You've comprised a list of things you notice about Matty Healy from afar, leaning against a bar in the back of a tiny club:
1. She's full of energy—not oozing, not slowly leaking like molasses in a jar, but almost like an explosion. Prancing around stage, fearless.
2. There are three men in the band. She's the only woman.
3. Her hair's nice, a mass of curls that moves with your head.
4. You wonder what it's like to touch her hair.
5. You didn't know what her name was until a girl screamed her name in the crowd. It's embarrassing, but you only ducked into the place when you heard a band was playing and quickly Googled the name of the band printed on an old flyer. Really. A slew of Tumblr posts came up and you pretended to be surprised.
6. She seems like the type of person you'd like to know.
So you're here, outside of the venue, stomping on a half-lit cigarette butt with your boot and feeling the cold whip against your cheeks—or maybe you're pretending, half-hoping she'll come slipping out of the back entrance. Make some comment in her weird accent or ignore your inappropriately-dressed figure huddled against the wall.
You can wait. You don't have anyone waiting for you at your place who'll blow up your texts asking where you are. Well, there's an exception: your fish Lucy whom you love dearly and come home to so you can tell each other about your respective days. You're still waiting for her to respond. She's probably just shy, you think. Did you forget to feed Lucy today?
"Hey?"
You jerk your head upwards, stringy strands of hair threatening to blow into your face in the nighttime breeze. It's her, shutting the squeaky door behind her and sifting through her leather pockets with the other hand. She's wearing thick tortoiseshell glasses and gazing at you with a neutral expression.
"Oh. Hi."
Matty nods at the lighter clutched in the palm of your hand. It's the cheap gas station kind, the one you're convinced will leak onto your hand and burn you like your old roommate did to his crotch with lithium batteries in a botched experiment (chemistry major, frequent visitor to the emergency room). "Can I get a light?" She's fished out a pack of cigarettes, waving them in the air a bit.
"Yeah."
"Thanks." She eagerly accepts the lighter.
You hum. Her head's bowed down, calloused hands cupping a dying flame in the biting wind. You're not much of a frequent smoker yourself, kind of off drugs since you accidentally got addicted to ketamine when it was laced in your weed—"Aww, did someone get addicted to crack?" a friend had once said, and you never bothered to correct him—but there's a peculiar shaky grace Matty holds in her air, hair threatening to spill into her eyes and chapped lips bitten as she concentrates.
"Christ," Matty mutters. You don't know if it's to you or herself so you keep quiet. She finally lights the end. "It's windy out here."
"Sure is," you say and nearly squeeze your eyes shut at how American you sound. Matty takes a silent drag. "Nice show you put on there."
Her eyes brighten up a little, darting across your face. "Thanks. I really like performing here, America. Weather's weird, though."
You shake your head. "The fucking worst."
"God, yeah," she laughs a little, and you smile. "Our first ever American show was in Texas—mid-March, so I wore a black turtleneck and jeans, but everyone showed up wearing shorts and a tank top. It was brutal. My friend, George, he's on the drums, he ended up taking his shirt off because he was sweating so hard."
