ephemeral // matty healy

to be in love

He left and she didn't fight it.

Matty thought that telling her the truth would have made him feel better, but he saw the look in her eyes. The panic stunned her in place, and it pulled his pride apart. I'm not going to fight it, he thought as he stepped out of the crowded street and into the studio.

He closed the door behind him and let out a heavy breath. He felt like he had just been punched in the gut multiple times, and the worst part? He did it to himself. He knew that it was a high-risk, high-reward situation by telling her the truth, but he had his eyes so focused on the reward part that the thought of something going wrong didn't even cross his mind.

"Where the fuck have you been?" George, the band's drummer, was fuming when he saw how late Matty was.

"Hey," Matty said. George towered over him as he nonchalantly took off his coat.

"You disappear for over an hour while we're trying to finish this bloody song and all you've got to say is 'hey'?" He gave up trying to intimidate Matty with his height and walked back to the leather couch that lined the room. "You don't check your phone?"

"Left it at home." Matty couldn't help but let his voice fall into a monotonous rut. "Sorry."

George shrugged and shook his head. He leaned back into the sofa and looked back at Matty with contempt, but then he noticed something different about his friend. His entire aura has darkened, and it was evident in the way his feet sadly shuffled across the floor and the exasperated sigh that left his lips when he sat in a chair across from him.

"What gives, man? What happened?" Matty pursed his lips before letting his head hang low. "You're not gonna tell me?"

Matty's curls bounced as he shook his head. "Let's just get on with the song."

The two tinkered with laptops and guitars and microphone effects for hours it seemed. The song was more or less finished, but it needed more fine-tuning to fit the picture that Matty held of it in his head. He wanted it to be airy and comforting, but following a specific story. He wanted it to provide answers about his past but also raise more questions in the end.

"I depend on my friends to stay clean, as sad as it seems." Matty sang softly.

"Brilliant," George said as he played the final cut of music. He looked up from his keyboard expectantly. "I think this is really good, Matty. What do you think?"

"Yeah," he said. He slumped back into his seat and finally caved. Matty was trying so hard to keep his feelings in but he felt a surge of unwanted emotion pour out of him. George didn't realize how quickly his mood has shifted until Matty's tears started to fall.

"Hey, hey, hey," George walked over and knelt in front of Matty. "What's the matter?"

"It's Blair!" Tears burned down his cheeks as George's big hands squeezed his knees gently. The second he heard her name his expression softened like he already knew what Matty had done. "I fucked up so bad."

"I got that, but why don't you tell me what happened from the beginning," George's voice softened as he sat on the floor in front of Matty's crumbling sense of self. "I think when you last left off, you met her for coffee without telling Jamie."

"I told her I loved her, George." He looked up to see his mate's mouth hanging open in shock.

"Oh shit," George whispered. The tears stopped falling, but his eyes were too red and puffy to play it off coolly.

"Yeah, no shit 'oh shit'," Matty mumbled. He mimicked George's deep voice under his breath, "Oh shit."

"Alright, alright," his jaw jutted out to the side when Matty spoke to him like that. He got up from the floor and saved their project on the computer. "What's your plan? Because plan A for me would be: run away without leaving a trace."

"Don't be stupid," Matty said. "I'm going to ignore it, pretend like it didn't happen."

"Oh, so we're not far off, then. That would be my plan B." Matty rolled his eyes. "Now, before I forget, I'm sending this to Jamie and the guys."

"So that's all you've got to offer me, then?" Matty stood up with his arms stretched like he expected something, anything else from his mate. "Either run away or ignore her?"

George looked up from his screen. "Yup," he said, punctuating the 'p' with a crisp pop of his lips. "'Cause we both know that if you say anything else to her, you're gonna fuck up more and more until you," he closed his laptop lid and pointed at Matty, "have so much emotions buildup inside you that you've got to write a song about it."

"Jesus Christ," Matty murmured and paced the room, keeping his eyes glued to the floor.

"My thoughts exactly," George extended his legs across the couch. "You've painted yourself into a corner here."

"I fucking have, haven't I?" He idly rubbed his face.

"Yeah, but the best thing about it?" Matty looked back at his friend, smugly pretending to sleep on the couch. "You're probably gonna write some really good lyrics soon."

Silently, Matty walked over and stood over George's still body. In one fell swoop, he jumped and put all of his weight on the couch, subsequently crushing his sleeping friend. George gasped for pushed Matty onto the floor, where he fell into a heap of mischief.