Page 7 of My Date With A Pair of Gray Sweatpant

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When I find myself in Matthew’s bed for the fourth time, he’s finally figured out this whole thing. His body is pressed up to mine, still warm, still inviting, but he’s clothed.

“Matthew… Matthew,” I hiss, turning in his embrace and trying to gently shake him awake. “Hmmm…what’s wrong, Kaitlyn?”

“I’m what’s wrong. I’m the wrong Kaitlyn, Matthew.”

“You’re not the wrong Kaitlyn, remember? It’s okay. I don’t think it matters.”

“What do you mean, it doesn’t matter?”

He clears his throat. “Things have changed since you were last here.”

“Changed?”

“I’ve been stuck here, so I’ve had a lot of time to think about what you said. You know, about what happens between times. And–” he pauses. “Maybe I should just show you.”

“Show me?” All I’m capable of at the moment is repeating Matthew. Something about the tone of his voice fills my belly with dread. He pulls away from me and flicks the bedside lamp on.

For as many times as I’ve said, “It’s the pants,” in the past two weeks, I’m not prepared for what I see.

Matthew is the pants.

I stare at him for a long moment, trying and failing to think of something to say. His entire body is the gray of the sweatpants. Along the top of his forehead, is what looks to be the scrunched up pattern of a waistband. Here and there bunched “fabric” creates lines down his face. It’s like the fabric of the pants has been stretched into the shape of Matthew. I try to school my expression. Whether he buys it, I can’t tell. He looks away from me almost immediately and heads toward the window.

Strangely enough, it's kind of hot. He's still wearing the sweatpants and they sit low on his hips. I can't help but stare as he stands with his back to me, lifting the blinds so he can see outside. There's something incredibly sexy about a man's shoulders and arms. I find myself wanting to get up and run my hands down the now-gray skin of the muscles in his arms and drag my hands over his variegated gray back.

“Well, now you know what you would have been turned into in the Beauty and the Beast house.”

“Huh?”

I shake my head. “Never mind. So what has happened?”

He turns away from the window to look at me. “In reality? Nothing. I’ve been here. Stuck for days like this.”

I cover my mouth with my hand. As usual in this “dream” I’m naked. “Could you throw me a shirt?” He throws me the Mike’s Discount Furniture shirt once again and I pull it over my head.

“Does everything reset when I leave?”

He shakes his head. “Not this time it didn’t. I picked that shirt up off the floor and folded it back up after you disappeared last time.”

“What about your mother?”

He shakes his head. “Haven’t seen her. Once you disappeared, she went back to her room. I haven’t been able to open the door since.”

I’m considering trying to open the door myself when the door down the hall slams again. Purposeful footsteps move toward the door, each one a loud click-click-click against what sounds like a hardwood floor.

Matthew sighs and moves to my side of the bed. “Stay behind me. I don’t know what she’s going to do.” I stand up and move closer behind him as the door is thrown open.

She laughs as she leans against the door frame. This time she’s dressed like an evil version of Dolly Parton—her large breasts are definitely the star of the show. “I see the whore is back.” It takes me a second, because I’m dense apparently, to realize she’s talking about me.

“Mother, she’s not hurting anything. She’s not even the right Kaitlyn.”

The woman laughs. “The right Kaitlyn. It doesn’t matter, my polyester son. That Kaitlyn doesn’t exist anymore–she’s an old woman by now, with grandchildren of her own. She doesn’t think about you. You’re just another man like your father who talks a big talk, then disappears when things get hard.”

As far as I can tell, Matthew’s pretty much fucked at this point. He has to escape this woman, but how the hell do I get him out of here when the only way out is the pants?

It dawns on me in that moment that he is the pants.

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