Page 20 of Undefined Terms

A year. Celyn’s had this character for a year. And I’ve been coming to that bar, every other weekend, when the London jobs let me, for a year. Longer, nearly fourteen months. The torch is on the columns and my head’s on the structure.

‘She stands in doorways because she’s afraid of rooms,’ Celyn says. Still writing. ‘She’s afraid that if she goes in, the room will change around her and she won’t be able to find the door again.’

‘So she stays on the edge.’

Celyn stops writing, looks at me. The torchlight catches one side of the face. The cheekbone, the eye. Dark and grey and looking at me like I’ve said something that matters.

‘Yeah,’ Celyn says. ‘She stays on the edge.’

We walk deeper. I talk about the brickwork, the headers, the stretchers, the lime mortar that’s softer than the brick and that’s the point, the mortar absorbs the movement, the building breathes. Celyn writes, asks questions. Good ones, sharp, specific.

‘Walk me through a day on site,’ Celyn says.

So I do. The morning, 6:45, before the lads, checking the overnight. Pour schedule. Deliveries. Steel comes in and you check every piece, because the steel doesn’t care what the order form says. It is what it is. You measure it. If it’s wrong it’s wrong. The afternoon, the pour itself, the pump, the screed, the trowel work that’s done by hand because no machine does it better. Fresh concrete smells, that wet, earthy thing. The weight of it. It starts liquid and ends solid. There’s a window, four hours, maybe five, where you can shape it. After that it’s done. Set. Whatever you made is what it is.

Celyn’s stopped writing, stood there, looking at me. In the dark with the torch between us and the columns rising and the smell of damp brick and Celyn’s perfume. That sweet thing that has no business on a person in a derelict warehouse at half ten.

‘What?’ I say.

‘Nothing. Keep going.’

‘I’ve finished.’

‘No you haven’t. You were talking about the window. The four hours.’

I was. I was talking like I talk on site when I’m explaining something to a new apprentice, with my whole body, the words coming because the subject’s mine and it’s built into my hands. And Celyn was listening. Properly.

‘It sets,’ I say. ‘That’s it. Liquid to solid. Once it’s set you can’t undo it.’

Celyn nods, writes one more thing, closes the notebook.

Outside, the air’s cold. It hits different after the warehouse. My skin prickles. The streetlight makes Celyn’s hoodie look grey-orange.

We walk, shoulder to shoulder. The pavement’s wet. Rained while we were inside.

Celyn stops.

I stop.

‘I want to kiss you,’ Celyn says.

Like saying it’s cold. Like saying the mortar’s lime-based. A fact, stated. The mouth that said it. The grey eyes looking at me in the streetlight and not flinching. The hoodie, the ripped jeans, the trainers, the hands in the pocket. The most male Celyn has looked since I’ve known them and the sentence is I want to kiss you and.

My chest stops.

Just stops.

‘Not tonight,’ Celyn says. ‘When you’re ready. But I wanted you to know.’

The voice is calm. How the vowels move, tonight gets an extra beat. Calm like the columns.

Celyn starts walking. The sound of trainers on wet pavement.

I stand there, my hands are shaking. I put them in my jacket pockets and they shake in there instead.

Street, warehouse behind me, orange light, rain on the ground. A person with a sweet perfume that doesn’t match anything just said I want to kiss you and my body said yes before the sentence finished. There’s no place in my head for this and the word for wanting doesn’t fit.

Something else. A person with grey eyes.