Page 62 of Undefined Terms

‘Third time you’ve apologised tonight.’

‘Noted.’ Tired. ‘Last one. Promise.’

We walk back. Celyn’s hand finds my wrist. The fingers, cold. Wrap around the bone and hold. Like testing if the bone’s still there.

I don’t pull away.

Door. Celyn uses the key, lock sticks, Celyn jiggles it. I could do it faster but I stand behind and watch the fingers work and the door opens and it smells like the heating, like old toast, like the building settling.

I make tea, two mugs, one sugar, milk.

Celyn sits on the bed cross-legged, the hoodie pulled over the knees. The face still tired, still circled, still the heaviest version of Celyn I’ve seen. But something’s different. Something’s coming off.

I bring the tea, sit on the bed, the mattress dips. Celyn’s knee touches my thigh.

We drink tea.

‘I read your message,’ I say.

‘I know. Double blue tick. I was watching the screen like an obsessed person.’ Celyn laughs. Small. Through the nose. ‘Like a person who says they hate phone culture and then stares at a phone for six hours.’

‘Didn’t know what to say.’

‘You don’t have to say anything.’

‘Right.’

The tea. The knee against my thigh.

‘The silence’s different now,’ I say. Don’t know why I say it. The words come out like the key came out of my hand yesterday, not decided. Done.

‘Yeah,’ Celyn says. ‘Scar tissue.’

I don’t know what that means. I know what it means. The silence with a mark on it from what happened. Like a wall you patch, you can see where the crack was, the plaster’s smooth but the line’s there if you know where to look.

Celyn puts the white mug on the floor. Leans sideways. The head on my shoulder. The hair against my neck. The stubble that I feel through the shirt, rough, warm.

The heating clicks off. Then on again. The sound of a flat that knows how to regulate itself. A thing Celyn said back when the staying-over started. Small things like that. A person noticing how a building breathes.

Celyn’s breathing deepens. The body goes heavier.

‘You’re warm,’ Celyn says, barely awake. A laugh, the sleepy one.

The flat’s dark now, the rain’s stopped. The blind-stripes from the streetlight move across the wall as cars pass. A rhythm I’ve started to recognise. This flat, this person. The heat that stays as long as I stay still.

Celyn sleeps, I don’t move. The ceiling crack is still there. The mark on the wall where something broke and got fixed and you can still see the line if you know where to look.

I do know where to look.

But knowing where to look doesn’t fix the crack. Celyn’s novel is still broken. The tutor’s still in there somewhere, in the sentences, in the hesitation before every paragraph. I can be there. I can be the tea and the silence and the flat regulating itself. But I can’t write the book. And the book is what’s breaking them.

The laptop’s on the desk. Closed. Tomorrow I’ll make tea and I won’t ask and Celyn will open it or won’t.

CHAPTER TWELVE

The door opens and Steph walks in.

Our table, Celyn typing, the glasses on, two mugs. The evening doing its thing until now.