Page 92 of Undefined Terms

‘Fuck. Yeah.’ Celyn’s voice into the pillow. ‘Now. Don’t stop.’

I don’t. Hard, fast, my hands gripping the hips, the bone under my thumbs, dragging them back onto me as I drive in. The slap of skin, the thong’s string dragged tight in the crease, the bed knocking the wall and the next flat can hear and I’m past caring. And the whole time I’m thinking about the front of that thong, the cock trapped in it and pinned against their own stomach, the lace soaked through and dripping, ruined, and the thought of it nearly finishes me.

‘There. There. Don’t you dare slow down.’

I lose it a bit. The careful goes. I fuck them like I’ve wanted to since I watched them carry three plates on one arm and smile at a table that wasn’t me, and Celyn pushes back to meet every drive, taking it, asking for more, the muscle gripping me each time I bottom out.

I never touch their cock. Don’t have to. Celyn comes anyway, untouched, the body locking and the arse clamping round me so tight I can’t move through it, and I feel it more than see it, the pulse of them trapped in the front of the thong, the wet flooding the lace dark and soaking it through, the Welsh punched out raw into the pillow. Untouched, just my cock in them and nothing else, and the fact of that, that I wrecked them this hard hands-free, lights me up worse than my own coming.

I follow two thrusts later, deep, buried, my chest down on their back, my teeth at the nape where the apron string sat all night, the bite, the shudder going everywhere. Mine.

I pull out slow. The thong’s a ruin, soaked clean through, heavy at the front with what Celyn spilled into it and smeared dark at the back where the string sat. I hook a finger under it, feel the wet of it gone cool, and Celyn huffs a laugh into the pillow because they know exactly what I’m doing. I don’t stop. I drag my thumb across the soaked lace, the wreck of it, mine, and I already know I’ll be thinking about it tomorrow on site with my hand flat on a level.

After, the breathing, the ceiling.

‘You left a mark,’ Celyn says. The fingers on their own neck. The spot where my mouth was.

‘Sorry.’

‘I like it.’

I look at the mark. Red. The spot where the apron string sat two hours ago. Mine.

Morning. The mark’s still there, purple at the edge. Celyn in the mirror, the toothbrush, the neck turned to look, touches it with one finger.

Doesn’t cover it.

Goes to work with it. Visible, above the t-shirt collar. Where the tattoo bloke will see it and the couple at table six will see it and the grey-haired woman who touches arms will see it.

Didn’t ask Celyn to keep it. Didn’t ask Celyn to hide it.

The sheets, the smell of us.

The kettle clicks, the steam. The morning light through the kitchen window, earlier than it was a month back, and the mark on the counter where I left my hands last night. Daylight’s pulled back the intimacy. Now it’s the restaurant clinging to Celyn’s clothes, the heat and the oil and the lamb. The smell of where they’ve been. The smell that left the bar and came home with a visible mark.

Gaz knows there’s a Celyn. He doesn’t know this. The mark on Celyn’s neck is mine and nobody gets to know that. The mark on Celyn’s neck is mine and nobody gets to know that.

I should feel guilty. Something. Guilt. Everyone who comes through that door for service will see it.

Marked instead. Like the mark’s mine too. Like I’m carrying it under the polo and the hi-vis and the site supervisor’s eyes. Like I’ve got taken written under my collar and I’m not hiding it.

This is what Ewan was talking about. You stop pretending. You make the tea for two people and you leave it on the counter and you stop apologising for the second cup.

The mark will fade. The visible one will bruise and yellow and disappear. But the other mark, the one that’s in the flat now, in the second toothbrush, in how the sheets smell, in Celyn walking out the door wearing it, that one doesn’t fade.

I pour the tea, two cups. Drink one. The other one cools on the side while the mark stays on Celyn’s neck and everything I can’t show yet is written underneath.

I left a mark on a person and the person wore it out the door like a—like something you’d⁠—

The kettle clicks.

I make the tea.

The Welsh starts before I hear the words.

It’s the sound. The rhythm of the voice changes. Celyn on the phone at the kitchen counter, the mug of tea going cold, the feet bare on the tile. The English Celyn talks in is one shape. This is another. Rounder. Consonants I can’t make, the ll, the back-of-throat thing. Like a room I can hear through the wall but can’t get into.

I’m on the sofa with the telly on. Darts. Blokes throwing things at a board and a crowd going mental over seventeen millimetres of aim. I’m watching the screen and hearing the Welsh and understanding nothing and the nothing is fine.