She's American {Matty Healy}

08 // I'm in love with this city but the green is turning brown

{stella}

I would be lying if I said I didn't want Matty to come with me on my walk after breakfast. And I was lying when I pretended to be uninterested in him joining me. For a moment before I walked out the door, I thought I had played the role a little too well—thought that Matty would be content to sit around my apartment doing nothing as I went out on the town because he genuinely believed I didn't want him.

But the truth was, I wanted him too badly. Sure, I might have told him that we needed to stop this relationship—or whatever it was—before it started, but there was no way I meant it. And there was no way I'd admit that to Matty. No matter how badly I wanted this to work, no matter how badly I wanted him, I refused to show it. Because in a matter of days he'd be gone again, off in some other time zone, and I'd be stuck here alone. He was incredible but I wasn't sure if he was worth months of long distance when I didn't know him well to begin with. And if my gut answer wasn't an automatic hell yes, then it had to be a no.

We waltzed down the street from my apartment building, around the block to the T station. Matty didn't say a word, just smiled and tried to keep up with my pace. We jogged down the steps into the station and as we approached the gates, I turned to Matty. "Stay close at my heels after I swipe my Charliecard. The gate'll open and we'll both go through. Ignore the alarms that might go off, okay?"

Matty grinned. "Oh definitely. I'm always down for breaking the law."

We pushed through the gate, and just like I suggested, we ignored the alarm that started to beep and just kept walking onto the platform. I didn't bother to check for security guards working, so I walked as far down the platform as we could, stopping next to a crowd of other millennials—if someone wanted to catch us, it'd be a toss-up as to who was the one to do it in a crowd of broke students.

I turned to make eye contact with Matty—the grin hadn't left his face. "That was pretty tame compared to what I'm used to," he said.

I rolled my eyes. "Oh stop. You think that's all I can do?"

Matty leaned in closer. "I'm sure you can do better than that." His face inches from mine, I took a deep breath of his air and felt my willpower starting to falter. He wanted to kiss me. I wanted to kiss him.

But I couldn't.

I took a step back, rolling my eyes. "Whatever you say," I mumbled under my breath. I was still dizzy from the moment that passed me by when the train sped into the station past us. We pushed through the crowd getting off at our stop and found a place to stand on the surprisingly empty train.

"Where are we going?" Matty asked. God, he was like a puppy with the amount of enthusiasm he had.

"I wanna walk around Newbury Street, if that's cool with you."

"I don't know what that means. So it sounds good to me."

With every stop of the train, Matty swayed into me. I smiled to myself each time, no matter how hard I tried not to. He stumbled toward me as the brakes went on, nearly knocking me over and profusely—but sarcastically—apologizing.

We finally ended up close enough to Newbury Street for us to get off the T and walk the rest of the way. When we turned onto the street, I looked up at Matty. "This is Newbury Street."

"This is it?"

"This is it."

Matty looked up and down the street. "I mean, it's pretty. I like the brick."