She's American {Matty Healy}

1 // a big town, synthetic apparitions of not being lonely

{stella}

When I moved to Boston, I had lofty goals for myself. Sure, I was only eighteen and naïve enough to set a house on fire and not even realize it—not that that happened to me, of course—but I believed my goals were extremely realistic. I was going to get an apartment in a historic building on or right off of the Commons, where I would live with two of the most interesting girls in the entire city as my roommates. I would work at some high-class boutique on Newbury Street and make enough to not only enough to pay the rent but also to buy expensive heels and faux fur coats I would wear on a daily basis. Those three things (apartment, job, and clothes) had been obtained, but the goals were not quite achieved, per se.

I lived in an incredibly shitty apartment above some equally shitty convenience store that so few people went in I was shocked it was still open. My roommates, Luna and Charlotte, were definitely some of the most interesting people in the city—I suppose they could be considered the one thing I got right in the equation. Somehow, they managed to be the only thing I got right. Nevertheless, I ended up not finding that high-class boutique job that I had dreamed of, and instead was doing mostly freelance photography to attempt to pay the bills. Considering I barely had enough to make my share of rent each month, there was no chance in hell that I would be able to afford the heels and faux fur coats I desired. The clearance section of department stores and consignment shops was as good as it was going to get for me.

I had just gotten accustomed to spending my nights out with Charlotte, working on a new photo series of black and white shots of her. Sure, it sounded cheesy, but it was the kind of thing that would look gorgeous on my newly made website to market myself to the masses. A set of a couple shots of her on the sidewalks of the city at night or in cute cafés or just a nice portraits would be great to convince people I was worth their time and money for whatever they needed a photographer for. Or at least, that was the hope.

But on this night, Charlotte had run into friends at one of the coffee shops we went in solely for a quick photo and cup of coffee. And naturally, she wanted to spend time with them. She loved wandering, but when she got to her destination, she knew. And tonight, although she began wandering aimlessly, we both realized that this coffee shop was what the destination ended up being.

So I continued on my own, stopping on corners to take pictures of particularly pretty fire escapes or particularly pretty people. I continued for a while, until I stumbled upon him. Or rather, he seemed to have stumbled upon me. I walked down the sidewalk, pausing every couple of minutes to take a picture of something on the Commons across the street. The sun just beginning to set made even the simplest of scenes look picturesque. The lighting would be perfect, even though the colors wouldn't be nearly as spectacular in black and white.

"Nice shot," I heard a voice from my right say.

I jumped, surprised that someone had come by when I was too busy trying to capture the perfect shot to even notice. I giggled nervously, muttering a "thank you" as I turned to glance at him. He pushed his curly black hair out of his face, a smile on his face.

"Seriously," he said, a thick British accent coming through the more he spoke, "I bet that'll look fucking beautiful."

"Oh, it does," I said, deciding that flirting with a stranger wasn't the absolute worst idea in the world. I mean, how threatening could a British boy with floppy black hair and skinny jeans be? His jeans were probably too tight for him to have enough mobility to catch up to me if I needed to run, anyway. "Did you want to see?"

He nodded slightly, leaning in closer as I clicked the preview mode on my DSLR. I clicked through the few shots I took from where we were standing, the cute boy at my side smiling at them. I continued clicking backwards, going back through the pictures I had taken earlier in the evening.