Pretty Kind of Dirty Face {Matty Healy}

20 // Woman

{you've tried chasing dreams, man it's harder than it seems}

For the first night in weeks, I slept. Maybe it was the wine, maybe it was the exhaustion of my panic attack. Either way, I found the sleep that I had been desperate for throughout the past weeks—dreamless, restful, and all-around perfect.

Waking up, I somehow felt like myself again. I didn't realize how much I'd lost myself throughout the weeks I spent without Matty. My old self reemerged, like a butterfly coming from my cocoon of blankets that I had lived in for that time. I was shocked to find how much better things were, just with Matty making a brief appearance. Telling him how I felt about him instantly cleared the fog that had surrounded me. I was so grateful that I got that off of my chest after all this time. And I had a feeling Matty felt the same way.

He texted me at 11:54 the day after Cecily's party—no doubt right after he woke up and took a couple of aspirin for his hangover. The text came from an unknown number, but I immediately knew it was him. I knew that Cecily had deleted Matty's number—"for my own good"—right when she came and picked me up in the city the day of the incident. She had pried my phone out of my feeble drunk hands and deleted his number for good—or so she thought.

But when I got that text that morning that was just incoherent enough that it struck a chord of déjà vu within me, I knew it just had to be Matty. He asked if we could talk about things over coffee. I instantly re-saved the number and said yes.

I knew it wouldn't magically make things perfect. I knew Matty's presence in my life wouldn't miraculously make my life normal again, or at all. But seeing him again would help. It had helped last night, even though things were briefly worse before they got better.

Nevertheless, I wanted to talk to him—no, I needed to talk to him. I needed to be sane again and stay that way. So I stood up and got dressed.

* * *

The coffee shop was nearly abandoned at 3 pm, save for a handful of college students typing furiously on their MacBooks. Matty sat at a table in the back, sipping his coffee and scrolling through something on his phone. I paused just inside the doorway for a moment, watching him. A smile appeared on my mouth as I studied him. God, how I missed him while he was gone.

I ordered a latte and found my way to his table, sitting in the red upholstered chair across from him. He looked up from his phone, apparently not realizing that I had walked in until I sat in front of him. Instantly a smile spread across his face, reaching all the way up to his eyes. Their dark irises had a glint in them I had only dreamed of—literally—until now. My heart warmed at the sight of them.

"Hey Eloise," he said.

"Hi Matty."

Neither of us really knew what to say. I had already said what I needed to. I had already told him that I loved him. I figured there were logistical things to discuss but I hadn't given the matter much thought. I hoped Matty had, but by the silence that engulfed us, he hadn't.

I was the one to speak up. "What kind of coffee did you get?"

"Just black," he responded. "You?"

"A latte."

Cue the silence once again. Fuck. I was so happy to see him again and this is what happens? Definitely not okay. I wanted to just go back and redo everything. Sure, we were together now, in the moment, but what was the point if it sucked this much?