Page 64 of Undefined Terms

If it were Gaz in the next seat, she’d have said hello and sat down easy. If it were Ewan, she’d have asked about uni. It’s Celyn she can’t fit into the picture, so she tries to crop them out.

‘I’m alright here.’

‘Course. Yeah, no, course.’ She laughs at nothing.

She asks for my number. Her flatmate’s an architect, loves old buildings, would die for a tour of the restoration. It comes out in a rush, rehearsed on the walk over, glad of somewhere to put it. I give it because the question’s reasonable and reasonable questions get answers.

‘Brilliant.’ She touches my arm, quick, stands too fast, the chair scraping. ‘See you, yeah?’

She goes. No goodbye to Celyn. No hello either. Not because Celyn’s nothing to her. Because Celyn’s something she couldn’t place and didn’t have the nerve to try.

Celyn types. Steady. The glasses on the nose.

Walk home at ten. Celyn half a step ahead. The scarf trailing.

‘You alright?’

‘Yeah. Tired.’ A beat, the cold, the scarf. ‘She couldn’t look at me.’

‘I said your name,’ I say.

‘You did.’ Celyn doesn’t slow down. ‘Put it down careful. She stepped over it like a puddle.’

‘She was just awkward, I think. Not⁠—’

‘Awkward still lands on me.’ Flat, the way they go flat when a thing’s true and old. ‘Happens a lot. Doesn’t get less shit.’

I haven’t got anything for that. I’d filed it under tired and it wasn’t. It was the woman who sat with her back to them and never said hello, and me half a street too slow to clock it.

Friday. Pub with the lads.

Gaz drove, his girlfriend’s Corsa, the one with the air freshener that smells like something that’s never been a fruit. Me, Gaz, Dean, Jay. Thomas’s off, his kid’s got chickenpox, which means Thomas’s texting photos of calamine-covered toddler to the group chat every twenty minutes. Jay keeps showing me the screen. I keep not looking.

The pub’s not our pub. Somewhere Gaz knows. A Wetherspoon off Oxford Road, the kind where the carpet sticks and the quiz machine flashes and the pints are cheap enough that nobody orders anything else. I don’t like it. The lights are too bright. The music’s too loud. But the lads picked it and the lads are the lads and Friday is Friday.

Dean gets the first round. Two Stellas, a Guinness for himself, a Diet Coke for Gaz because he’s driving and won’t shut up about it. I take the Stella. Cold. Fine.

The talk is work, always starts with work. The Block C pour went well, set clean, no cracks, the inspection on Monday’s a formality. Dave’s happy. Dave being happy means less Dave. More getting on with it. How I like it. Jay talks about the new apprentice, seventeen, scared of heights, stands at the edge of the second-level scaffold and goes white. We all went white once. Nobody says that.

‘Seriously though,’ Gaz says. Leaning back. Third Diet Coke. The Corsa keys spinning on his finger. ‘You seeing someone?’

The table shifts, not physically, the atmosphere tighter. Jay looks up from his phone, Dean holds the Guinness slightly differently. The question that everyone’s been thinking and nobody’s asked.

‘Yeah,’ I say. ‘Sort of.’

‘Sort of.’ Gaz grins. ‘What’s that mean then? Shagging but you’ve not DTR’d or whatever?’

‘What’s DTR’d?’

‘Defined the relationship, it’s a thing, Steph says it. Off TikTok. Doesn’t matter. Point is I don’t care.’

‘It’s not a thing.’

‘It is a thing, it’s massively a thing, but fine, whatever.’

I drink the Stella, ‘Yeah, I’m seeing someone.’

‘What’s her name?’