THE ROOMIE (Pedro pascal)

Intro

Pedro was staring at the bass that was in the corner of the apartment. He was wondering when it had all started to go wrong. He took a sigh that made him close his eyes and let all his weight fall on the chair. Life hadn't always felt like this. Pedro in his twenties would have never felt this way, but his young adult years were a dream that now seemed far away.

Isaac and Pedro met when they were fifteen years old. They knew each other from the Spanish course, but it wasn't until they were both sent to detention that they became friends. By the time summer vacation came around, they became inseparable. They spent the afternoons listening to music, in the arcades, and doing the typical mischiefs that teenagers do. Isaac looked at the ceiling with a cigarette between his lips, and without turning to see Pedro, he said, "If you could do whatever you wanted in the universe, what would you do?"

Pedro turned to see his friend lying on the couch, and after holding his chin to simulate to be thinking, he replied "If I could do whatever I want in the universe... I'd do your mom.''

''Fuck off dude, I'm being serious'' Isaac sat on the couch and took one last puff on his cigarette before putting it out with the sole of his shoe. ''I thought we should stop dreaming and start doing'' he continued.

And Pedro knew exactly what he meant. If he could do anything in the universe, he'd make music, and not just any kind of music, one that's so amazing, Deep Purple would invite him to collaborate with them. The two teenagers could spend hours talking about music and had dreamed of starting a band countless times. ''Start doing? '' Pedro responded.

''Remember this summer very well, Pedrito, that today will be the first day of the rest of our lives'' Isaac said as he looked him straight in the eyes ''Tomorrow you are going to lift your lazy ass and you are going to find a job. By the end of the summer, you'll have enough money to buy the stupid bass you always see in the store downtown'' Pedro rolled his eyes at the comment of the bass, but what could he expect from a guitarist.

After two months as a waiter at the local diner and with school about to start the following week, Pedro had raised enough money to buy a bass guitar and an amplifier. It wasn't the best or the most expensive, but it was love at first sight, and it would always hold a special place in his heart.

That bass was always the one he composed on, regardless of the fact that a few years later he would have a room full of more expensive ones. The camera flashes, the European tours, the women and all the alcohol and drugs money could buy; Pedro and Isaac's life was exactly as they had dreamed it. Until one day, everything changed.

Pedro shook his head trying to get that memory out of his mind as quickly as he could. He snapped back to reality. He was no longer the young man who was going to eat the world, now he was a middle-aged man who the world had eaten. He never imagined that at his age he would still be renting an apartment, let alone fighting over it with a 25-year-old girl.