𝐍𝐎𝐍-𝐋𝐎𝐕𝐄 𝐒𝐎𝐍𝐆𝐒

What if it's not meant for me? (Love)

BARCELONA, SPAIN
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

A couple of days with Matty on a whole life and I found myself struggling coming back to reality. I tried to sleep on the plane, but I didn't get to rest properly. The thought of him was haunting me - haunting me quite delightfully. I was ridiculously happy.

"Guys, look. This is how you make a girl fall in love with you. Look like a drug dealer, don't wash your hair for a couple of weeks and they're gonna walk around thinking of you all day with that face"

"Fuck off, Alex"

"Fuck off" the boys imitated me.

"And, I'm not in love" I clarified.

They laughed of me, but I didn't care, cause I knew the truth. There was something incredibly superficial in the instantaneous true love's cliché. You need to know somebody to love them and I knew yet so little about Matty. I wasn't in love. I was just infatuated, fascinated. It wasn't less intense, it was just another thing.

Truth be told, he was driving me mad.

We didn't talk about Twigs, we didn't talk about the age gap, we didn't talk about him leaving for tour, we didn't talk about what-are-we. But in that moment, it didn't matter. All I cared was that night I was going to see him again.

I was a bit nervous. Festivals always had a certain intimidating power over me. Matty said I was going to be amazing. I hope he was right. We were going to play in the evening, and him and the other boys were going to headline right after us, as the affirmed stars they were. I wished I had the same careless confidence as him, but I was a bundle of nerves.

Suddenly my phone ringed.

trumanblack: you'll be mental. divine. magnetic. enchanting. ridiculously sexy. see you later?

trumanblack: actually it wasn't a question

A grin on my face, I wanted to kiss him, softly, so so bad. Oh, how I wanted to slap myself just as intensely.

Keith locked eyes with me. "Hey, it's almost time. How are we feeling?"

I smiled. "Supersonic"

I was center stage, Alex on my left, Keith on my right, Charlie behind me. The deep sound of the bass kept the time dictated by the drums. I felt it in my chest. The guitar suddenly cut the tension. The setting sun blew my mind, falling under the crowd. Boys, girls, they were all piled up staring at us. Festivals were problematic because some people likes you, but most of them have no idea who you are. It was their souls we wanted to steal. I took a deep breath. They don't know who we are as we arrive, but they will when we'll leave.

I was wearing a simple white top, black adidas shorts and a pair of black platform boots. Liam Gallagher faced Maine Road with an Umbro sweatshirt and he looked biblical. We wanted that style. I fluttered my mascara-covered eyelashes. I got close to the microphone and started singing.

Music ran through my veins like fuel. I took a look at my friends and they were enjoying all of that, playing their instruments like they were shaking actual human beings. Slowly, my anxiety faded out to leave room to an electric enthusiasm. I banged my head, smirking and winking and laughing loudly when people freaked out.

I found myself surprised, like it was the first time I realized that I wrote some songs for a guy who meant nothing to me anymore. I wasn't actually in love with him - no, not even close. I wasn't talking about love, I never do. But it's crazy and in some ways scary how time changes everything. There had been days in which I felt just as good as that morning with Matty, but with another guy. I wondered when the hour of judgment would come also for me and Matty. I didn't fear the end yet, but I knew all the bright precious things fade so fast. And they come back in the form of tasteless plasticized memories.

When our set was over there was no trace of the sun anymore. The energy of the crowd filled me with joy.

"It's been fucking mental! Biblical!" Charlie giggled in the backstage.

"Have you heard them singing? They were fucking singing with us! They knew the lyrics!" I pointed out with excitement.

"We made it, we made it again" Keith said, serotonin and adrenaline running through his veins, just like in all of us.

"Of course we made it, we are fucking great" Alex giggled. "The best band. On the planet"

We cheered to ourselves, opening a bottle of red wine I didn't even like, but who cares, we'd been fucking great, we had to party.

"Guys, I love you" I said pouring a sip. "I fucking love you and our band"

We hugged again, drunk of joy and arrogance.

Suddenly we heard the crowd making a loud and hysterical scream.

"Fucking hell" Keith exclaimed.

I knew what it was. "The 1975 arrived" I said.

I took a look at what was happening on stage. An ambient, spoken-word song was playing. It was the voice of Greta Thunberg. Her firm and proud words resounded in the air, and Matty stood there, walking around, wearing a white Fugazi t-shirt that said "fight prejudice, stay human, people are equal, social conscience, education offers options, literacy for all".

This man.

His hair wasn't curly as usual, they fell on the sides of his face gently and wet. He looked charming, older, sexy. When People started playing he literally rubbed his lunchbox on the microphone stick. The crowd loved it. Just a little blink of his eyes could make them crazy and he knew it. He jumped on the crowd, laid on them, let them touch his hair, let them scream like they were holding a holy body.

When they played Robbers, it hit me like a beam of light. When I saw them in Milan, they didn't play it, I remembered. Now he was singing it, and as I was listening to it live for the first time, it hit me differently. Not only because people were singing along - and I saw tears on their faces, and on Matty's too. I knew it was one of the most famous ones, and my conceited intellectual taste always preferred the less known songs, the less acclaimed ones. But that hit me, like a bullet in the back struck from a great height. Because I remembered Matty's words. He wanted a relationship "where love is the highest law and conquers all against the odds. All or nothing". It hit me like a hook with a right, and I could have fell to the floor. I knew, as I knew that I had to die, that I could never give that to him. Or to anyone. And maybe he didn't even want that kind of love from me, but that wasn't the problem. It wasn't about Matty anymore, it was about me.

Matty kept singing passionately about the essential beauty of being in love and I realized I had never grasped that purity, nor I was going to let myself do it now or in the future. I was unable to love, and to be loved in return.

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

This story reached 1.1K views. Excuse me? Ahhh I hope you're all okay!! Please stay safe, stay home, wash your hands, create and enjoy art to kill boredom <3