Addiction/Affliction {M.Healy}

infatuation/amusement

Hey everyone! I'm so happy to see that my story is on more and more reading lists, and I'm thrilled with all the votes and comments! They truly mean a lot to me and give me such motivation to write this filth. Love and thanks to you all. As always, please enjoy this cute gif of Matty because he's the greatest thing that there ever was. xoxo.

Hannah was freshly showered, the smudged makeup removed from her face, the reminents of last night washed away. She was eating a bowl of cereal that no one over ten should be allowed to consume, a pink towel wrapped around her head like a turban, seated on the kitchen counter. I was throwing my morning smoothie ingredients into the blender, and had changed into yoga pants and a university t-shirt. I had also put on a pair of panties, because Matty still had mine.

"His name was Ignacio, or Ernesto, or something. Anyways, barely spoke English, but damn if he didn't know how to work his--" Hannah began before I interrupted her with the whirling of my blender.

She was recalling her one-night-stand, and I was still wrapped up in whatever the hell had just happened between Matty and I that I could barely focus. I was being a bad friend. I was being an awful, unethical student of mental health treatment.

Today, I was going to eat a healthy breakfast. I was going to read some texts over sex addiction. I was going to run five miles. I was going to scrub my apartment, top to bottom. I was not, not, not, going to let myself succomb to him.

The blender stopped and I poured the contents into a glass, then moved onto washing the blender itself. Hannah went on and on about how One Night Stand's apartment was decent, but she's nearly positive he still lived with his mother, and also how she could barely understand his texts because of the languae barrier. She informed me of this in between giant bites of rainbow-colored cereal.

My responses were small, generic comments, telling her she should just have fun, let things go where they would, enjoy being single and having experiences. I couldn't focus on anything but how Matty had made me feel, and before I knew it I had scrubbed all of the countertops, the oven, the microwave, and was sweeping the already spotless floor as my smoothie was melting.

Hannah's pretty features were judgmental and concerned.

"What the hell's gotten into you? Why are you stress-cleaning?" she asked me.

I put the broom and dustpan back into the utility room, and sat at the kitchen table, taking a drink of my smoothie, trying to figure out the best way to explain all of this to her.

"That looks like diarrhea," she said, her sky-blue eyes glaring at my smoothie.

"It does not," I sighed. "It's bananas, kale, almond milk, chia seeds and--"

"It's diarrhea. Anyways, what's up, buttercup?" Hannah asked as she sat her empty bowl into the kitchen sink, the clank of her spoon startling me as she tossed it in as well.

Hannah was being irritating, intentionally, I suspected, because she knows how particular I am about messes around the house. I was already anxious enough today.

I licked the smoothe from my lips and chuckled to myself a little. "It's my new patient."

Hannah removed the towel from her hair, scrunching her long blonde tresses dry. "You don't have patients, Olive. You're not a therapist yet."

"No, not yet," I admitted. "My new study, I mean."

The one who I'd nearly had sex with about an hour ago.

"Matty," I said to her.

I loved how his name sounded as I said it. I wanted to say it again, over and over.