Page 65 of Undefined Terms

The question. The space in the air. The word her sits in the middle of the table. The foam settling in Dean’s Guinness.

‘Celyn.’

‘Celyn. Welsh, innit.’ Gaz nods. ‘Nice one. How’d you meet?’

‘Bar. Near the flat.’

‘The one you go to every night like a seventy-year-old?’

‘That’s the one.’

‘What’s she do?’

The pronoun again. She. The word that makes a picture in Gaz’s head. A girl at a table, a girl in a bar.

‘Writes. Novels.’

‘Novels?’ Jay looks up. The first interest he’s shown all evening. ‘What kind?’

‘Horror.’

‘Horror?’ Jay’s eyebrows go up. ‘Fucking hell. Your bird writes horror? That’s well dark.’

Bird. Her, she, bird, and the one I’m not saying is sat in my throat like a block.

‘Yeah.’

‘Fit and scary. Dream combo, mate.’ Jay goes back to his phone.

Dean drinks his Guinness. Doesn’t need to say anything.

‘Bring her round, yeah? Steph keeps going on about doing a couples thing. Italian or summit. She won’t shut up about it.’

I drink, the Stella. Jay’s thumb hasn’t stopped moving on the screen. Dean finishes the Guinness. Gaz talks about Steph and Italian or Thai and I nod and drink and the evening moves on.

On the drive home Gaz plays the radio too loud and sings along, nineties, and I sit in the back with Dean who doesn’t sing and doesn’t talk and the silence between us is the Dean silence. The Corsa smells like fake fruit. The streets pass, Manchester through the window: the lights, the cranes, the sky that’s never fully dark because the city won’t let it be.

The flat, half eleven. The key in the lock, it sticks, the old one, the original. The door opens, the heat comes out, the hall light’s on, and there’s shoes by the door, not mine. The trainers, Celyn’s, the Converse with the frayed laces.

The flat smells like garlic, cooked proper. Not beans on toast.

Celyn’s on the bed, laptop closed, scrolling the phone. The lamp on, the warm one, the one I never use because the overhead’s brighter but Celyn says the overhead makes the flat look like a police interview. A t-shirt that might be mine, the grey one, the Primark three-pack, too big on Celyn’s frame.

‘There’s pasta,’ Celyn says. Eyes on the phone. ‘On the hob. Made too much.’

‘Cheers.’

I eat, the pasta’s good. Garlic, chilli flakes, something green. Spinach? The bowl’s one of my two bowls. The fork’s one of my two forks. Eating at the counter, the flat warm and the lamp making the walls soft and Celyn on the bed doing the phone thing. Someone made me pasta in my flat with the key I gave them. The one-sided toaster. The crack in the ceiling.

‘You eat like someone’s about to take it off you.’ The phone’s down now. Celyn watching over the top of it.

‘Site lunch is a sandwich at half eleven. You learn to be quick.’

‘Quick.’ The slow half-smile, the one already three moves ahead. ‘Pity. What I had in mind wasn’t.’ Celyn stretches out on the bed, deliberate, the grey t-shirt riding up, a strip of stomach, the dark line below the navel.

I put the bowl down half-eaten and cross the room.

A knee on the mattress, and Celyn’s already at my belt, the joggers kicked off in one go, nothing under them, just skin and the half-hard weight of them swinging free as they straddle my thigh. My flies, my cock out, and Celyn’s hand round both of us at once, the two of us pressed together in their fist, hot, the heads dragging slick against each other.