Page 34 of Undefined Terms

NQ streets, puddles, closed shops. Celyn’s hand finds mine, the fingers threading through, the ring cold against my knuckle. Mine slightly bigger. They close and the fit is —

We walk.

No direction said out loud. Not yet. My place is seven minutes if we cut through the side streets. Celyn’s is ten the other way. We don’t talk. The trainers and the boots on the wet pavement. Their hand in mine.

At the corner Celyn slows.

Not home. Not goodbye.

The face, no makeup, no colour, just the person.

‘Ronan.’

The soft R. My name in that mouth.

‘Yeah.’

Celyn looks at our hands. Then at me.

‘Yours?’

My flat, my bed. The sheets are clean. The machine finished hours ago; I hung them before the shift. The thought hits me stupidly hard, ordinary and not ordinary at all.

‘Yeah,’ I say.

Celyn’s fingers close tighter around mine.

We keep walking.

Don’t think about the dream. Don’t think about the person who stays still. Don’t think about any of it.

Think about all of it.

CHAPTER SEVEN

The alley, the wall, the same wall.

It’s our wall now, which is a thought I don’t finish. We pass it on the way to mine and Celyn stops like the bricks have caught a sleeve. Leans back against them in the cold, breath visible.

I stand in front. Close. Closer than I used to. Close enough to feel the breathing change when I step in.

‘You smell like the restaurant,’ I say.

‘Degreaser and onions. Very sexy.’

‘I didn’t say.’

‘You were thinking it.’

I wasn’t. I was thinking that under the degreaser and the onions there’s the other thing. The garden-fruit smell. Like a screed under the finish coat. Like⁠—

Celyn puts a hand on my chest. The palm, the fingers spread. The heat through the t-shirt. Through the jacket, through whatever I’m wearing. I don’t know what I’m wearing.

Then the hand goes down.

Slow, sternum, ribs, stomach. The fingers on the fabric, the pressure light. The stomach, the belt. The fingers on the buckle.

I catch the wrist.