matty healy, falling in love over night

La fin part 1

2 year later, june

"and with that, i want to give all my love and affection the happily married couple!" gemma says raising her champagne flute to me and matty.

we are in a rehearsal dinner for the wedding right now, final checks and so forth. everybody's here and it's such a lovely atmosphere. rose who is now a beautifully intelligent five year old, gemma and harrison, george, adam, ross and caroline all sat together in harmony.

everybody went their own ways in the past couple years. i started a business with gemma and harrison who finally stopped travelling, we now sell used books online and in a small bookstore in camden. my business degree from uni came in handy with this and i finally left my office job, i loved it there but this was a passion and i couldn't be happier that i was pursuing something i loved

george and caroline moved out of the old flat and bought a new one down in bethnal green, the day they sold the flat well ... that was a strange day, it was the last time we saw adam bar today. we had a massive house party to say goodbye, that flat played a big part in all of our lives and we had to give it the send off it deserved. but you can tell they are completely in love. she works in the music industry so george still helps to produce albums with the artists she works with. he loves her completely and i think he's truly at peace with life. of course there are still nights he calls me crying and nights where we sneak out onto the roof of my house and talk until we can't anymore. but i think we are slowly fixing.

carly and adam moved to the country side and bought a little cottage, we see him the least due to the miles but we make sure to call and text a lot. it's weird not having them there even though we all kinda grew apart.

and finally ross and john started up a non profit business to help teach kids to play instruments, the passion they both have for helping people is really quite something. rose goes sometimes, she's already learning the guitar but she loves the saxophone so even though she can't really hold one, she's trying.

as for matty, he's a stay at home dad now, i tried to convince him to go back into music but he really had no desire to. at least not right this moment, he just loves to be around rose, he's teaching her guitar at the moment, between her dance lessons and swimming club. what can we say, we have an active child who loves to just live.
he's writing a lot though, mostly songs or poetry and i'm glad he is. i think it's how he deals with things that he isn't ready to talk about just yet.
he got his three years sober badge the other week and i couldn't have been prouder, me and rose threw a party for him. she didn't fully understand why, one day i'll tell her.

"i think the rest of us are saving our speeches until the wedding?" my dad says, everyone murmurs in agreement. mattys hand find mine beneath the table and gives it a reassuring squeeze.

tonight is the hen and stag night, i'm just having a simple night, wine and talks with gemma and caroline while matty opted for going out with the boys. i'm not worried, if you had asked me when we were younger if i wanted him to go clubbing i wouldn't have said no, but i would have stayed awake all night worrying if he'd taken drugs or hurt himself. now i don't have to.
i know he'll stumble into george's flat drunk and have the worst hangover of his life tomorrow, but i know he will call me before he falls asleep, i know he will be okay.

i look around the table, in three days we will al be here again and obviously extended family too, but i will be married ... i don't know. i guess it's all hitting me now and i can feel the tears spring to my eyes, i wipe them away quickly but not before matty sees, he smiles and me and leans into my ear

"it's al real now isn't it?"

i nod afraid to speak incase i cry more, it's just been such a crazy few years.
being engaged is one thing, but being married is just ... what i want for me and him more than anything.
we'd been putting it off for two years because we both wanted to pursue our own things, me with gemma and the business and matty with looking after rose. we had our own lives but now we were back on track.
i'm glad we waited though, this was everything we wanted down to the exact flower, and this meant rose was old enough to fully participate and remember it, that was important too.
we weren't always going to wait, at the start we were ready to marry straight away, but life happens and that's okay.