Page 105 of Undefined Terms

‘Please.’

I get the tea, bring it back, put it down. Celyn over the mug, the hoodie, the cap.

Same.

Exactly the bloody same.

I sit there and drink my pint and watch a person in a grey hoodie type on a laptop and the thing in my gut, the one that was there last night, hasn’t shifted one millimetre.

Celyn reaches across the table without looking up from the screen. The hoodie sleeve past the wrist. Fixes my collar. The polo’s got a fold at the back from where I pulled it on too fast after the shower. The fingers on the back of my neck. Two seconds, the cap, the stubble rough.

‘You had a thing,’ Celyn says. Still typing.

A thing. A fold in my collar and a person in a hoodie and four days’ growth leaned across a table and fixed it with chipped nails and the touch lasted two seconds and the two seconds are on my skin and the skin is warm and it hasn’t changed, not from the lipstick, not from the boots, not from any version, and I know.

Right.

Wednesday.

The dress is short, black. Stops above the knee, thin straps, collarbones and the shoulders and the. I don’t know what the muscle there is called. The one between the neck and the shoulder. The one I put my mouth on two nights ago.

Tights. Sheer. The legs are long and smooth and the shoes have a low heel. Low enough to shape the calf.

Makeup. Full. The eyeliner thicker than Monday. The lipstick the same dark shade. Blush. Something on the eyelids. Colour, a shimmer. The face smooth. Shaved clean.

The ring, the earring, a small hoop, gold.

Celyn orders at the bar. I watch from the table. The heels change the walk, the hips, the spine. Celyn leans on the counter and the bartender leans in and Celyn laughs and the laugh is the laugh from every version, the breath through the nose, the head dipping forward, the hair falling.

The bartender, the regular one, the bloke with the piercing, nods. Celyn turns back towards our table. Catches me looking. Doesn’t do the half-smile this time. Does the full one. The one that uses both sides of the mouth and reaches the eyes. The rare one.

The dress moves when Celyn walks back, the heels on the floor, click, click, click. The same person who sat here yesterday in a hoodie and a cap with four days of beard and typed on a laptop and fixed my collar.

The same, the same, the same.

I’m sat at this bar with my pint going warm and the window behind me and I’m looking at a person I’ve seen in a long skirt with combat boots, in a hoodie with four days of stubble, in a short dress with heels, and the feeling hasn’t changed once.

If it was just the skirts I could tell myself. Right. The legs, the fabric, how a skirt moves. Could file that. Could put it in a box.

If it was just the stubble I could tell myself. I dunno. Could file that too.

But it’s all of it. Every version. The boots and the heels, the lipstick and the bare face, the rough mouth and the clean skin.

All of it is Celyn and Celyn is, I don’t have the word. I’ve been looking for the word for, months. Girlfriend is wrong, boyfriend is wrong. The thing your mate says when he asks who you’re seeing. That’s wrong too.

Celyn looks up from the laptop. The full makeup, the shimmer.

‘What?’

‘Nothing.’

The opposite of nothing. The biggest something I’ve ever sat with and I can’t.

It comes in quiet, it comes in quiet. Like noticing it’s raining, you don’t hear the first drop, you look up and it’s already been raining for a while and your jacket’s already wet.

I’m in love with Celyn. Every version. Celyn.

I’m in love with Celyn and the word for what that makes me doesn’t exist in the language I’ve got. And I sit with that, the gap, and it’s okay.