opia; matty healy.

25%

"How'd you both get in?" Matty inquires.

"Denise just let me in," George shrugs, "quite funny, actually. She just looked at me and rolled her eyes, said 'He's upstairs', and not another word."

"I told her we're working on a French assignment together," I grin, proud of my plan and finally able to announce it.

"Do we actually?" Matty asks me, while George speaks over the top ("That's the oldest trick in the book, Isabel").

"No," I tell Matty, "And fuck off George, Denise didn't give you a second to even come up with a lie. I'd like to see you do better."

"How about: there's a party tonight and Matty's clearly in mourning over his freedom so we need to take him out and get totally pissed?" I laugh at George's attempt to invite, let alone get Denise's permission for Matty to step a foot outside the front door.

"Fat chance," Matty scoffs, "Not in a million years. I'm grounded until I'm thirty fucking years old."

"Fine, Isabel? You in? Y'know, since Matty's too busy being sook," George asks.

"I don't know," I chew on my bottom lip, "I was just gonna stay in tonight. Maybe watch Love, Actually..."

"It is getting close to the holidays," Matty agrees, "but you should go. You've only got a year of high school ahead of you, how many parties will you be invited to in that time?"

"Oh?" I quiz, "and you expect you'll have longer than a year of high school left?"

"At this rate," George comments, "if you break anybody else's nose you'll have to repeat middle school again."

Matty flips George off while I laugh once again, "You're next if you don't back off, Daniel."

In the end, between endless amounts of "banter", Matty comes to the conclusion that leaving the house will leave him in his mother's grasp – most likely hand cuffed to the bed and forced to eat prison meals with his feet – for the rest of eternity. Although we try to convince him otherwise, it turns out Matty is quite good at convincing me to attend parties without him. While this puts me on edge and sends my anxiety sky high, we watch Love, Actually anyway.

When we finish, and we say our farewells and George drives me home, I feel a little better about going with George. I admit my anxiety, and he tells me he'll wait for me at my house while I get ready, and then we can go to his place and I won't have to leave his side if I don't want to.

"It's just that sometimes I feel a little overcrowded when I'm not with people I know," I tell him.

"You don't need to explain yourself," he says, admiring my simple bedroom décor and bookshelf, muttering: "No wonder you and Matty hit it off so well."

"He was actually quite the asshole in the first ten minutes of our meeting!" I call from the bathroom, the door open and my voice travelling through the hallway.

"I'm not surprised," George tells me now, nearing closer to the bathroom, "you girls get so dressed up."

"This is tame!" I defend, motioning to my maroon sweater tucked into a denim skirt.

"Just throw on some jeans," George waves his hand.

I roll my eyes, strolling past him and back to my room. In all honesty I hadn't put too much effort into my look today. I remained in my makeup of the day and threw on the first things I could find. This was both because I have no one to impress, and also because I didn't want to keep George waiting for too long.

As I find out a little later, George takes far longer to get ready than I do. I charge my phone while he showers, leaning against the headboard of his bed and texting Matty at the same time. I beg him to sneak out and join us, but he's adamant to accept. I can understand why, although I'm sure if he begged Denise enough to come over to George's for the night she would give in. Sometimes I feel bad that she has to put up with his needy attitude.