Chapter 15
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
The banter changes.
Don’t notice at first. The morning’s normal: briefing, the east wall, the new agency lad who talks too much and works too slow and’ll be gone by Friday.
Lunch, portacabin. Halfway through the sandwich, I do the normal thing, the Gaz thing, the thing you say about a person you go home to.
‘Celyn wants me to cook something that isn’t toast.’
Said to the table. Easy. The way Gaz goes on about his bird.
Quiet. Jay finds his phone. Thomas lifts his sarnie and his tea and shifts to the fold-out by the window, the one we use for spare hard hats. Jay goes with him, backs half-turned.
They’d seen us. The bar’s got a window, I’ve sat at it with Celyn enough times, and the city’s smaller than it looks. Nobody grassed. The name was never the news. Me saying it at the table is.
Gaz doesn’t look up. Dean opens the thermos, slides me the biscuit tin.
After lunch, the site. Thomas comes up to me at the block stack, normal enough. Needs the measurement for the east elevation return. I give him the number. He writes it on his hand, stands there.
‘No offence, Ron, but I don’t want to hear about it.’ He’s not looking at me. Looking at the number on his hand. ‘Whatever you do at home, just keep it separate, yeah?’
My hands on the block. The rough surface, the grit.
‘Right. So when Gaz talks about his bird for twenty minutes straight.’
‘It’s not the same.’
‘Why.’
Thomas doesn’t have the answer. The mouth working, the eyes on the ground, the hand with the number closing into a fist and opening again. The answer’s not there.
He walks off, the block stack, the east elevation. The measurement he’ll forget by tea break and ask me again.
Dean appears, doesn’t say anything. Gets his tea from the portacabin. Comes back. Sits on the block pallet next to where I’m standing. Drinks the tea, looks at the scaffolding.
We stand there. Sit there. Tea. Scaffolding. Drill.
He finishes the tea, gets up. Nods once. Goes back to work.
Evening. I walk home.
The usual route, five minutes: the turn past the barber’s, the alley with the bins, the street with the Turkish place that always smells like lamb. It’s dark, proper dark, the winter kind where five o’clock looks like nine and the streetlights make everything orange.
Two lads ahead of me, young, twenty, twenty-one. One’s tall, skinny, a jacket that costs more than my weekly shop. The other’s shorter, a beanie, trainers. They’re holding hands.
Fast, automatic. Dad watched the football, Mum made the tea. Ewan learnt to hide. I learnt to not see.
The two lads turn the corner, the held hands disappearing around the wall. And the second thought arrives: I’m walking home to a person with painted nails. I’ve had this person’s mouth on mine.
The first thought was my father’s. Twenty-seven years of rent, paid on time. The second’s mine. I keep walking.
The flat, the key.
Celyn’s on the bed.
I stop, in the doorway, the boots half-off, the jacket on.
Celyn tonight is, the word doesn’t come. The dark green dress, short, bare feet, toes painted emerald to match the fingers. Full makeup. Lipstick so deep it’s almost brown. The jaw smooth, shaved clean. Earrings catching the lamplight.
Celyn looks like. Celyn looks like a girl sat on my bed.
And then the hands move, reaching for the mug on the bedside table, and the wrist turns and the fingers are long and the forearm has the—and the throat swallows the tea and the Adam’s apple moves and it breaks and reforms and breaks again and the dress is there and the legs are there and the lipstick is there and none of it changes what I—
I don’t talk about Jay and Thomas. Don’t talk about the two lads. Don’t talk about the pavement or the lamb smell or the thought.
The bed. My hands on my knees. Flat, the knuckles white.
The hands are shaking.
‘I want you to fuck me.’
I say it how I’d say I want a pint. Flat. The site voice.
Celyn doesn’t move, two seconds, three.
Celyn puts the mug down. Looks at me, the eyes. The eyeliner makes them huge, the mascara makes the lashes long, and underneath the grey-green that I know. That knows me.
‘Yeah.’ The accent on the vowel. ‘Okay.’ Celyn stands. The dress shifts on the thighs. Steps in front of me. I’m sat on the bed and Celyn’s standing and the height is—Celyn looking down at me. The fingers, the emerald nails. Under my chin. Tilting. I go.
‘But slow. And you tell me if you want to stop.’
I nod. The fingers on my jaw. The nails on my skin. The lipstick above me.
Celyn leans down. Kisses me. Slow. The lipstick tastes like wax and something sweet and the mouth is warm and the tongue is careful and my hands find the hips and the dress is thin and the hips underneath are narrow and the bone presses into my palms and I hold on.
The jacket comes off. Celyn’s hands, steady, the fingers working the zip, peeling back the sleeves. My shirt. Celyn pulls it over my head and I feel the air and Celyn’s hands on my chest, my sternum, my stomach, the muscles that tighten under the touch.
The dress. I reach for the hem and Celyn takes my hand and puts it back and undoes the zip at the back, the sound, the teeth separating, and the dress drops.
Underneath, lace. Dark, black, maybe navy. A bralette, lace against the flat chest. Knickers matching, tights. The body underneath all of it, the ribs, the hip bones, the skin. Body I know.
My breath stops. Comes back wrong, too fast.
‘Here,’ Celyn says. Pushes me back. I go. Bed. Pillow. Celyn above me. Hair falling forward. Curtain of it around my face. Lipstick close. ‘Slow.’
Slow.
Belt. Celyn’s fingers on the buckle. Jeans, boxers.
And then skin, Celyn’s weight on me, the lace and the warmth and the legs and my hands on the back where the bralette clasp sits and I don’t undo it because Celyn didn’t take it off and that means it stays.
I know this now. Know the rules that aren’t rules, the things Celyn keeps and the things Celyn sheds.
Drawer. Celyn’s hand, the emerald nails catching the handle. The lube. Condom. The cap clicks.
Cold, the first of it, against the inside of my thigh, then lower. I flinch. Celyn waits.
‘Tell me if you want to stop.’
‘Yeah.’
One finger, slick, at the rim. Slow. The strangeness of it comes before anything else, the wrong-way-round of it, the body’s first instinct to close against the thing instead of around it. I clench. Celyn stops. Doesn’t push.
‘Breathe out.’
I breathe out. The finger works in on the breath, past the tight ring of muscle, and it isn’t pain, it’s just new, a pressure in a place I’ve never let anything be. My hands don’t know the job. They find the sheets and grip, because gripping is the only thing they’ve got.
‘Still with me.’
‘Yeah.’
The bottle again. More than I’d use. The cold, then warm, the slick of it loud in the quiet.
The finger moves, slow, in and out, working me looser, and just when I’ve got the shape of it Celyn crooks the knuckle and drags forward over something that jolts up my spine and punches a sound out of me I didn’t sanction.
‘There,’ Celyn says. Quiet. Not doing it again. Filing it. ‘That.’
Two fingers. Now it’s the stretch, the burn, the wait Celyn talked about without using the word.
The rim protests, gives, protests. I want to push back onto them.
I want to pull off. The two cancel and I stay still and shaking, full in a way that’s got no precedent, the slick easing the drag of them in and out.
‘Don’t hold your breath.’
Didn’t know I was. It goes ragged out of me. Celyn moves slow, patient, opening me by degrees, three fingers now, the burn flaring again.
‘Look at you,’ Celyn says. Low. ‘Taking that.’
Then the fingers are gone and the empty’s its own thing, a clench around nothing.
More lube, too much, the kind of too much that seems like the right amount.
Celyn slicks the condom, the long line of it shining in the lamp, settles between my thighs, hauls one of my knees up and back, opening me to the air, to the look on Celyn’s face when they look at where they’re about to be.
The head against the rim, blunt, wider than three fingers, and the pressure builds and the body says no the way a door says no before the hinge gives.
‘Wait.’
Celyn waits. Doesn’t move. The breath above me steady, the hair down around my face, them holding right there at the stretch.
‘Okay. Go.’
The head breaches and the burn flares white, wider than anything the fingers did, and I grit my teeth and Celyn stops, no asking, reads it straight off my face.
‘Out a bit. There.’ Pulls back to just the head, the angle shifting, a degree, less. ‘Now breathe.’
I breathe. Celyn feeds it back in, slow, and the burn turns into something with no edges, the body opening the way I once watched it open for me from the other side and never understood till now.
Inch by inch, pausing when I tense, until the hips meet the back of my thighs and Celyn’s all the way in and I’m full of them and there’s no word for it because I’ve only ever been the one doing the filling.
Celyn’s mouth at my ear. ‘Still okay?’
‘Yeah.’
‘Tell me.’
Slow. Celyn wasn’t lying about slow. Everything slow, how Celyn watches my face.
And the feeling is—I don’t have the. Pressure.
Weight from inside. The edge of too much that doesn’t tip over.
My hands on Celyn’s hips, the skin hot under my fingers.
The lipstick on my shoulder, my collarbone.
The stain it leaves, the mark of a mouth that said slow and meant it. The scratch lines I’ll feel tomorrow.