Page 121 of Undefined Terms

Tomorrow. Your place. I’m bringing beer.

I look at the message. Tomorrow, beer.

yeah alright

7:30, don’t eat, I’ll bring crisps.

Beer and crisps. The Ewan version of a meal plan.

I put the phone down. The flat, the Friday silence. The hoodie on the radiator.

Every morning the blue mug. Every sandwich without cheese. Every night a ceiling without stars.

Tomorrow Ewan comes with beer.

I sit with it. The sitting’s all I’ve got.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

Aweek and the flat’s got a shape now. A man who goes to work and comes home and sits. Dave stopped asking if I’m alright on Wednesday. Practical men stop digging when the shovel hits rock.

The packet of stars is still on the bedside table. The same ones from the charity shop. Eighty pence. Sealed.

I was going to put them up. On the ceiling. The weekend Celyn was at the restaurant for the double shift. I had the plan, the step-ladder from the site, the packet, the ceiling. Put them up while Celyn was out. A surprise. Like a bloke who can’t say a thing so he sticks plastic stars on a ceiling and hopes the stars say it instead.

I never did it. And now the packet sits there and the ceiling is bare and the person who was supposed to look up and see them is somewhere in Manchester. Hasn’t texted, I haven’t texted.

The food’s been existing. Toast. The last of the beans. A Tesco sandwich on Wednesday that I ate in the portacabin, Dean next to me saying nothing, and the nothing was the right shape. Thursday I didn’t eat until lunch. Friday the fridge had a lemon, half a pint of milk on the turn, and a jar of Celyn’s chutney. The one from the farmer’s market. The one I don’t like but eat because Celyn puts it on everything, and the taste of it is the taste of Celyn’s kitchen.

I threw the milk out. Kept the chutney.

My birthday was the fifth. Twenty-eight. I clocked it the way you clock a date on a delivery note, a thing that’s due, and went to work and poured a slab.

Ewan texted in the morning.

Happy birthday old man. Let me cook you something proper, I’ll come up, cake and the lot. Just say the word.

I looked at it a long time. The word was yes, and yes meant a table and candles and Ewan watching my face to check I was alright, and I wasn’t, and I hadn’t got it in me to be alright over a cake. Next time, I sent. Busy. He knew there was no busy. The thumbs-up came back and let me keep the lie.

The knock’s at half seven. Saturday. I’m on the sofa, not watching the telly. The telly’s on, noise, don’t know what. The sound fills the room and that’s the function of the telly tonight. Filling.

I open the door and Ewan’s there. Carrier bag, four cans, the tall ones, Moretti, the green ones, which means he went to an actual shop and not the Tesco Express because the Tesco Express doesn’t do the tall Moretti.

‘Alright,’ I say.

He walks past me, puts the cans on the counter, looks at the flat. He clocks all of it, every object, fast. Surgical. Eyes that miss nothing.

‘You look like shite,’ he says.

‘Cheers.’

He opens two cans, hands me one, sits on the sofa. I sit next to him. Telly on. Sound.

Ewan drinks. Doesn’t say anything for—I don’t know. Two minutes. Three. The length of time it takes to decide how to cut someone open.

‘You fucked it up,’ he says. Statement. Verdict.

‘Yeah.’