Pretty Kind of Dirty Face {Matty Healy}

17 // Me

{I was thinking about killing myself, don't you mind?}

It had been a full twenty-four hours since my final experience with vodka and the hangover was not wearing off. I had never experienced anything worse than a little headache that only lasted until after breakfast. But this time? No, my handfuls of shots only lengthened and intensified my hangover.

As I laid in Cecily's bed, curled up in her covers all by myself, I couldn't help but feel like complete shit, physically and emotionally. I couldn't believe I left Matty like that. I couldn't believe I loved him. I couldn't believe that my idea of therapy was a dozen shots of vodka.

I had dreamt that I ran away from Cecily's house, stealing her car and heading off to catch a plane to anywhere that would take me away from the drama in my life. I was desperate to escape, running red lights and almost killing pedestrians as I drove as fast as I could to the airport. Everything was wrong, and I couldn't escape. The faster I drove, the more I couldn't breathe, the more trapped I felt. But I kept going. I kept trying to outrun it. Until I woke up to Cecily shaking my shoulders, whispering that it was all just a bad dream. And with that, I curled up under the covers and tried to disappear.

The doorbell rang, making me startle but not get up. And then, from the other room, I heard them. Cecily and George, having a whispered argument. She hissed at him angrily, insisting on something. And then, George sighed and burst into the room where I was hiding.

He closed the door behind him and sat on the edge of the bed; I pretended to be asleep. He saw right through it. "Eloise," he whispered, placing a hand on my shoulder, "talk to me."

I pulled my head out from under the covers to look up at him. I shook my head stubbornly.

"Come on." Then, after a minute of the two of us just staring at each other in silence, he continued. "If it makes you feel any better, Matty's miserable too."

It did make me feel better, if we were being honest. A small smile grew on my face, but faded quickly.

"Seriously, he's just been pouting all day. He won't talk to me either." George looked down at his lap. "He just walks around the house like he's in a daze, but whenever I try to talk to him he brushes me off. I thought at least you would talk to me. . . ."

With a sigh, I sat upright, looking George square in the eyes. "Fine," I said softly. "What do you want to know?" With that, I laid back down, getting comfortable, but still looking up at him, waiting for a question.

"Well, how are you feeling?"

I just stared at him. Did he honestly need to ask me that?

"Right," he said with a little laugh, "moving on. What happened? Start from the beginning."

What was the beginning? Back to when we had sex? Back to when we hung out at Cecily's party when he came back to town? Or all the way back to making out at the beginning of senior year? God, if I had known that this was going to turn out this way, I never would have even come close to him.

"Well," I started, "we fucked and now I'm fucked."

George chuckled. "That's one way to put it."

"I don't really know what happened. One second everything was fine and the next he was yelling at me. And asked if I loved him and I said no and he told me to leave. That's it."

He sighed, shaking his head. "But what I'm getting from you is that you should've said yes?"

I nodded, sticking my head back under the covers so George wouldn't see the tears in my eyes or the redness on my face. I gave Matty everything. Before I even realized it, he had my heart. I gave it to him, along with everything I had within me in the course of two days, and he ripped it all away from me. I wanted nothing more than to have it all back, to be just a passing acquaintance in Matty's life like we were before. But that wasn't how the world works, and I couldn't have my heart back after something like this.