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୨⎯ "𝒓𝒆𝒂𝒍 𝒍𝒊𝒇𝒆" ⎯୧
⋆.ೃ࿔*:･

ᴺᴼᵂ ᴾᴸᴬᵞᴵᴺᴳ : for real this time - gracie abrams
ᴠᴏʟᴜᴍᴇ : ▮▮▮▮▮▮▯▯▯

I think that maybe I was right
Back when I knew to draw the line
Already gave what I could offer
Maybe we'll work another time

𝐍𝐨𝐰 𝐥𝐨𝐚𝐝𝐢𝐧𝐠. . .

Matt's lazily laying in bed on his phone when he hears a small knock at his door, he does nothing but stir in bed as he just expects whoever it is to walk in anyway. To his surprise, they don't and he hears another small knock. He frustratedly gets out of bed and takes the two steps to his bedroom door, gripping the handle.

"I don't know why you can't just walk in because you do it every- oh. Hi"

Josie stands there looking a bit confused, if not guilty, as she takes in Matt's disheveled appearance. His hair is messier than usual and she can see his sheets have been tossed back, like he just woke up. She squints guiltily at him. "Sorry, I didn't know you were asleep"

He furrows his brows in confusion and looks behind his shoulder at his bed and a look of understanding "I was just laying around, I've been up for hours. What's up Jose?"

She shrugs and Matt takes note of the jingle of her keys. He didn't hear her come in this morning which means that she probably didn't go home last night. Huh.

"I just wanted to check in on you before I left"

"I'm fine"

Josie leans on the doorframe and rests her head on the wooden frame "Can you be honest with me please? I'm not asking for the sake of it, I'm asking because I want to know how my friend is doing"

Matt steps back and gestures her to step into his room. She walks to his desk and pulls out his roller chair whilst Matt sits back down on his bed "I told Gemma that I don't think that I should be someone she comes to anymore."

Josie's jaw drops in shock, since he dropped Gemma home four nights ago she has noticed a drastic change in both of their behaviours. Gemma hadn't seen Halle since that night and Matt had started only dropping Nick and Chris off at their place or just coming in for five minutes before leaving to either go home or do something else.

"I kind of... don't really know what to say to that" The chair squeaks as she moves around "Can I ask why you told her that?"

Matt sighs deeply "We had a bit of an argument in the car after I told her that I was worried about her. It escalated a bit and I said something that I shouldn't have said and she naturally retaliated, I was definitely in the wrong and I shouldn't have said what I said but she was comparing me to Finn almost the whole conversation and honestly I just got sick of it."

Josie nods in an attempt to understand both sides of the story without the full context. She knows where Matt is coming from but she also knows how Gemma feels about Finn and that whole situation. She begins to wonder if maybe Gemma has been saying two different things to both Matt and their other friends.

"What did you say to her Matt?"

He looks down will regret "She said that she didn't care about what other people said about her relationships and then I told her that that's why she stayed with Finn"

Josie as literally no idea how to respond to that. She has never really known Matt to get snappy with anyone but his brothers so to hear that he said that to Gemma, especially while she was drunk, has her reeling a bit. Gemma hasn't said anything about what had happened that night and now Josie finally knows why.

"You shouldn't have said that"

"I know Josie! But I just got so sick of it. I got sick of Finn and everything to do with him and she was drunk and rambling and I don't know, Josie! if I could take it back I would because it wasn't fair to her but I don't regret telling her that she shouldn't come to me anymore"

She purses her lips and continues to nod understandably but doesn't say anything. There's nothing really to say because this isn't her choice. On one hand, she agrees with him and kind of applauds him for setting the boundaries he needs despite how strongly he feels towards Gemma. On the other hand, Gemma wasn't initially in the wrong. Finn is a loser with nothing better to do, it's plain and simple, so the fact that Matt let him get inside his head is something that Josie probably won't ever understand.

Whatever she said after that must've really stuck with Matt because Josie gets the feeling that she shouldn't ask about that. She worries for both of her friends and when Matt doesn't continue to say anything else, Josie knows that the conversation is over. She gets up off of Matt's chair as Chris steps in front of the open door, he raps his knuckles on the frame twice and looks between the two of them "You ready J?"

She looks at Matt and then walks towards Chris "Yeah I'm ready"

As she steps out to the hallway outside of Matt's room, she sees Chris nod at his brother before turning around to face her "I'm so fucking hungry"

Josie cracks a smile and wraps her arm around Chris' shoulders, pulling him in the direction of the front door.

Matt watches his brother and friend walk off and can't help but feel a bit jealous. He thinks about everything that led him to this point as he scrolls through his phone, opening the contacts app and going to the 'S' section. Her contact name stares him in the face and he feels the overwhelming need to do something about it so before he changes his mind, he presses the edit button.

He swaps out sunshine for Gemma in an effort to make it feel more real in his mind and then he locks his phone so that he doesn't have to look at it anymore, choosing to turn on his tv instead. His YouTube app opens on the screen and sitting in his recommended is one of their interviews that he hasn't seen and against his better judgement, he watches it.

It's pretty generic as far as interviews go. The four girls get asked fan questions, questions that Matt already knows the answers too, and banter with the young woman interviewing them. Josie and Avery go back and forth continuously and Jade tries to make sure they all answer the questions. The look on Gemma's face when they get asked what the inspiration behind Bad for Business has him regretting his curiosity.

Avery clearly covers up the real story with some shit about Sam and the interviewer seems to accept that answer with minimal skepticism but he knows better. Gemma and Avery did write on the song, yes, but that song isn't about Sam. It's about Matt and only Matt. He remembers Avery telling him that her and Gemma had sat down together and fleshed out and tweaked the general idea for the song before she just straight up said that the song was about him. The confession wasn't super surprising but the fact that Avery had just said it so simply, so mattter-of-fact, left him feeling all too confident in Gemma's feelings and actions. He knows better now.

He can't regret her, or his feelings for her, but he does regret not listening to his gut. Especially since he's been left feeling like this despite the fact that they weren't together, they never spoke about being together and he was no longer confident that she even wanted to be together. He knew he didn't want to get in the middle of whatever it is that Gemma and Finn had going on and he went and did exactly that, leaving him where he is today: In bed alone, watching her interviews on tv and mourning something that almost was.

💌

lets all remember: gemma hasn't changed his contact name 😋

thanks for reading! hope you're having a good week <3