Page 66 of Undefined Terms

‘Look at the state of you.’ Celyn laughs into my neck, the hand working us slow. ‘Home five minutes.’

‘Your fault.’

‘I know. I’m very good.’ A twist of the wrist, both of us at once, and my hips buck up into the grip.

We grind into the fist, the wet building between us, Celyn’s cock thick against mine, foreskins catching. Their thumb finds both heads at the top of every pull and works the slick down over the two of us, easing the drag, and that’s the filthiest part of it, that they thought of it, that they’re watching their own hand do the work with their bottom lip caught in their teeth. I get a hand on their arse and pull them down harder, the muscle flexing under my palm. They let me set it for a second, then take it back, slower, because they can.

‘Look at the state of you,’ Celyn says, low, pleased with themselves. ‘All worked up, and I’ve barely started.’

Then Celyn slides down the bed and takes me in, deep, no ceremony, the way you do a thing you’ve done enough times to be cocky about it. The hand I put in their hair. The laugh they do halfway down because they’re pleased with themselves and won’t stop for it, the hum of it buzzing round my cock. Two fingers of their free hand press up behind my balls, that spot, and my heels dig the mattress.

Quick in the end. Celyn does it like a dare they set themselves, the throat, the suck, the two fingers still pressed up behind my balls and working that spot, and it goes before I’ve got the word out to warn them. One hand fists in their hair, the other twists the duvet, and I come down their throat. Celyn swallows, the head of me held deep while they do, takes all of it, and slides off looking far too pleased with themselves.

The Wetherspoon’s still in my head. The five blokes at a table and the word I didn’t say. Four letters, that’s all.

The garlic’s strong. Celyn’s heavy-handed with garlic like I’m heavy-handed with sugar in tea, not a choice, just how it is. The lamp’s on and the radiator’s clicking and somewhere on this bed a person is scrolling on their phone with orange nails and wearing my shirt and I didn’t say they at a Wetherspoon and I’m standing here eating pasta.

I wash up. Bowl, fork, pot, done.

‘The lads think you’re a girl,’ I say.

Celyn looks up, the eyeliner. The orange nails on the phone. The expression that isn’t surprise because Celyn’s never surprised by this.

‘Do they.’

‘Gaz asked your name. I said Celyn. He said Welsh, innit. Nice one. Bring her round.’

‘Bring her round.’ Celyn says it back. Testing the shape. ‘And you didn’t correct him.’

‘No.’

I wait, the counter. My hands on the edge. The pasta warm in my stomach and the guilt, if that’s what this is, the thing in my throat not shifting away. Correcting Gaz puts me in the sentence. Not Celyn. Me. The word lands the second I open my mouth, and I stayed quiet to keep it off me. That’s the shape of it, and the shape’s a coward’s.

‘I should’ve,’ I say.

‘Maybe.’

‘I didn’t know how.’

Celyn puts the phone down. Sits up. The t-shirt shifts. My t-shirt, the grey one, the neck too wide, the collarbone. Eyeliner, stubble. The face looking at me. Not anger.

‘What matters,’ Celyn says, ‘is what you call me when it’s us.’

‘They.’

‘Yeah.’

‘Always they.’

‘The rest catches up, Ron. Or it doesn’t. But you don’t have to fight every fight at a Wetherspoon on a Friday. That’s not where the fight is.’

‘Where’s the fight?’

Celyn lifts one side of the mouth. ‘In your head. And you’re further than you think.’

I look at the counter. The clean pot, the fork. The flat that has garlic in it and a person on my bed who made pasta and is wearing my shirt and has a key and knows the lock sticks and doesn’t need me to be ready for a Wetherspoon.

This is where this is.