Chapter 17 #2
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.
Celyn laughs, in Welsh. The laugh’s the same but the setup was Welsh and the punchline was Welsh and whatever’s funny is funny in a language I’ll never speak. The full laugh, rare, head thrown back. Catrin. Mam. The voice on the other end, can’t hear the words. Can feel it.
I drink my tea, the darts, the seventeen millimetres. The living room in Manchester with the Welsh in the kitchen and the English on the telly and me between them understanding half of each.
Celyn’s voice drops, the laugh goes, the tone changes.
Not sad, not angry. Serious. The serious Welsh, tighter, faster.
I catch a word, tad, father, and brawd, brother.
Then something longer that I don’t know and Celyn’s hand goes to the forehead and pushes the hair back and the gesture is the tired one, the one I know.
Then quieter. The hand. Back of the neck. There.
A long silence, Celyn listening, the tea, the feet.
Then: a sentence in English. Halfway through, like it broke surface. ‘Yeah, Mam, he’s here now.’
The he is me.
More Welsh. The tone that’s. Warm. Kitchen-warm.
‘Diolch, Mam. Caru ti.’
Phone comes down. Celyn stands at the counter. Back to me. Shoulder blades under the t-shirt. Silence.
I wait, the darts, the crowd. The telly doing its job. Filling the room so Celyn doesn’t have to fill it yet.
Celyn comes to the sofa. Sits, a cushion between us. Celyn close means come here. Cushion means wait.
I wait.
‘She asked if I’m seeing someone.’ The voice flat. The post-phone-call voice. ‘I said yes. She asked if it’s a boy.’ A beat. ‘I said it’s a man called Ronan. She said “Oh. That’s nice.” Which is Mum-code for seventeen follow-up questions she’s saving for Christmas.’
My hands are nowhere. The pint glass is in the kitchen. The remote’s on the floor. Hands on my knees. Solid. Fine.
‘She knows about me.’
‘She knows I like men, she got there years ago, no drama.’ Celyn’s head tilts. The half-smile that isn’t really a smile. The one that’s been used too many times for this conversation. ‘It’s how to talk to me she can’t manage. The pronoun. She’s read the Wikipedia page. Twice. She still says he.’
‘Does that matter.’
‘It used to.’ Celyn picks at the hem of the t-shirt. The fingers working the thread. ‘Now it’s just weather.’
Weather, you get the jacket.
‘Dad’s different,’ Celyn says. Looking at the thread. ‘Dad says he and hears himself do it, every time, and it lands on him after. Mam says he and forgets. Dad’s the one trying so hard you can watch it cost him. Different things.’
‘Owain, my brother, he got it first try. Rang me up and said “right, so I tell the kids what exactly?” Told him. He said “sorted.” That was it. Never slipped once.’
‘Good.’
‘He’s like that. Owain. Efficient about love.’ The thread pulls. Celyn lets it go. ‘The kids just say Celyn. No aunt, no uncle, nobody sat them down. To them it was never a question with two wrong answers, it was only ever my name.’ A beat. ‘Easiest people in that family, the under-fives.’
I think I’m more like the kids than the grown-ups on this. You learn the name because it’s theirs, and after a while you just know it, and it stops being a thing you’re getting right.
‘Your mum knows about me,’ I say. My name in a kitchen in Snowdonia. A house I’ve never seen. A village I can’t pronounce.
‘She knows your name. She knows you work in construction. She knows you’re from London.’ A pause. ‘She asked if you were tall.’
‘What’d you say?’
‘I said you could probably reach the top shelf without the stool and she said “oh, that’s useful.”’
I almost, the laugh catches, doesn’t come out, sits in the chest.
‘She sounds smart.’
‘She sounds like a woman from Beddgelert who’s had thirty years of practice being surprised by nothing.
’ Celyn’s feet pull up onto the sofa. The knees tucked.
The small version. ‘She’ll ask you seventeen questions when you meet her and you’ll think she’s interrogating you and she’s not.
She’s deciding where to put you. In the house.
Which chair. Which mug. That’s how she loves. In logistics.’
I think about my mum. The phone call, the kettle. Any nice girls in Manchester? The laugh that came out wrong.
Mum knows, I think Mum knows. Like she knew about Ewan. Somehow, before words. She waited. When Ewan said the words she already had the kettle on.
Dad won’t push because Dad doesn’t push.
Dad goes inward. Dad’s been inward since Ewan said the thing he said at the kitchen table a year ago.
I was there. Stood in the doorway. Ewan at the table, Dad at the head, Mum by the cooker.
The words, I don’t remember the exact words.
I remember Dad’s face, the face didn’t change.
The face stayed the same, and behind it something closed. Closed. Like a fire door on a hinge.
He stood up. Said ‘right.’ Took his jacket. Left. Mum stood at the cooker. Ewan sat at the table. I stood in the doorway.
That was a year ago and the fire door hasn’t opened.