Page 26 of Undefined Terms

The bar tilts a bit. Or the chair does, or time does.

‘Still think I’m just a girl?’ Celyn says.

‘No.’

‘Still think I’m just a bloke?’

‘No.’

‘Good.’ The half-smile comes back. The full smile’s still waiting. ‘Then we’re starting to get somewhere.’

Outside. The rain’s the Manchester kind, not quite rain, not quite mist. Makes everything shiny without getting you properly wet. The street’s dark and the puddles catch the light from the bar sign and my feet are on the pavement and I don’t turn right towards the flat.

I turn left, towards Celyn.

Celyn walks, I walk beside. Half a metre away, the gap you’d leave with a mate. But I’m walking toward Celyn.

We don’t talk. The Converse and my boots on the wet pavement. The sound of the city winding down. A taxi, a group of girls laughing, a siren somewhere far.

Celyn turns into a side street. Narrower. Darker. The streetlight at the end throws orange across the bricks.

Stops.

Turns.

Looks at me. From below, ten centimetres below, maybe more. The stubble, the eyeliner. The smell, that sweet thing, close now, in the wet air.

I don’t decide.

I’ve never decided anything about Celyn. The body has. The body decided three days ago and the body decides now.

My hands go to Celyn’s waist.

Too much. I pull too hard and my nose bumps Celyn’s, and then the mouth finds the mouth, and it scratches. My chin, the skin around my lips. The drag of it, coarse, sharp, nothing like smooth skin, nothing like anything I’ve kissed before. The scratch sends something down my spine I don’t have a word for. The scratch says: Celyn. The whole of them. And the body says: more.

I kiss harder. Celyn’s hands come up, on my chest, on my jacket, the fingers gripping the lapel and pulling. The sound Celyn makes, low, brief, surprised. Settles below my stomach and doesn’t leave.

We pull apart, breathe, the orange light. The rain on my face. Celyn’s face, the eyes half-closed, lips open, the eyeliner smudged at one corner.

‘You didn’t need three days for that,’ Celyn says.

The voice is light. The hand on my lapel hasn’t loosened. Knuckles white. Held through the kiss and the speaking and holding still.

The lip balm. Celyn’s lip balm, not lipstick, something clear, something that tastes like, I lick my lip. Taste of someone else’s mouth.

I kiss Celyn again, better. The hands know where to go now, waist, the curve of the back, the nape where the hair starts. Celyn’s hair in my fist. Holding it. Celyn’s fingers on the front of my jacket, then inside the jacket. The cold of the ring against my collarbone through the cotton.

‘Come home with me,’ Celyn says. Against my mouth.

‘Yeah.’

‘Or I come to yours. I don’t care which door. I just don’t want this to stop on a street.’

My flat’s closer. Five minutes. My feet know the way and my hands don’t leave Celyn’s waist and we walk like that, stupid, joined, bumping hips, down Tib Street in the rain.

The door.

Dark.