Page 10 of Undefined Terms

‘I’m always losing you. You’ve been lost since long division.’

‘Oi.’

‘True though.’

True, he’s the clever one. Always was, the one who skipped a year because the course couldn’t keep up with him. The one who went to university and found. This. Laurence, the house. The books on the stairs. The second bottle of wine.

I’m the one who left school at seventeen because school was done with me. The one who’s good with his hands and thick with his words and thinking.

Is this it?

Up close? Two people who just. Do this? The plates and the wine and the touching and the talking and someone who knows your name the way nobody says it?

The thought catches.

Night, Ronan. The soft R.

I drink the wine.

The walk home, Chorlton to the NQ. Should’ve got the bus, didn’t. The cold’s good, clears the head.

The streets are Saturday-night busy: groups going to bars, couples walking close, a woman in heels carrying her shoes. The tram rattles past; I walk.

My phone’s in my pocket. I check it, nothing. I don’t have Celyn’s number. Celyn doesn’t have mine. Three nights at the same table and I know how the tea smells and what colour the nails are and the exact sound of that’s a line and I don’t have a phone number.

Ewan has Laurence’s number. Ewan has Laurence’s toothbrush in the bathroom and a spare set of keys.

I have a circle on my wrist where a ring pressed four nights ago.

Ceiling, white, blank, eighty quid a night.

I brush my teeth. The mirror, my face, same face. I look tired. Gaz was right.

I brush my teeth. In the mirror it’s the same face. I look tired. Gaz was right.

I get into bed and the sheets are cold. Close my eyes.

Celyn’s there, behind the lids, the table. The laptop screen gone dark. The shirt. No, the hoodie tonight, the oversize one, the bare chin and the dark around the eyes.

It runs. Celyn at the table, looking at me, the half-smile. Then the hand across the table, the fingers on my wrist again, but longer this time. Moving, up. Past the wrist, the forearm, the crook of the elbow where the polo sleeve ends and the skin starts. And Celyn’s face is closer now, the tea and the perfume and the clean skin or the rough jaw, it switches, both, doesn’t matter.

The mouth on mine, soft and then not soft. The tongue, tea on it. Celyn makes a sound, small, in the back of the throat, and the mouth moves. Off mine, down. Jaw. Neck. Chest.

I open my eyes, the ceiling.

Hard. The third night in a row. Same ceiling. The duvet’s got a ridge where my body’s pushing up and I can see it in the dark. The shape of the thing I’m pretending isn’t happening.

I don’t do anything, I lie there. Flat on the mattress. Eyes open.

The sequence plays again. The mouth on the neck. Lower, the sound Celyn makes.

I press my face into the pillow. Turn onto my side. My hips push, once, against the mattress.

Stop.

Stop it, go to sleep, you’ve got work Monday. You’ve got footings to check and a pour at noon and there’s no space in this for anything else.

Mouth. Sound. A hand going lower.