Chapter 24 #2
Seven minutes tonight, normal speed. My legs know the way.
The jacket’s not warm enough. January. Should’ve worn the other one, the work one, the quilted one. Didn’t think. My hands in the pockets, phone right, keys left, Celyn’s flat key. The one they gave, pressed into my palm.‘In case I’m in the shower.’
I could use the key. I’m not going to use the key.
The light from upstairs is on. The bedroom light. The one that means Celyn’s in.
The stairs, the door. The carpet that used to be something.
I knock.
Nothing, the heating, a car outside, a podcast, maybe. A voice.
I knock again, harder, the knuckle, the wood.
The podcast stops.
Footsteps. The floor in Celyn’s flat creaks by the door, the board near the hinge side, the one I’ve stepped over enough times to know it. Tonight I hear it from outside.
The door opens.
Celyn, the doorway, the light behind them.
Joggers and a hoodie I don’t recognise, not mine. Bare feet. Unkempt stubble grown in along their jaw. Nails bare, cuticles raw where they’ve picked at the edges.
They look at me, I look at them.
‘Hey,’ I say.
Celyn doesn’t move. Doesn’t open the door wider. Doesn’t close it, just. Stands.
‘Can I come in.’
‘Why.’
Flat. The vowel shorter, harder.
I open my mouth, close it.
‘Because I need to say something.’
‘You said enough. Without a word.’
‘Yeah.’ I close my eyes for a second. ‘I said the wrong enough. I need to say the right.’
Four seconds of grey-green flat. Then:
The door opens wider, enough.
I go in, take my shoes off.
Flat, same. Post-its on the wall, yellows, pinks, greens. Small writing. Mug on the desk, the one with the chip. Empty, bed unmade. The laptop on the bed, open, screen dark, the sleep mode light pulsing.
Celyn sits on the bed. Against the headboard, knees up. The position I’ve seen a hundred times.
I sit on the desk chair. It creaks its usual complaint. I let it.
We sit.
The heating clicks.
I don’t know where to start. I had, on the walk. Seven minutes, I had words. I had the shape of words. I had what I was going to say, the order, the beginning and the middle and the—but it’s gone. The flat’s taken it. Celyn’s face has taken it. Everything taken and now there’s just this.
‘I panicked,’ I say. A different beginning than the one I planned.
Celyn doesn’t respond, the knees. The arms around the knees.
‘When Mum came up I wiped the flat of you in an evening. The mug, the toothbrush, the second pillow. And at the showcase I sat at the back, because the front meant the whole cohort seeing me be yours, and I didn’t know how to stand in that.
So I told you I wanted it simple. Like simple was a thing you’d done to me, and not a door I kept shutting on you. ’
Because the word is wrong. The word I used last time. The word that hit Celyn where someone had already hit them.
‘Hard,’ I say. Wrong word. ‘Not, I didn’t mean you’re a complication.
I meant I’m, thick. I’m too thick for this.
I don’t have the words. I’ve never had the words.
You have words. You’ve got, post-its and a novel and sentences that do things and I’ve got “dunno” and “right” and “something’s off” and that’s, that’s what I had and I threw it at you like it was your fault I can’t. ’
My hands, on my thighs, the calluses. The dust in the knuckle cracks that doesn’t come out. Even after a shower. Hands that know how to hold a level, grip a beam, feel for a crack in a surface.
‘You said the complication was mine,’ I say. ‘Stood right there. I’m a person, you said. I’m not complicated, you said. And you were right. The complication was mine. It was never you.’
Celyn’s chin drops, an inch. Into the space above the knees.
‘You’re everything.’ I stop. Start again.
‘You’re the realest thing in my life.’ The words come out wrong.
Too big for my mouth. ‘And that’s the problem.
The real. Because real means, everyone sees.
My mum sees. The lads see. Robbie and Trav see.
And everyone seeing means I can’t go back to the version where nobody asks and nobody knows and I sit in the Nag’s Head on Saturday night and everything’s simple. ’
I stop, the ceiling, Celyn’s ceiling. The cracks I’ve looked at from the bed, lying on my back, Celyn’s head on my shoulder.
‘Do you want to go back.’ Celyn’s voice. Quiet. Not flat anymore. Careful.
‘No.’ No pause. My chest and my throat and my mouth, the same circuit that said ‘yes’ on Ewan’s sofa.
The body answering. ‘No. I want to be here. With you. In whatever this is. I don’t have a word for it.
I don’t know what I am. All the terms are undefined.
I’ve never, I was with girls and it was fine and then you were at a table with a laptop and green nails and a pencil between your teeth and the fine wasn’t, it wasn’t fine anymore.
It was just what I’d been doing while I waited for something I didn’t know I was waiting for. ’
The flat, the post-its, the heating.
‘The lads at the site know. They’ve known since they clocked us at the bar months back, I just never said it out loud.
I said as much to Gaz and Dave, with you not even speaking to me, that there was someone, that I’d fucked it up, because it was true whether you took me back or not.
’ I make myself hold the eyes. ‘There’s no drawer anymore, Celyn.
I took it off its runners. I’m asking you to be in the room.
The front of it, where I should’ve stood the whole time. ’
‘I don’t know what I am,’ I say again. ‘And I don’t care. I don’t care about the word. I know who I want to be with and it’s you and the word for that is enough.’ My voice cracks on ‘enough.’ ‘It has to be enough.’
The flat holds the word. The post-its, the bed.
I sit on the edge and I don’t move because I know this.
I know what happens when you try to pour concrete in rain, when the conditions aren’t right, when you force the pour anyway.
The pour fails, it fails slowly, the cure cracks.
The whole structure becomes load-bearing in places it shouldn’t be.
You can walk on it and it holds and nobody knows it’s wrong until the day the floor shifts a quarter-inch and a wall splits from top to bottom.
I had words for it on the walk. Seven minutes of words.
The right shape, the right angle, the explanation laid out like I was checking a level.
Then Celyn opened the door and the words fell apart because words are just scaffolding anyway.
The actual thing is here. The stubble and the bare feet and the face that’s been eating itself from the inside.
I think about Dave on site when something’s shifted and we’ve got maybe twenty minutes before the whole day stops. He doesn’t say much, he checks the angles, he reads the break. And then he holds it, reads the weight, knows when to press.
I’ve got one thing I know how to do. Stay, press. Don’t move until the weight redistributes.
The Welsh in Celyn’s voice when the door opened. That was the weight asking for the brace.
My hands are shaking, the calluses, the cracks.
Celyn’s looking at me. Eyes. Something my vocabulary doesn’t reach.
Celyn closes the laptop, slow. The click of the lid. Puts it on the floor. The safe place.
Shifts, the knees come down, the legs uncross. The body opens, not much. Enough. The space on the bed that used to be my space before I fucked it up. And Celyn’s making it again.
‘It’s enough,’ Celyn says.
The Welsh in them. The door opening, not a crack. The whole door.
I stand up, the chair creaks, my knees crack, seven steps. I sit on the edge, the mattress dips, Celyn’s weight shifts towards me, not a decision, just the mattress, same as before, same as always.
Celyn’s hand comes up, touches my face. The thumb on the bone. The fingers along the ear. The touch that checks if something’s real by pressing on it.
I turn my face into the hand. My mouth against the palm. The callus of a pen and the skin that smells like tea and cold air and the flat where I should have been.
Nothing else comes. Said enough. Said the right enough this time.
Celyn’s forehead drops against mine. The weight of it. The stubble on my skin. Cheek to cheek, rough, the friction of two faces that haven’t shaved, and underneath the friction something I don’t have a word for and don’t need one.
The heating clicks.
Wall, yellows and pinks. Space on the bed.
Enough.