Page 7 of Undefined Terms

Smooth, clean, the jaw bare, the cheeks soft. There’s colour round the eyes, smudged, makes the grey-green bigger, warmer.

Same person, but different. The face without the stubble. The eyes with the dark around them. Yesterday I couldn’t file the combination and today there’s a new combination and I still can’t file it and the thing is, the thing in my stomach and my chest and lower is the same.

Same.

I sit down, the chair, my chair now. When did it become my chair.

Celyn looks up. The eyes, the darker eyes, the smudged edges. The look drops. My forearms, bare below the polo sleeves. Clean, but the site’s still there, the tan, the scratches, the concrete not washing off. It stays a second too long.

‘Long day?’

‘Yeah.’

‘You smell like work.’ A beat. ‘I didn’t say it was bad.’

Celyn leans forward, closer, breathes in. A centimetre. Not touching, the warmth of the breath on my skin and the closeness and the smell of the tea and a perfume, fruity, sweet, that doesn’t match the oversize hoodie.

‘Like a man who works with his hands.’

The voice is lower than usual.

Celyn sits back, picks up the mug, drinks, like nothing happened.

The pint’s in front of me. The barman brought it. When? Don’t know, I pick it up, drink it, all of it. The whole glass, the throat working, the beer cold and fast and I put the empty glass down and I’ve been in this bar for four minutes.

Celyn watches me finish.

‘Another?’

‘Yeah,’ I say. ‘Cheers.’

I drink three pints. Don’t feel any of them. Feel the centimetre.

CHAPTER TWO

Ewan’s kitchen smells like garlic and wine and something Laurence has done to a chicken that shouldn’t be legal. A Victorian terrace in Chorlton, books everywhere, shelves, stairs, the windowsill above the radiator where the condensation’s warped one of the spines. Laurence moves around the stove, no wasted steps, a bloke who’d measure flour to the gram and think that was normal.

I’m sat at the table with a glass of red I didn’t ask for. The wine’s good, probably expensive; don’t know enough to tell. Ewan’s opposite me, feet up on the spare chair, jumper with a hole in the elbow, settled in like he’s been here years even though it’s been. What. Eighteen months. Less.

‘How’s the flat?’

‘Still an Airbnb.’

‘That’s not a flat, Ron. That’s a bed with delusions.’

‘It’s got a kitchenette.’

‘Has it got a toaster?’

‘No.’

‘Then it’s not a kitchen.’ Ewan picks up his glass. ‘You’re paying how much?’

‘Enough.’

‘Eighty a night?’

I don’t answer. Ewan does the look where his face doesn’t move but his eyes do. I’ve been seeing that look since he was fourteen and I was twenty-one and he came home from school with a split lip and said fell over and his eyes told the truth.