Page 61 of Undefined Terms

Celyn’s at our table.

I stop, in the doorway. The cold still on my back and the bar heat on my face and Celyn’s at our table with a pint and no laptop and the face, the face is different. The eyes are tired, circled dark, the kind of dark you get when you don’t sleep. The hair’s down, falling across the forehead. The nails, violet still, but barely. Chipped down to islands.

I walk to the table, pull out the chair, sit.

‘I was an arsehole,’ Celyn says. Eyes on the pint between the hands. The violet islands.

‘Me too.’

Silence. The couple at the bar laughing. The buzz-cut bartender wiping the counter.

‘My tutor said the novel’s not working.’

‘I know it’s not.’

Celyn nods, the hair moves. The circles under the eyes are worse than I thought, not just tired, something deeper. The face of someone who’s been sat with themselves for twenty-four hours.

I go to the bar, order two pints. The Northern Soul. Bloody stupid name, good beer. I bring them back, put one in front of Celyn. Take the old one that’s gone warm and flat and set it to the side.

Celyn drinks, I drink. The silence is the kind I know, not comfortable, not uncomfortable. Working, like mortar that’s still going off. You wait.

Someone puts music on. Acoustic, a bloke with a guitar who thinks he’s better than he is. Celyn’s foot touches mine under the table. The table’s small, but the foot stays.

I let mine stay.

‘You can say my job’s shit,’ I say. After the second pint. After the foot. After the guitar player gives up and the jukebox takes over and the buzz-cut girl brings us chips without asking. ‘But mean it. Don’t use it as ammo.’

Celyn looks at me, full-on. The eyes, the grey-green, the thing I still can’t, the eyes are wet. Something sitting behind them that won’t come out.

‘I don’t think your job’s shit.’

‘You said it.’

‘I know what I said. I was failing and I wanted you to fail too. For one second. That’s not right.’ A breath. ‘That’s the worst thing I’ve ever done to someone I care about.’

The sentence stops and I hear it.

I eat a chip, it’s cold, eat another one.

‘The reading was brilliant,’ I say. The word feels wrong in my mouth. It’s the right one though. ‘The whole room couldn’t breathe. Your tutor wasn’t in that room.’

Celyn blinks.

‘Ron.’

‘What.’

‘You just said something beautiful and you have no idea.’

‘I said it was brilliant. That’s all I can say.’

‘I know. That’s why it’s beautiful.’

I sit with it, eat more chips. The salt on my fingers. The jukebox, a tune I don’t know. The foot under the table. Celyn’s foot against mine, the heat through two shoes.

The bar fills, a quiet crowd. Smaller, the people who don’t have somewhere better to be and I’m one of them and have been for months. The couple by the window. The bloke who reads the paper in the corner and has been reading the same paper since I started coming here.

Celyn orders another pint. Doesn’t ask me, just goes to the bar and comes back with two. Puts mine down.