Page 1 of Undefined Terms

CHAPTER ONE

The hands. That’s what my eyes do first. Fingers moving in the bar light, the ring on the middle one, the nails. Red. Postbox red.

The mouth keeps going above them. Something about a bloke at the restaurant who sent back his steak because he didn’t know it was cow. I’m not tracking the words. I’m tracking the colour on them and the way the ring catches the light.

Celyn. I’d had the name a year and nothing else with it. Weekend visits up to Ewan’s, the corner table across the way, me at the counter never once crossing the floor. Three nights this week I’ve done the same. Just that, and the thing in my stomach I keep blaming on the beer.

First time I clocked Celyn I’d come up to see Ewan. The two of us ended up in here, and it was already the way it stayed: the corner table, the laptop, a tea that smelled like a garden. I didn’t go over. Didn’t say a word, wasn’t going to. Looked once, looked at my pint, looked again.

Ewan caught it. He catches everything, my brother. Always has.

‘Good-looking, that one,’ he said. Easy. Like passing the salt. ‘You’ve clocked them.’

‘I’ve clocked them sat there.’

‘Course.’ He let it lie, drank. Never drops anything, Ewan, just sets it down where you’ll trip on it later.

Said nothing back. Looked at the table I wasn’t looking at, and a year went by like that.

‘and he actually says, “I didn’t realise steak was cow.” At a steakhouse. Called the Grill and Heifer. I’m holding his chips thinking, has this man just been eating things his whole life without asking what they were?’

Celyn stops, looks at me. The eyes are grey or green, can’t tell. The mouth does a thing. Half a smile.

‘You haven’t heard a word.’

A statement, not a question.

‘I heard steak.’

‘You heard a word. Not the same thing.’

I drink, the glass is empty. Don’t remember finishing it, which means I’ve been sat here for a while. I check the phone, forty minutes. Forty minutes gone and I couldn’t tell you the steak bloke’s name.

Could tell you what Celyn’s wearing though. Jeans, a shirt with the buttons undone, the sleeves rolled past the elbows. No makeup tonight. Tuesday there was something dark around the eyes, precise, made them look bigger. And a day’s stubble on the jaw. He. They, Celyn.

The stubble and the open shirt and the chain sitting in the dip above the collarbone. My brain tries to sort it. File it, no file. The shirt says collarbone and a freckle near the chain and I shouldn’t be able to see the freckle from here but I can. Can’t stop.

I’ve been in Manchester a week. The Airbnb sits above a barber’s in the Northern Quarter: bed, kitchenette, a job that starts at seven. Victoria North, Block C, twelve storeys of residential going up out of an 1887 warehouse shell. Two years of it.

Good money, good project, close to Ewan. That’s the list, three things.

The first three nights I sat at the bar with a pint and minded my own. Low music, brick walls, moody and dim. My sort of place has football on the telly and crisps behind the bar and nobody asks what hops you prefer.

But Celyn was here, every night. Corner table, laptop open, one earphone in, tea that smells like a garden. Typing, reading, the pencil between the teeth. And I sat at the counter and didn’t look and looked and didn’t look and looked.

Tonight the bar was full. No stools free. I was stood with my jacket on like a spare part and Celyn looked up from the laptop and said: ‘That stool looks uncomfortable. There’s a chair here.’

So I sat down. Because of a sentence about a chair. Because my legs got there first.

‘I’m working on this novel,’ Celyn says. Between sips. ‘Had the idea a while back. Horror.’

‘Horror.’

‘You said that like I just told you I collect teeth.’

‘Nah. Just, you don’t look like horror.’

The second it’s out I know it’s bollocks. What does horror even look like.