one more stop

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Matty sat confidently in the carriage but refused to look at Blair. She noticed because she couldn't seem to pull her gaze away from him. She felt messy, her skin sticky, her lips swollen; and yet, he sat there.

Unfazed.

It drove her a bit mad. He stressed how badly he wanted her and now he is so calm. She felt as if she was in shambles. Keeping things together by the thin fabric of her clothes.

"Want to go back to mine?" He broke the silence, finally turning to face her. His eyes were darker than their usual mahogany hue. She could sense urgency in them yet remained keeping his composure. But everyone has a breaking point.

"Mhm, what do you want to do there?" She inquired.

"Nothing in particular." He was so cheeky.

"Okay great, I have something I want to show you," she lied.

"Oh? What would that be?" Matty shifted in his seat.

"It's a project I was working on in my undergrad... A video journal." She thought to the project she used for an end-of-term assignment. "I think that you might like it."

"What's it about?" He asked. Blair knew that he can't resist knowing. He always has to know what is happening and why. Then, once he knows that, he has a sarcastic comment about what he learned. He turned away to face the window. "Sounds interesting."

She turned away as well. "Well, yeah. I thought it was," she mumbled and smoothed wiped her clammy hands on her thighs. She felt a hand wrap around three of her fingers and looked up to see Matty, still not looking at her, but holding on tight. Blair allowed their fingers to interlace, and she saw his expression soften from behind his wall of curls.

The drive to Matty's was short after that. Blair was practically buzzing with nerves as they sat in his bedroom. She kept her composure as he pulled an extra chair up to his desktop.

"Please," he said with a gesture to the keyboard. He watched her slender fingers type out the Vimeo link. "I thought all the greats used Dailymotion."

"When you go to an American school, you use American providers, I guess," she said wryly as she typed a code into the search bar. Something Matty could only assume was an amalgamation of her initials, student number and course code. The video loaded within seconds and had a heart wrenching title.

The moment he stops loving you

"This was for a project I did in my last year," she began. "It was for an Interactive Media module, but my professor really liked it and told me to submit it this contest.

"I have a problem with things ending, like books and TV shows and stuff, so I wanted to tell this story out of order and put the pieces I didn't like at the beginning to get it over with—"

Matty leaned in. "Hence the title, I suppose?"

She shrugged a bit and pressed play. Instantaneously, she felt disgust in the pit of her stomach. It swirled like a vicious vortex as quick shots of her then boyfriend, Brandon, filled the screen. The videos showed him rolling his eyes, turning away from her and yelling. In one clip, he even called her a bitch before pushing her camera out of the way.

The video reached a deafening silence and black screen before a clip of Blair setting up her camera, only illuminated by the yellow lightbulb of her desk lamp. She had dirty hair and no makeup on; clearly, she had spent a few days in that state.

"Maybe I should give up," she says before sitting in silence for a few moments. Blair opens her mouth for a split second before reaching over to turn off her camera.

Matty reached over to grab her hand again, not just a few fingers this time. He caressed her soft skin and stared at her creation in amazement.

Suddenly, a twinkling noise is emitted from the speakers as shots of Blair having fun reaches the screen. It starts out with solo activities: watching a movie and smiling, dancing while cooking dinner, finding joy in a good walk. She says nothing on video, but you often hear her laughing, singing. She is trying on fancy clothes in stores and then wearing them in nice pubs. She is a beam of light, and many people in the background of the video notice her. 

Blair never saw that before.

The music that was playing came to a crescendo before some cymbals crashed and reverberated. A single line of white text appears.

The moment he stops loving you, steal the camera you bought him

"There are some things I would change about this now, like shots I would leave out now and stuff. But I was really proud of this when I finished it. Now, it seems more like a vanity project, I guess." She rubbed the back of her neck with her free hand.

Matty had watched Blair learn to fall in love with herself, and in the process, he fell for her deeply. More than he already had.

He moved in ever so slightly, staring at her lips with a hunger. Bravely, she closed the gap between the two of them, leaning into the kiss with all her might.

The kiss was forceful and full of fire as their lips melted together with a sick passion. Immediately, Blair's hands went into his hair, pulling and tugging until he moaned against her bottom lip. Matty couldn't help but reach his hands between her legs, begging for her. They had picked up where they had left off in the conservatory, but this time, she wouldn't let him get away. 

Not without making him wait a bit.

Blair broke the kiss, getting up from her chair and holding his chin in her hand. He couldn't help but feel her, desperately pulling at the fabric of her dress. He needed to be closer, but instead she stepped back from his grasp in order to lean down to face-level. He could feel the heat of her breath as she snickered and tucked her silver strand behind her ear. Matty couldn't help but melt into his chair when she whispered into his ear.

"Will you be a good boy for me tonight?"

ephemeral // matty healyWhere stories live. Discover now