There wasn't anything quite like your best friend screaming into your ear in the early hours of the morning. On one hand, at the moment it's happening, it's the worst thing that could ever happen. The loudness and horrible morning breath, made me wish I could throw him out the window as I could with a normal alarm.

On the other hand, it reminded me that I was now living in a tiny apartment, that I could barely afford, with an over-excitable person who only calmed down when they were asleep.

No, that's still on the same hand. The horrible hand. The hand that seemingly has been dipped into a bucket of my worst fears. I have no idea where my good hand was. I've lost it. I probably left it back in my parent's house. In the cosiness of my childhood room, which I didn't have to pay for.

I've made a terrible mistake.

"Matthew! It's time to get out of that single mattress you call a bed!" My best friend's voice bounced around my small, almost empty room. "It's almost time to go to school!"

"You don't have to be so loud," I groaned, pulling my blankets over my head.

I knew that my words would only fall on deaf ears, even if I said them a hundred times. James was always the most energetic and loudest person in any given room. I had no idea how he managed to keep his energy levels so high.

Then again, I had a trait that made our friendship extremely chaotic, so I couldn't say too much about James.

I was an extremely competitive person and there was nothing that I loved more than a challenge. Sadly, that meant that I believed anything James could do, I could do better. Occasionally, that meant being the most energetic and loudest person in any given room.

Not so much in the mornings, though.

"Can't you go and play on the highway for a while, James? Just until I wake up some more."

"Nope! Come on!"

I heard the sound of footsteps moving around my room, and I knew James was planning something. Before I had time to say do or say anything, I felt James tug at my blanket and almost pull it off me.

Luckily, I grabbed it just in time.

"James! I haven't got anything on!"

"Well, hurry up and get fucking dressed then, because we gotta go to school!" James sang as he dropped my blanket and skipped out of the room, closing my door behind him.

"Stop calling it school!" I called after him, pulling my blanket over my head, groaning as I did so.

The quiet that James had left behind let my mind drift to the day ahead. James and I were having our first official day of university—or, as my parents so aptly called it, 'The Money Blender'.

I wasn't dreading going. I was quite excited to get started. Ever since orientation, I couldn't wait to dive in. It was everything else outside of university that was making me groan.

It was everything else that I dreaded.

The harsh reality of it all was my parents lived three hours away from the university that I had got into. Meaning, the travel to and from would have killed me. To counter this, James and I had decided to move into an apartment close to the campus—considering we managed to get into the same university. However, that created many more problems. One of them was that we had to pay for the apartment—and everything else that went with living away from home.

So, we both had to get jobs. Shit ones.

"I can't hear any movement in there!" James called through the apartment, his voice grinding in my ears.

Honestly, with how loud the both of us could get, I was surprised one of our neighbours hadn't complained about us yet. I guess it was only a matter of time.

"I am moving!" I yelled back, and I heard a huff from outside my bedroom door.

Letting out a sigh, I flung my blankets off me and shivered as the cold air swept over my bare body. I hated mornings. My body was not designed to handle them. Why the hell did I choose to take morning classes?

Letting another shudder run through my body, I swung my legs off my mattress and let them lay on the carpeted floor.

Another fantastic thing about not having a lot of money was I couldn't afford much of a bed. A single mattress laying on the floor shoved in the corner of my tiny room was the best I could do. It was only slightly worse than James, who had the same set-up, only he had a double mattress.

Lucky bastard.

Pushing myself up from my mattress, I stumbled over to the small set of draws on the other side of the room, next to the door. Apart from where I slept, the draws were the only other piece of furniture in my room. The other occupants within the walls were a laptop and a school bag. It was safe to say I was living the high life.

Ignoring the voice of my best friend that had once again made its way into my room, I quickly got dressed and moved out of my bedroom, flipping James off as I went into the bathroom.

Brushing my curly brown hair in an attempt to make it look less like a disaster, I tried to keep my mind focused on university, and not the crappy job I had to go to after.

University. All of the good things that could come from it. More friends. I will need those if I'm going to survive, and they also might make James a little more bearable. Learning, which I love. Can't get enough of it. I wouldn't say that I was a nerd or a geek as I can throw a ball... sometimes. But I did pride myself on my intellect.

Also, and let's not forget the most important thing—university should bring plenty of opportunities to get some action, which I have been lacking. So much. The closest I've come to human interaction is when James almost pulled my blanket off this morning.

That almost got me too excited.

"Dude! For the love of God, just wear a beanie!" James yelled at me again and I snapped out of my thoughts.

"Shut up, you straight-haired fuck!" I screamed back and looked into the mirror and tugged at the brush. "Ah, fuck. It's stuck in my hair."

After a few gruelling moments, I untangled my hair and decided James' idea wasn't the worst thing in the world and grabbed the beanie I kept hanging in the bathroom. I wore it whenever my hair wasn't doing what I wanted it to do. Which was almost every day.

It would have been my go-to move this morning, but I didn't want to be known as 'the beanie boy' at university. I had that nickname in high school—I did not need it again.

"Are. You. Ready. To. Go?" James asked extremely slowly, and I had the sudden urge to hit him.

I didn't have any siblings, but this was the closest to the Cain Instinct I was going to feel.

"You don't even care that I haven't eaten, do you? Or had coffee?"

"Look, you overslept, it isn't my fault. Now, let's go! Or we'll be late," James said, jumping up from the only chair in the apartment, which was sitting facing a bare wall where we were going to put a television.

When we go one.

If we got one.

"Fine. Jesus Christ. Can you just tone it down a little bit for, I don't know, five minutes?" I asked, walking back into my room, grabbing my laptop from its charger and shoving it into my bag.

"Tone it down? Tone it down?!" James called after me, and I could hear him slamming his fist on something in the kitchen. "This coming from the person who jumped off a two-story house because he, and I quote, 'have stronger knees than you, James'."

Yes, that wasn't my proudest moment. It also isn't the worst or stupidest thing that I have done. I have what my parents called dumbass energy. You mix that with my 'I can do anything better than you' attitude and my 'I'm going to do that because it seems extremely hard' way of thinking and it rarely ends well.

"Did prove I have stronger knees than you," I muttered, slinging my bag over my shoulder, leaving my bedroom, and following James out of the apartment.

"You couldn't walk for two days," James pointed out, doing small skips down the hallway, keeping himself ahead of me.

"Nobody's perfect, James!" I said, trying to trip him as he skipped but missed.

"Well, you need to stop your imperfectness from cramping my style," James said as he continued to dodge my efforts to trip him. "I don't need that negativity at uni."

"Please, you cramp your own style," I pointed out, and James huffed.

"My style is the uncrampiness of them all. Except when you get all up in this business."

I knotted my eyebrows at James as he began slapping the elevator's button to go down. Thankfully, it was already on our floor and opened up immediately. James grabbed my arm and dragged me through the open doors and frantically began pressing for the ground floor.

Usually, I would indulge James, and do my best to tell him how wrong he was and how I am, in fact, the most uncrampiness of them all. However, this time, I stayed quiet. Sometimes, with James, that was the best solution—due to the fact if done correctly, I got some peace and quiet.

"You're no fun in the mornings," James said, eyeing me off as he bounced on the balls of his feet. "Come find me at uni when you're happy again!"

As soon as the elevator doors opened, James darted out of them, almost knocking down an old lady that had been waiting to get on. I watched as he did a small skip when he reached the apartment building's front door and barged out of it.

"I'm sorry about him," I said to the older lady, stepping onto the elevator as I held the door open. "I just picked him up from the shelter. Still trying to house train him."

"You may need to try harder. I can hear him howling at all hours of the day," she replied with a smile. "I live right near your apartment. I'd recognise his voice anywhere."

As I said—it was only a matter of time.

"I'll be sure to put a muzzle on him when I can." I returned the old lady's smile and moved away from the door.

That was the first time I had ever interacted with one of my neighbours. It went much better than I thought it would. Albeit a little weird.

Turning back to face the lobby, I was thrown back into my morning slump. The sight that greeted me instantly reminded me how horrible of a place this building was and, in turn, what a poor, university student I was.