Page 13 of Proof By Contradiction
He’s pounding into me, and the beach photo is all there is in my head.
‘Fuck.’
I come clutching the sheet, grip vice-tight on his cock. My body arches off the mattress and, for three seconds, the world is nothing but the faceless torso and the man behind it.
He finishes himself off while I’m breathing wrong. My hand isn’t moving.
He pulls the condom off and bins it. Flops beside me—normal behaviour.
‘Who’s Haldrey?’
Everything turns to ice.
‘What?’
‘You said a name. When you came. Haldrey.’ He’s looking at me with an expression that’s half amused, half offended. ‘Boyfriend?’
‘Nobody.’ I’m up. Pulling on my jeans. ‘Uni stuff, actually. I was thinking about a maths problem.’
The excuse is so catastrophically bad that it circles back around to the truth.
‘Right.’ He watches me dress. He’s seen this before. ‘You know, you could just say if you’re with someone, I’m not a jealous type.’
‘See you around.’
Door, stairs. Night air. October in Manchester, which means it’s already cold enough that my breath makes ghosts in the streetlight.
A maths problem. I told a bloke I was thinking about a maths problem while we were shagging.
My hands are shaking.
Haldrey’s name lives so close to the surface it fell out of me.
I walk faster.
Tuesday. Week three, nine AM. I’m in the back row with my hood up and a coffee I’m not drinking, and I’ve sworn to myself I’m going to be invisible today. No hand, no clever answer. No eye contact, arrive, sit, leave. Clean transaction.
The lecture happens around me like the weather. Haldrey at the board, the measured vowels, the sleeve folded twice. I write approximately four things in my notebook, and none of them are maths. I writesleeve. I cross it out. I writethe pen cap in his teeth when he’s thinking. I cross that out harder. I draw a box around the crossings-out, as if it might contain them.
Femi’s got his notebook open and takes notes, because Femi is here for a degree.
Haldrey talks about continuity, but I miss it. His left hand stays on the lectern, and when it moves, I track it.
And then. This.
Mid-sentence. Mid-definition. He looks up once across the back row. Half a beat. Middle of the worduniform, the consonant snagging. He goesum.
Um.
Dr L. Haldrey. Week 3, two hundred freshers. Does notum.
Recovers. Steps back a word and finishes clean. Four lectures in and I’ve never heard him drop a single one. Nobody else clocks it. The lad two down is drawing a spiral in his margin. The girl in front of me is asleep on her arm. Anumisn’t a crime. Anumin a nine AM is weather.
But.
I write it in my notebook and cross it out, staring at the deletion like it means something. My pulse does a small disloyal thing.
Theumwasn’t about the definition.
