About You. (Matty Healy)

Prologue

About You by The 1975

"Hold on and hope that we'll find our way back in the end."

January 2022

Jade stood at the kitchen sink, scrubbing away at white ceramic plates. The hot water and soap mixture made her worn-out hands feel drier than they were before. They began to sting a little. The sponge became harder to hold onto. She thought about putting off the rest of the dishes for later.

It felt like she had hit a wall. The tiredness didn't manifest itself so much physically, as it did mentally. Her internal monologue which started out as clear vocal dictations became a much more visual clumpy mess. This made her lose track of the tasks at hand, or blatantly butcher them. Her mind and body felt cacophonous. One was working faster than the other, but she couldn't figure out which. Moments earlier, she had almost put a dirty spoon with the clean ones. These types of instances seemed to become more frequent with age. The fact that she was only twenty-nine years old worried her. She wondered if this would become a hindrance to the life of her older self or worse, her daughter's. It was probably just a matter of needing more self-care, or at least that's what she told herself to make the worry disappear for a while.

She rinsed off the plate and set it on the counter and then turned off the sink, silencing the sound of the running tap. She rested her hands on the cold, wet surface and took a deep breath. Simultaneously, she heard the front door shut. That much sudden noise could only feel as if it was a cue for another scene to start, a chance to reset herself and pull it together.

"Jade?" a man's voice called out.

"In the kitchen," she replied, wiping her hands clean.

Footsteps came closer to her. She took another breath and smiled, preparing to speak when the footsteps stopped. A routine kicked in. "How was your day?" she asked. The man leaned against the concrete archway. "Good", he replied, just as she expected he would, "Productive."

"That's good to hear."

"How was yours?" It was his turn to play his part in this everyday charade.

"Just a lot of writing, per usual."

The man made an obvious glance at the dishes. She sighed, "I took the effort to make myself and Vi a nice lunch, so now I'm cleaning up."

"What's she up to?" He asked eagerly.

"She's up in her room, sleeping. I tucked her in for a nap about ten minutes ago. She was getting kinda cranky."

"The apple doesn't fall far from the tree," he joked. He took a breath to change the subject, "Remember when I promised to tell you if I ever wrote a song about you?"

The mundanity in the room started rapidly fading away. Jade was hesitant to let it go. "Matty," she said while rolling her eyes, "I think we're years past the need for that type of transparency."

"Well, I wrote a song about you."

It had been a long time since she heard him say those words. Her forehead wrinkled, her eyebrows furrowed, and her mouth opened. Her facial expression could be read as shock or confusion. It was both, perhaps. The emotion she hid, however, was something close to happiness. She wasn't quite sure exactly where it came from. Maybe she was relieved to hear him say it again. Maybe this is what she had been missing for the better half of her adult life.

"I want you to hear it," Matty said, a light smile interrupting his neutral expression.

"Oh, so you can give me a heads-up on all the mean shit you say about me," Jade stated this out loud in such a way that it was an obvious joke, but she could also protect herself in case it was true. 

"All good things," he laughed, reassuringly.

"Promise?"

"Promise."

Matty grabbed her pruned hands and led her to sit on a stool at the counter. He took the seat next to hers, as her knee bobbed up and down from nerves. He got out his phone and set it on the marble countertop. Before he pressed play, Jade spoke, "What's the song called?"

"About You."