Weeds (George Daniel/Matty Healy)

7: "i love you."

Drowning was a rather odd concept. It's not something anyone can properly grasp without experiencing it, and still anyone that lives to tell the tale has not really experienced it at all. Sure enough, water may have flooded their lungs, and they may have lain still under the most tempestuous of waves, but they never did truly drown. For how it truly was to drown was long beyond anyone's proper comprehension.

In more ways than one, falling in love was an awful lot like drowning. It was perhaps an abstract comparison to draw, however both love and drowning were already rather abstract concepts. Where did you draw the line between life and death? Where did you draw the line between lovers and friends? At what specific moment did everything make that change?

The sea always looked so inviting when you were stood upon the shore. With golden sand between bare toes, and the golden sun beating down upon you from above, the scene was more or less idyllic. Back of a postcard picturesque.

With hands outstretched, tanning and burning all at once under the sun's rays, it was of course, only a matter of time. With everything, it was always a matter of time. Eventuality was a cruel mistress, and an undefeated champion. For the moment you stepped foot upon the shoreline, she bade you to tread into the ocean.

When it came to the matters of love, that was the first glance. That was the tug of your heart. And every broken promise to yourself - that it wouldn't be like that this time. Though the heart never listened, for it communicated not in words, not in thoughts, but in unexplainable convulsions, beats akin to the rolling of tide.

Perhaps it was just a little chilly once you got your feet wet. Perhaps you yearned to retreat back onto the shore. But you got used to it. You always did. And under the sun's beating rays, the pull of the waves seemed so enticing.

It was always more than tide lapping over your ankles, always more than a few hesitant smiles. For before you could entirely process what was happening, control of your body was long gone, and you had set out on an unstoppable journey through the waves.

First kiss. Knee deep.

A regular thing. Waist deep.

Sex. Chest deep.

Love. Uncertain. Neck deep.

By the time you could say 'I love you' and truly mean it, the water was up to your eyes. And there was no turning back after that. In your lover's response came the defining moment - came the acception or the rejection: came learning to breathe underwater or drowning. For the water would not stop, the waves of the ocean would not still, not for a single weeping soul.

Falling in love was a lot like drowning. Or at least, the last few minutes beforehand. By the point you knew there was no real solution, by the point you were certain nature and fate had concurred upon the cruel hand you'd been drawn. At that point, you just had to hold your breath and pray.

And in the morning, perhaps you wake up, disoriented upon the shore, sand between your fingers and toes, or perhaps you simply wouldn't at all. Perhaps that was where you'd lie - the bottom of the ocean forever.

Matty had never learned how to swim. It wasn't a skill that he would need to call upon in a tiny, land-locked town in the north of England. Still, it was perhaps rather notable considering the circumstances.

For he'd followed this boy into the middle of the ocean without a shred of knowledge as to how he might reach the shore again. All Matty bore in his heart was the dreadful kind of all consuming hope. It dared not to label itself false, although it hardly hurried to conceal its identity.

Despite all of his better sense, despite every heartbroken romance he'd read, despite every sad story he'd ever heard, despite every lesson his mother had ever told him, despite every word of warning his friends had ever uttered, Matty followed George into the ocean. Hand in his.