Chapter 10 #2
Celyn pulls a wipe from the bag, starts taking the makeup off. The dark red comes off on the white cloth in streaks, the face appearing underneath, paler, the real skin showing through. Like plaster coming off a wall.
‘The first draft? About ten months ago. But the idea’s older. There was this.’ Stops. The wipe on the cheek, the lipstick half-gone, the mouth two colours. Changes direction. ‘The house came first. Then the character.’
Ten months. I count back to last spring.
Coming to Manchester every other weekend by then, contract not started, site visits going.
Drive up Friday night, back Sunday morning.
And somewhere in those weekends Celyn started writing a novel about a house that changes shape and a woman who stops noticing the walls move.
Coincidence. Course it is.
‘Ron.’
‘Yeah.’
‘You’re doing the face.’
‘What face.’
‘The one where you’re thinking something and you’re not going to say it.’
‘I’m not thinking anything.’
‘Right.’
The cold air and the streetlights and the postbox-lips half-wiped and somewhere ahead the flat and the key under the mat.
The reading still in my arms, not my ears, my arms, the cold going through them when Elin reached for the mug.
And Celyn wrote that. I build things. Between those two facts there’s a gap. I’m in it.
He builds things.
It is enough. Don’t know why it matters that it’s enough.
But it does.
The silence is the wrong kind. Celyn’s at the restaurant until close, double shift, someone called in sick. The flat’s mine; hasn’t felt mine for weeks but tonight it’s mine.
I eat. Beans on toast. No garden-fruit smell tonight, no tea in the white one. I make one cup in the blue one, and leave the white one where it is, because using it when Celyn’s not here feels wrong. Like putting on someone’s jacket in an empty room.
No milk, because Celyn does the milk.
And the bread.
And the small things neither of us assigned.
I sit on the bed with the mug. The bed that’s too big.
Wasn’t too big when I moved in, the estate agent said double and I thought luxury because the one in Rotherhithe was a single and my feet hung off the end.
Now the double’s too big. The left side has a shape in it that’s not mine.
The mattress remembers a weight it hasn’t got tonight.
I sit on my side. The right side. The rain.
The telly’s on. Football. Highlights I should care about.
Don’t. My eyes on the screen and not watching any of it.
Plate on my lap, the fork going back and forth, and outside it’s raining, the window doing that tick-tick-tick from the drops.
The flat small and full of things that belong to someone who isn’t here.
The beans, the plate, I wash it. The sponge, the hot water, the plate on the rack. My boots by the door, the hi-vis on the hook, the hard hat on the shelf.
Shower, the water too hot. Eyes shut. The day comes off.
The dust, the concrete, the noise. And under the day there’s the other thing.
The one that’s been there since the reading, since the bar, since the first night.
The hum. Low. Constant. Like a generator you stop hearing until someone switches it off.
Nobody switched it off.
I get out. Towel, boxers, teeth, the bed. Sheets changed yesterday, Celyn’s idea, because apparently you’re supposed to change them more than once a month. The pillow smells like detergent. Detergent.
I lie on my back. Ceiling. The crack that runs from the light fitting to the corner. I’ve been tracking that crack since I moved in. Hasn’t got worse, hasn’t got better. Structural nothing, cosmetic, plaster shrinkage, doesn’t mean anything.
The phone on the bedside table. I pick it up. Type: How’s the shift. Delete it. Type: I think about you when you’re not here and I don’t know what that means. The cursor blinks. Fifteen words, too many, too real, the backspace key, letter by letter, the screen goes blank.
Ewan said his words at the kitchen table and Dad pushed back the chair and the chair legs scraped the tiles and the scraping sound is still in the kitchen. The backspace key doesn’t work on sentences you say out loud.
The generator hum, still there.
I think about the reading. The voice that made the room cold. The arms that went cold. My arms, the goosebumps.
Then: Celyn in the morning. No makeup, stubble. Hair on the pillow. Mouth slightly open, breathing.
This is the line, right here. The boxers and the ceiling and the hand on my stomach. The previous times, the WhatsApp photo, the mattress at two in the morning, those happened TO me. Like tripping.
This is not an accident.
My hand is on my stomach and moving down and I know what I’m doing and I’m choosing to do it. This is. This is me. On purpose, with my eyes open, in my flat. With the name in my mouth before I’ve started.
The hand goes into the boxers. Wraps around, tight. Familiar, years of this. But the pictures are new. All of them. Every version.
Dress. Stubble. That laugh, the real one, the pillow one.
Voice reading the horror novel in front of thirty-odd people with the accent thickening on certain words.
Voice in the dark saying there like a compass point.
Hands, the ring, on my chest, flat, feeling.
Hip bones under my thumbs. The weight, the sound through lace.
I don’t separate them, don’t try, the skirt, the hoodie. Stubble, eyeliner, bare face. Lace, boxers, the—all of it. At the same time. Because there aren’t options. There’s Celyn.
One hand on my cock. The other I don’t know what to do with, then I do.
I spit into it and bring it to the head, slick, and wrap it over the first hand, base and head working different speeds, the way Celyn showed me, mirrored.
The back arches off the mattress. The heels dig. The breath going short.
Three minutes in I’m not going to last and I make myself slow it down because I want it.
I want to know what my own body does when I let it want what it wants.
The hand at the base squeezes and stops.
The other hand stays at the head, just there, the wet, the friction without movement. The cock pulses against my fingers.
Then I start again. Slower. The mouth that said my name twice. The hand below my hand becomes Celyn’s hand. The hand above becomes the mouth. The body is shaking and the breathing goes short and the ceiling’s still there with the crack and the rain’s still ticking and I’m coming.
Celyn.
The name. Two syllables. Comes out of my mouth, not loud, barely sound, and the come hits my fist hot, then the stomach, then the chest, the surprise of how far.
The hand keeps moving through the aftershocks.
The smell of it. The name on my tongue, clean and simple like a joint that fits first time.
I lie there. The mess on my hand. The boxers pushed down. The breathing going back to normal. Waiting for what usually comes after. The scramble, the discomfort.
It doesn’t come.
Just. The rain on the window. The flat that smells like detergent and beans and nothing else.
Like a pour that’s set overnight and you strip the forms and the surface is clean. Right. That’s what that looks like.
I get up. Wash my hands, clean up, change my boxers. Drink water from the tap, cold, the glass against my teeth.
The phone, I don’t text, don’t need to. The shift ends at eleven. Celyn will text when it ends, or won’t, either way.
I get back in bed. Pillow, detergent.
The phone buzzes, eleven twelve.
Dead on my feet. A man asked for the wine list and then ordered a Coke. I’ve seen things, Ron. I’ve seen things no server should see.
I read it. The smile comes before I decide. The corner of the mouth, not the full one. The Celyn voice in the text. The way even the typing has timing. The comedy that arrives two beats after you expect it.
I type: Thoughts and prayers
Three dots, then: You were sleeping, weren’t you
I look at the phone. The screen in the dark.
Eleven fourteen and I just came saying this person’s name twenty minutes ago and now the person’s texting me about wine lists and I’m typing back like nothing happened.
Like the last hour was a different room in the same building and you can walk between them and nobody checks.
Nearly, I type.
Go to sleep, I’m getting the bus. I’ll text when I’m home.
Night.
Night, Ronan
I put the phone face down. The screen glows blue through the case. Then dark.
The flat, the rain. The white one in the cupboard. The smell of detergent that isn’t garden-fruit. The blue one in the sink with the black tea I didn’t finish.
Tomorrow they’ll use the white mug. Tomorrow the flat will have two cups in the sink and the pillow will have a dent and the silence will be the right kind.
Sleep comes like it hasn’t in weeks. Fast, simple.
The phone on the pillow. Silent. I don’t check.