CHOICES (Matty Healy fanfiction)

Chapter Seven

Matty's POV:

The end notes of "give yourself a try" vibrated around the studio.

"That was fucking sick," George grinned, placing his drum sticks down.

"That's definitely the best run through so far," Ross agreed.

I walked over to the recording screen peered through. Rachel was sat with her feet up on the mixing desk, her head resting on one hand and staring at the wall.

"Rach...?" I called, tapping on the screen.

"What?" She replied quietly, still staring at the wall.

"How was that?" I continued, despite her lack of concentration.

After a second or so she suddenly seemed to snap out of it.

"It was pitchy. You'll have to do it again and you'll have to hurry up. My shift ends in 20 minutes and you can't be in here when I'm not," she said quickly, clicking away at her laptop.

She hadn't looked at me once all day but in all honesty, I wasn't taking it personally. She hadn't really looked at or spoken to anyone all day. She seemed half-present.

"Fuck sake," George muttered. "This is our song. Surely we know how it sounds best,"

Ross and Adam silently nodded their heads.

"Shhhh, she knows what she's doing, alright? Just trust her. We'll all be thankful later," I whispered.

"I can hear you, by the way,"
Rach called.

*

After another two recordings, we had to leave. We hadn't played a version that was up to Rach's standards yet, but we were at least getting somewhere.

As the boys packed away their things I watched Rach. She pulled a leather jacket on over her black sweatshirt and then scrambled around in a tote bag until she produced her phone from out of it. I watched as she unlocked it and checked her messages, before taking a deep breath and chucking the phone back into her bag. She shoved the door open and left quickly, leaving us in the studio.

I quickly followed her and jogged down the corridor to reach her. She didn't look at me when I approached.

"Are you gonna tell me what's up?" I said quietly.

"Nothing is up," she replied instantly.

"You haven't looked at or spoken to me all day,"

She looked up at me with disgust.

"I've known you for about 24 hours and somehow that makes you think you know when something wrong?"

I placed my hands in the air as if in defeat.

"I'm sorry about last night. I don't know what happened in the van but I -"

"It's not about last night," Rach cut in.

"So something is up?"

"Will you fucking leave it?" She stopped walking and stared up at me.

I stared back and we stood in an extremely intense silence for a few seconds before the boys caught up with us.

"We're going to the grape-farm, the new pub round the corner. You coming Rach?" George asked as he bounded over.

"No thanks," Rach replied, folding her arms across her chest, still glaring at me.

"Fair enough. Shall we head off then?"

Finally looking away, Rach produced a set of keys from her pocket and unlocked the front door of the studio.

"Rach!!" shouted Anna, who was sat on the bonnet of our van outside the studio. "You coming to the grape-farm?"

"Nah man," Rach replied flatly.

"Oh my god pleeeease!! I don't want to be the only girl PLUS you can sleep at mine after if you need to,"

Rach sighed and nodded slowly.