Page 17 of Undefined Terms

Nice bar.

I read them and I hear everything he’s not saying. The Christmas phone call. The pub in Lewisham where I couldn’t shut up about a table and a pair of hands. The months of texts where I didn’t mention the bar and Ewan didn’t ask because he already knew.

I put the phone away. Celyn’s eyes on the screen, the dress fabric shifting against the thigh when they cross their legs. The perfume’s still there. Stronger now. The bar’s warm and the warmth pulls it out.

‘Friend of yours?’ Celyn says. Not looking up.

‘Brother.’

The typing stops. ‘You have a brother.’

‘Yeah.’

‘Older or younger?’

‘Younger. Ewan.’ I pick at the edge of my beer mat. ‘He’s, he lives here. Chorlton. With his.’ The word. Which word. ‘Partner.’

‘Ah.’ Celyn types. ‘He didn’t come over.’

‘Nah.’

‘Why not?’

‘He’s like that,’ I say. ‘Comes and goes.’

The eyes are lined. The mouth is red. A look I wasn’t expecting.

‘I like that he came,’ Celyn says. Then types again.

I finish my pint.

The walk. The NQ at half ten, the streets emptier, the shops dark. A cab idles at the corner, someone’s laughing down the block. The cold’s January, finding the gap between collar and neck.

My boots are heavy on the pavement, the site boots, the ones I wear everywhere because I haven’t bought others. Walking through Manchester in site boots and a jacket my brother hates and the smell of a pint and the image of a dress and the message on the phone screen.

Nice bar. Not: who’s that. Not: is she your girlfriend. Not: Ron, we need to talk. Just: you’re there, you sit with them, nice bar.

He knew before I did. Ewan always knows before I do. The clever bastard with the dark eyes and the jumper with the hole and the brother who couldn’t say hello to a person at a table for weeks, he knew. Probably knew at Christmas when I couldn’t shut up about a bar.

The flat on Tib Street, the brick wall, the nail.

I get in. Jacket off, boots off, the jeans stay on. I sit on the sofa, stand up, sit on the bed. The same ceiling, five days in.

The red nails, bright as a postbox, the same shade as the mouth. The chain in the hollow of the collarbone, the throat, the place where the pulse is.

The legs. The inch of thigh above the knee where the dress sat when Celyn crossed their legs and the tights darkened the skin and I looked and Celyn said you can look and meant it.

My hand, my jeans. I try to make it the dress. Doesn’t hold. I try to make it the stubble. Doesn’t hold. It’s Celyn. Same want.

I come with something in my mouth that might be a name.

Two times now. That’s not nothing.

Both.

Morning, alarm, six fifteen. The pillow’s got the dent from my face and the cotton smells like me. Just me. And whatever I said into it.

I shower, don’t think about it. No moment where the brain steps in and says hold on. Just the water, just the moving through.