shoulder. “No, just the night. We’re here for the weekend.”

He still doesn’t seem to get what I’m trying to say. I roll into his embrace and turn to face him in the dark. “But what about in between the times you dream about me? What are you doing then?”

“I…”

“There was an entire week in my life that passed between our first and second dream. You remember me each time, so this can’t be a dream for you, but nothing is happening in your world in between?”

“I…”

I start to shiver in the cold of his room. “Sorry, let me get you some clothes.”

“Not the sweatpants,” I tell him. “Just a shirt.” I don’t want to accidentally wake up before I can figure out what is going on.

“O-kay,” he says, drawing out the word. He turns on the bedside light and throws me the black Mike’s Discount Furniture shirt for the third time. I pull it over my head as he pulls the sweatpants on.

A door slams down the hall and footsteps make their way toward us, growing louder and louder as they approach. The bedroom door flings open, slamming against the wall and bouncing back. An older woman in a fancy black lace nightdress and robe stands in the door. She’s beautiful. Her nightdress fits her snugly, showing off every curve of her body. Her eyes grow wide as she looks between the two of us.

“How dare you act like a whore in my home!” she says to me. I mean, I do keep waking up naked next to her son, but still, whore’s a little much. “Why, I ought to take a belt to you like I used to my daughter.”

Something in Matthew’s face changes, and he moves to step in between his mother and me. “That’s enough, mother. Go back to bed.”

“Go back to bed? So this little cunt can fuck you in my house?”

“Mother, you will not speak to Kaitlyn that way.”

She turns and looks at him. “So she’s gotten her claws in you? You don’t have to put up with her, Matthew. There are so many better women out there for you. Women that will take care of you like you deserve to be cared for.”

“Mother, no one has their claws in me. I love Kaitlyn. I want to marry her.”

“Marry her? Marry her?” the woman’s words turn into wails as her lip trembles. “You’re going to get married? My baby is going to leave me and get married?”

Matthew sighs. “Mother, I’m not leaving you. You wouldn’t be losing me, you’d be gaining Kaitlyn.”

She begins to cry. I do my best not to roll my eyes in case she can see me from where she still stands in the door. “But you’re-you’re all I have left. Your brother hardly comes around and your sister won’t speak to me. You-you-you can’t leave me.”

I expect him to comfort her, but Matthew surprises me by actually having a backbone. “Mother, there’s a reason Jennifer never speaks to you. It’s because you treated her horribly. If you can’t control yourself around Kaitlyn, we’ll have to distance ourselves as well.”

She puts a hand to her chest dramatically. I expect a full-on crying fit to erupt, but instead she wraps her hand around a ring hanging from a chain around her neck and pulls. The chain breaks and she holds out the ring to him.

“If you insist on marrying this girl, then at least have the decency to wear your father’s ring. He’d want you to have it.”

Cautiously, he takes it from her outstretched hand.

She steps closer to him and pulls the chain from the ring. “Go ahead. Try it on.”

“I don’t think now’s the time.”

“It’s such a simple thing, Matthew. Please, do it for me.”

“Fine–”

Before he can put it on himself, she takes the ring out of his palm. “With this ring,” she says, and I cringe. What kind of fucked up childhood did Matthew and his siblings endure? “I thee bind.” She slides the ring on finger and instantly the energy in the room shifts.

Matthew begins to make a sound, almost as if he’s choking. I want to scream or run or wake up, but all I can do is watch as he shrinks and disappears into the sweatpants he’s wearing.

He is fucking sweatpants? The sweat pants I’ve been wearing? The pants begin to writhe and wiggle as if they’re in pain.

There is a split second where neither of us left in the room move and then I lunge for the pants, determined to keep this disgusting woman away from them.

“It doesn’t matter,” she laughs as I pull them toward me. “You’ll never break the spell.”

“Fuck you, bitch,” I spit out as I manage to get my leg into the pants and wake up to the sound of my alarm at full volume, Stanley making painful biscuits against my thigh yet again.