Page 126 of Undefined Terms

I’ve got one thing I know how to do. Stay, press. Don’t move until the weight redistributes.

The Welsh in Celyn’s voice when the door opened. That was the weight asking for the brace.

My hands are shaking, the calluses, the cracks.

Celyn’s looking at me. Eyes. Something my vocabulary doesn’t reach.

Celyn closes the laptop, slow. The click of the lid. Puts it on the floor. The safe place.

Shifts, the knees come down, the legs uncross. The body opens, not much. Enough. The space on the bed that used to be my space before I fucked it up. And Celyn’s making it again.

‘It’s enough,’ Celyn says.

The Welsh in them. The door opening, not a crack. The whole door.

I stand up, the chair creaks, my knees crack, seven steps. I sit on the edge, the mattress dips, Celyn’s weight shifts towards me, not a decision, just the mattress, same as before, same as always.

Celyn’s hand comes up, touches my face. The thumb on the bone. The fingers along the ear. The touch that checks if something’s real by pressing on it.

I turn my face into the hand. My mouth against the palm. The callus of a pen and the skin that smells like tea and cold air and the flat where I should have been.

Nothing else comes. Said enough. Said the right enough this time.

Celyn’s forehead drops against mine. The weight of it. The stubble on my skin. Cheek to cheek, rough, the friction of two faces that haven’t shaved, and underneath the friction something I don’t have a word for and don’t need one.

The heating clicks.

Wall, yellows and pinks. Space on the bed.

Enough.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

The light comes in different. East-facing window, Celyn’s flat, not mine. I know this light. How it hits the post-its first.

I’m on my back, Celyn’s bed. The sheets smell like sleep and underneath. Skin.

Celyn’s asleep. Curled towards me, not touching. The hoodie, still the blue one, not mine. The joggers ridden up past the calves. Bare ankles, the feet tucked. The hair across the pillow, dark with the unwashing, falling where it falls.

The stubble’s grown in. Along the upper lip and under the chin where it comes in thickest.

I look at Celyn sleeping. Something settles. What a foundation does when the weight on it is right and the ground underneath holds and the whole structure just, sits.

I lie there, the light, the post-its, the mug, Celyn breathing.

I could get up, make tea. I know where the tea is, the tin without the writing, second shelf, behind the instant coffee. I know which mug is mine. I know the kettle takes four minutes because the element’s going.

I don’t get up, the light, the breathing.

Celyn wakes slow, the eyelids first. A flutter, then open, then the grey-green finding the ceiling, then finding me. The focus takes a second.

‘Hey.’

‘Hey.’

The voice is rough. Morning-rough.

Celyn looks at me, I look at Celyn, the pillow between us, the six inches. The light on the post-its.