That 000000 & ffffff || Matty Healy

Broken Phone, Retching on the Floor

/ / B R O K E N  P H O N E ,  R E T C H I N G  O N  T H E  F L O O R / /

I sit on the curb, staring at my phone for the longest time. I'm torn between answering Brian's probably nineteenth attempt at reaching me and spilling everything that's happened the night before, or ignore everything about this situation all together.

I groan and turn my phone off mid ring just as I feel the vacant spots to my left and right fill up. I look up, moving my head from side to side, startled to find myself between Louise and Anna. Anna has a box of fries in her hand and she offers me some, which I take gratefully, being that I gave Matty Healy the rest of my meal. I cringe, did he even eat it?

"He took it to go," Louise says, breaking our silence, as if reading my mind. "If you wanted to know," she says the same time I'm about to ask her if she can read minds.

"So you wanna tell us why you ditched him, yet again?" Anna asks between bites.

I shrug, twisting the phone in my hand, "I... got scared... I don't know – I've never done anything like this...and god, I get so starstruck around him, like you'd think I'd get over the fact that he's a celebrity after I've already had sex with him, but he makes my mind go blank and my mouth go dry and my heart rate speed up and..." I trail off.

Louise and Anna share a look before Louise says, "I have to head back to work, and I know it's probably not my place to say, seeing as, we've only met last night, but either you stalk that boy till the ends of the earth or you dump that boyfriend of yours and get with the Healy."

I frown a bit, "Those are kind of the same ideas."

"Then your choice shouldn't be hard." She gets up, patting my head and waving to Anna before heading off to the diner.

I moan out something that sounds like a dying whale and slump my head against Anna's shoulder. She feeds me a few fries but I keep thinking about Matty and how he fed me that god awful orange soda fry and the way his lips tilted in a smirk and his eyes, how they squinted a bit when he was smiling and, "Fuck, I have a crush on him."

Anna snorts, "Babe, you've had a crush on him since you accidentally witnessed an interview in which he flipped his hair and you got overwhelmed."

"Did you just ..."

"Yes I did, but try to deny me." And I really can't. I was sixteen then, and The 1975 were fairly unknown, but they had come to our local radio station and I had been there, looking at him through the glass window separating studios. I don't think he'd caught my eye then, I don't even think he noticed me then, but it's then that my little obsession had started.

"This is so messed up, isn't it? He'll have moved on by tonight, right?"

I feel her shrug, and she's not one to sugarcoat anything, so she agrees, "Probably. Listen babe, unless you do something, then yeah, he's gonna fly away."

"I have –"

"A boyfriend, yeah, yeah, you little liar, but honestly, he didn't even cross your mind last night." But he did, just not in a way that made me feel guilty. I don't tell her this because a silver car pulls up in front of us and I'm halfheartedly calling shotgun as I make my way to the passenger side. Anna slides in the back, scoffing at Jamie, "Even when I don't want you here, you're still here."

"Bitch, you can walk. I came for Marcy." I roll my eyes and Jamie waits a beat, knowing that Anna wasn't going to get out of the car, before driving off. He shoves a water bottle in my lap, "Drink this."

The car ride is irregularly silent, no one really knows how to approach the subject on their mind – or at least I don't. Jamie doesn't turn on the car dock because his driving playlist only consists of The 1975, One Direction and one Justin Bieber song. No one questions it, really. The last person who did, had to walk ("Either you sing What Makes You Beautiful on the top of your lungs with me, or you get out of my car.")