Page 130 of Undefined Terms

‘The man. He’s stuck on the threshold, can’t decide, the way I’ve been stuck on the whole book.’ Celyn stops. Starts again. ‘So he stops trying. He sits down. He stops holding himself apart, and the house takes him in. And the book comes unstuck the second he does.’

‘You told me that,’ Celyn says. ‘Months back. “Has he tried just sitting down and not trying.” And I laughed because it was obvious. And simple. And the thing I couldn’t see because I was too inside it.’

‘We smell,’ I say.

‘Profoundly.’ Celyn doesn’t move. ‘I’ve got lube in my hair.’

‘How.’

‘I don’t know. I don’t want to know. Are you going to ask what’s on your stomach.’

I look down. I’m not going to ask.

Shower. The water goes hot. Celyn’s shampoo, not mine; I use it anyway.

Celyn strips the bed while I’m drying off and I take the other end. The clean set from the shelf, the grey ones. We make it without discussing who does what.

Celyn gets back in. Sits against the headboard, hair wet, my t-shirt.

‘Can I read it?’

‘Later. When you haven’t just fucked me. Your judgment’s compromised.’

‘You fucked me.’

‘Mutual fucking. Joint enterprise. The point stands.’

I laugh again.

The palm flat. The heartbeat underneath it, slow now, the right speed.

I lie in Celyn’s bed in Celyn’s flat on Oldham Street above a charity shop in Manchester and my body’s full of something that isn’t concrete and isn’t a word.

The light on the post-its. The mug with the chip. The door that opened.

The sound I make here. The sound that’s real.

Sunday’s the call where nothing happens, the check-in, the weather, the ‘you eating properly?’ and the ‘yes Mum’ and the thing about next door’s extension and the thing about Ewan and the ‘right love, I’ll let you go’ and the phone goes dark and I’ve said nothing. Said everything that’s not the thing.

Thursday. Because Sunday I’ll lose my nerve. Sunday the pattern will take over, the rhythm, the script, the kettle she puts on halfway through, the telly she turns down but not off. Sunday’s too easy to hide in.

I’ve been rehearsing since the walk home from the site. Five minutes from the gate to the flat and every step was a word. Mum. I’m seeing someone. Left foot. Right foot. Their name is Celyn. Turn at the barber’s. They’re a writer. Past the bins. They use ‘they.’ Key in the lock.

The sentence changes every time. Mum, I’ve met someone. Too casual. Mum, there’s something I need to tell you. Too heavy. Too much like Ewan’s, and the echo of that sentence in the kitchen with Dad still in the room is not the echo I want. Mum, I’m with someone. Close. But ‘with’ could mean anything. Friends, mates. The word that doesn’t say what the hands do and the mouth does and the body does.

Mum, I’m seeing someone, their name is Celyn.

That’s the one. Direct. The site voice. Give the information, don’t decorate it.

I’m sat on the bed, my bed, flat. Celyn’s at the restaurant. Thursday’s the late shift, the one that finishes at eleven. Celyn kissed me on the way out this morning.

Taste of tea and toast and the lip tint that leaves a mark I don’t wipe off until I get to site.

Phone. Screen. Mum’s name.

My thumb on the call button. I look at it. The nail, short, clean, the line of dust underneath that never fully shifts. The same thumb that measures steel and holds a plumb line and can’t press a green button on a phone screen.

I put the phone down. Pick it up, put it down.