Page 88 of Undefined Terms

Tuesday.

Two blokes in the corner with a chessboard, the bartender wiping glasses, the music low. Something with a piano and a woman singing words I can’t make out. Doesn’t matter.

Celyn’s at the table, the corner table, the one that’s been ours for. How long now, don’t count. Counting makes it a thing.

Laptop open, the typing, the stops. The lip between the teeth and the eyes on the screen and the focus that goes somewhere I can’t follow. I’ve learnt not to talk when the typing’s happening, learnt it how you learn anything, by getting it wrong enough times. Interrupted once in the middle of a sentence Celyn was writing and got a look that could strip paint.

I drink the tea, the tea’s good here, better than the beer, if I’m honest. Took me months to admit that, months of ordering pints I didn’t want because you don’t sit in a bar and drink tea. Except I do now.

Celyn tonight: the soft washed-out t-shirt, jeans, the trainers with the split sole that should’ve been binned weeks ago. One day of stubble. The hair’s a mess, actual mess, like the last thing that happened to it was a pillow. Or my hands.

The nails, bare. Short, clean, the ring still there.

The pull behind my ribs. Same as the first night. Every night, the same.

‘There’s a cat.’

Celyn points at the window without looking up from the screen. I look. Orange tabby sat on the windowsill outside. The tail wrapped around itself. Staring at us through the glass like we owe it money.

‘That cat’s always there.’

‘I know. I’ve named it.’

‘You named a cat Dave.’ Still not over it.

‘He looks like a Dave.’ Still typing. The fingers moving. The bare nails on the keys. ‘Judgmental. Disappointed. Probably a Tory.’

‘You can’t tell a cat’s politics from its face.’

‘You absolutely can.’

‘Gaz asked about you,’ I say. Don’t know why. The sentence just. There.

‘What’d he say?’

‘Asked if you were coming to the pub quiz. Thursday. The Wheatsheaf.’

Celyn looks up. ‘Is Gaz building a team?’

‘Gaz is building a team that doesn’t lose fourteen rounds in a row. His words.’

‘I don’t know anything about football.’

‘Neither does Gaz. That’s why they keep losing.’

Celyn laughs, the real one, the one starting in the chest and opening the whole face. I feel it in my knees. My knees, that’s a new one.

‘Tell him yes.’

‘Right.’

Typing, piano music, tea. I look at my phone: scores from the weekend, a text from Mum I haven’t answered, the weather for tomorrow. It’s supposed to rain, course it is, Manchester.

‘Ron.’

‘Mm.’

‘Look at this.’ Celyn turns the phone across the table. A headline, a photo, I don’t, it’s a picture of a goat wearing a hi-vis vest. A construction site in Wales where a goat walked on and nobody noticed for a week.