Hurricane // Matty Healy ♣ The 1975

14. empty

While the concert was going on, I was sitting outside around the back of the venue, listening to the muffled music coming through the walls. 

I leaned against a wall, dragging my hands through my tangled hair. I really needed some paracetamol but the woman on the counter in Boots didn't believe I was over sixteen. I chewed on my bottom lip and took a sip from my water bottle. 

I wanted Matty. 

I sighed. 

He'd be completely out of it by the time he was finished with the gig. 

A voice pulled me out of my thoughts. 

"Hey... you waiting for them, too?" it was a girl with a guy a couple of years older than her. She was dragging him over to me by his hand, almost treating him like a very unwilling dog. 

"Um, yeah." I replied, doing the cap up on the bottle. 

"Who's your favourite?" she asked, leaning against the wall next to me. Her boyfriend kissed her neck gently. 

"Matty." I said without thinking. "How about you?" 

"George... or Adam, or Matty, or Ross... I dunno, I love them all." she smiled slightly. "I'm Teresa, this is Ryan." she said.

"I'm Lizzy." I replied and she smiled at me. 

"I recognise you from somewhere..." she said and I winced, preparing myself. "You were that girl who went missing last yeah, right?" 

I let out a sigh of relief. 

"Yeah, yeah I did." 

"Did you go back home?" she asked. I nodded my head. 

"Yeah. Well, unwillingly. I was living with my boyfriend and some other friends and then people found out... um, now I've left again and I'm back with the boyfriend." I said, smiling as I heard the  chords to Sex being played inside. 

"The same happened to me. Now I'm sofa surfing with Ryan." she said, smiling distantly, like she had reached the end of her happiness a long time ago. "Where's your boyfriend?" she asked. 

"Um, he's in there." I pointed to the wall. She smiled. 

"Lucky shit." 

"Yeah." I replied. 

----

Matty had been sick four times. 

"I love you, Lizzy." he mumbled, rolling around on the bed. I laughed quietly as he began to wrap himself up in the duvet. 

"Matty!" I whined. 

"What?" he asked, his face squished against the pillow. 

"I'm cold now." I pouted. Matty smiled at me, unwrapping the duvet from himself and draping it over me. 

"That's because you're only wearing underwear. It's freezing." he mumbled, pressing his lips against my shoulder. 

"And that's because you threw up on my top while you were sleeping with your head on my stomach." I dragged my hands through his hair, massaging his scalp softly with my fingertips. 

"I love you." he softly ran his fingers over my stomach. 

"I love you too." I kissed him gently and smiled at him. 

I adjusted my laptop on my knees and began typing. 

"Read me what you've written." he whispered, his lips now on my collar bone. 

I took a deep breath and scrolled to the top of the page, tapping my fingers on the edge of the laptop nervously. 

"There is nothing worse, than loving someone so much that it makes your chest ache with an unfamiliar form of longing, and your eyes glass over when you can't see them, and your hands shake when he kisses them... He makes me think 'fuck, fuck, fuck...' because I love him so much, and I know I'm in the deep end. He's confident and clever and I'm just... useless. I'm the pause right before the punchline of a bad joke, I'm the emptiness that nothing can fill other than a thick, dark, treacle-like toxic mixture of sadness and hunger for something more than words and his lips. I love him, and he says he loves me, but all that I want to say when he does, is, you're really dumb."

Matty took my hand and kissed it. 

"I love you." 

"But are you in love with me, Matty? When... w-when there are so many better people?" 

"Elizabeth..." Matty mumbled at he pushed himself up on the bed. "There is no one I could love more than you." 

I pressed my lips against his, giggling quietly as he tickled my stomach. 

I pulled his shirt over his head and he smirked at me. 

"Let's warm you up, eh?"