One Plus Two Minus One

by Tess Mackenzie

  “I didn’t pressure him. He hit on me. Several times.”

  “Then I think you’re okay.”

  Beth nodded.

  “I mean, you’ve got a whole other bunch of issues being young and a girl and banging one of the guys in your class.”

  “I know,” Beth said.

  “Like them queuing up outside your office door, and how you blush easily. But not an official one.”

  “Yeah,” Beth said, glaring at her. “Thanks.”

  “So fuck him as much as you want to.”

  “I will.”

  Amanda opened her mouth.

  “Could we stop, please?” Beth said.

  Amanda grinned.

  *

  Ethan texted while Beth was in a lecture. Her other course, not his. She told him to go to her place in an hour, sent it from the front of the lecture theatre, in front of a room of other students, while she kept talking and they ignored the phone in her hand. It was kind of hot.

  She went home and Ethan turned up ten minutes later.

  She opened the door, horny and wet, pulled him inside and started kissing him and then realized she still had her glasses on. She snatched them off. She didn’t need glasses all the time, only to read whiteboards and so she didn’t squint at books. She hadn’t had them on around Ethan until now, didn’t really want her younger fucktoy seeing her with them on.

  “Yeah,” he said into her mouth. “I saw you wearing them all last year.”

  “So?”

  “I like you with them on.”

  “You would.”

  He shrugged because it was probably true.

  “Put them on,” he said. “Please.”

  “No,” she said. “My eyes look better without.”

  “Okay.”

  “Are you looking?” she said.

  “Nope,” he said, and pulled her shirt off.

  He kept kissing her, opened her jeans and fingered her leaning against the door, and she kept saying she wasn’t going to come just from that right up until she did. He pulled her over to the couch and started again there, in some confused mix of sex and oral and bending her over the furniture until they were both done.

  She went and put her contacts in, while he laughed at her, then came back down and lay on him and slowly kissed his chest.

  “Apparently we aren’t breaking any rules if I didn’t pressure you into this,” she said.

  “You didn’t.”

  “I know.”

  “Almost the other way.”

  She grinned and pulled his hair.

  “Those shoes you had on,” he said. “You should put them back on.”

  “Just the shoes?”

  “Anything else you like, but the shoes, yeah.”

  “Why?”

  “I had an idea.”

  She pulled his hair again, harder. “Why?”

  “Put them on.”

  She looked at him for a moment, then pushed him off her. She went upstairs and looked in her wardrobe and found them. Sat on the bed and put them on, and then went back down to him.

  “Okay,” she said. “There.”

  He stood up, and looked at her. She sat down on the couch, where he’d been.

  “Stand up.”

  “Why?”

  “Just stand up.”

  She did, stood there with her arms folded over her chest, a bit uncomfortable. He stood beside her, looked at their hips. Like he was measuring.

  “Turn around,” he said.

  She did.

  “Bend a bit.”

  “Why?”

  “Just do it.”

  She did, feeling very awkward.

  “Yeah,” he said. “I think that would about work.”

  “What would?”

  He put the end of his cock against her, the very slightest part inside her. She jumped, and almost shrieked, and then tried to push back against him.

  “You like?” he said.

  “Shut up,” she said, trying to get herself onto him. “Shit, that isn’t going to work.”

  “It is. Move your feet.”

  She did. “I’m not tall enough.”

  He put his hand on her hip and slid into her. She blinked, surprised and couldn’t believe anyone could fuck her quite that easily.

  “Okay,” she said. “We’re going again.”

  “Yep,” he said, and held her hips so she didn’t fall over forwards. She went limp and toppled onto the couch when she came, and he went with her.

  “Yeah,” he said afterwards. “So actually I was going to get you to lean on the kitchen bench like you were leaning on the bar that night, then fuck you standing up.”

  “Okay.”

  “Okay?”

  “Yep,” she said. “We’ll do that sometime. Dress and all, if you want.”

  He lay beside her for while, breathing hard. She slid her hand up and down his chest, slippery with his sweat.

  “Tomorrow,” she said. “I’m not going to see you. I need to stay here and work.”

  “Okay.”

  “You don’t mind?”

  “Of course not.”

  She looked at him.

  “We’re fucking,” he said. “It’s fun. I really like you. And I’m pretty sure that being needy is going to turn you off quicker than asking if you’re into bestiality.”

  “Maybe.”

  “Is the guy in the photo a bit clingy?”

  She lay there for a while then said, “Don’t say things like that.”

  “So it’s true?”

  “Don’t.”

  He kissed her and said, “Okay.”

  “He is,” Beth said. “And I’m not.”

  “Not what?”

  “Bestiality.”

  He grinned. “Thanks for making that clear.”

  “Yeah, you know. Thought I should.”

  *

  Ethan texted again when Beth was tutoring. She did extra tutoring because she’d been around Robert too much, listening to his complaints about the world being unfair. That annoyed her a little, that he’d got to her, but she tried to fix it anyway. Sometimes people had trouble with maths. Bad schools or bad teachers or not trying hard enough when they should have. Beth had spent years sitting in rooms where everyone looked the same, and wasn’t sure she liked that. She wanted to be cold and brutal and see the world as a jungle where you had to make do or fall by the wayside, but she didn’t. Sometimes the difference between success and failure was so small it just needed a little push, and sometimes that difference wasn’t the person’s fault, but the fault of this huge overwhelming system so big and complicated you couldn’t possibly fix it. And if the system was too big to fix, you didn’t bother. You just fixed the particular problem in front of you. Beth understood, and fixed problems one by one while Robert tried to fix them all and never got anywhere. So Beth tutored.

  She was sitting there watching a student get his head around Kepler’s laws and elliptical orbits and areas swept out under a function. She’d been reading, looking through papers she needed for her research, stopping when the student needed help. She texted Ethan back. Told him to come up and see her, to knock but she was with someone, so not to come in.

  After a while he knocked, and she suddenly had a very good idea.

  “I’ll just be a sec,” she said to the student.

  She went outside and said hi to Ethan and looked at him and thought.

  “Want to do me a favor?” she said.

  “Ah, yeah. Sure. Of course.”

  “I’m tutoring. But I think you’d be better at it than me.”

  “Ah… Not really. Not for your courses.”

  “It isn’t my courses. This is, ah….”

  She suddenly didn’t know how to explain.

  “It’s just someone who needs a bit of help. And I’m doing my best, but it’s calculus, and you’d be better at it.”

  “Okay.”

  “So want to be a tutor? You don’t get paid and there’s no credit in this
. There’s nothing in this except doing the right thing. But want to? For me?”

  “Yeah, sure, but…”

  She opened the door, said, “Hey, um. This is Ethan. I thought he might be a bit more useful than me.”

  And they said hi to each other and seemed a bit awkward.

  “Give it a try,” she said. “It’s just an idea. If it doesn’t work, no problem and I’ll take over again. But I’m shit at calculus and Ethan isn’t, so he might be able to explain it better.”

  They both looked at her, like neither could quite believe she was serious.

  “I mean it,” she said. “And now I’ll get coffee and leave you to it.” She looked at Ethan. “You turn on my computer, or you look in my drawers, I’ll fucking kill you, you understand?”

  “Yeah, of course I won’t.”

  “I’m serious. No poking around looking for exam papers or anything.”

  “I won’t, I swear.”

  “Okay. I need the office back at the end of the hour, and I’ll sort out a room for you for next time.”

  “Yeah,” Ethan said. “We’ve got it.”

  “Okay.”

  *

  Beth went and found Ethan later that afternoon. She could see his timetable on the student record system, so she walked over to the computer science building when once of his lectures was finishing and waited outside. Fiddled with her keys, hadn’t bothered to bring anything else, so jingled them and twisted them around her hands and got annoyed wondering where he’d got to.

  A couple of other students looked at her as they went past, like they were wondering whether to say hello. She suddenly realized Ethan probably wasn’t the only one taking her crypto course over here.

  He came out, was taking to another guy, and Beth called, “Ethan.”

  He seemed surprised, came over. “Tutoring,” she said. “How did it go?” She said it loudly enough she hoped the other students could hear.

  “Yeah, seemed to be fine.”

  “Better with you explaining it?”

  Ethan didn’t answer for a second, like he was trying to work out how to say it politely. Then he just said, “I think so.”

  “Can you again? I mean, do you have time?”

  “Yeah, of course.”

  “You get why this matters? Helping him?”

  And he just looked at her like she was the biggest idiot alive. Which pleased her. It meant he really did understand. Not just helping, but never talking about why you were helping.

  “Dumb question,” Ethan said. “You don’t know his name, do you?”

  “Whose name?”

  “The guy you wanted me to tutor. That’s why you told him mine, but didn’t tell me his.”

  “I can find out what it is if you need me to.”

  “I just asked him. I know what his name is. But you don’t, do you?”

  Beth shrugged. “I can’t remember anyone’s name.”

  He kept grinning.

  “What the fuck’s wrong with you now?”

  “And you’ve never told him not to look in your drawers, have you?”

  She didn’t get that one. “Of course not.”

  “So why me?”

  “Ah, because the first time you went to my house you started looking in my undies drawer.”

  Ethan seemed surprised. “That’s why?”

  “Yeah, of course. Why?”

  “Nah, no reason.”

  She thought about that, and realized. “Don’t do that.”

  “Do what?”

  “That. All that bullshit, thinking you know why I do shit. Just don’t.”

  “Okay.”

  “Seriously. The guy in the photo? Every moment of my life with him I had that shit going on. Oh Beth, you’re so enlightened and crap, even thought you pretend you’re not.”

  Ethan was grinning.

  “I’m not. And if you start doing that too, we’re over. I’ve had enough of that shit in my life already.”

  “I won’t. I promise.”

  “Okay. Are you doing anything now?”

  “A lecture.”

  And she was actually disappointed. That surprised her a bit.

  He was looking at her face. “I can skip it.”

  “No, I can’t…”

  “It’s databases. It’s boring as fuck and I already read the whole text.”

  And she looked at him and remembered that he had his things he was good at too, even if she didn’t always see them, and that was sexy as hell.

  “Okay,” she said quietly. “My place.”

  “Now?”

  “Now. But don’t follow me.”

  And she walked straight there, didn’t even go back to her office for her bag. He must have almost run, because he beat her there.

  She kissed him on her front path, hoping no-one came along, and was wet and horny and desperate enough by the time she got to the front door, she couldn’t get the key in the lock. While she was fumbling around, Ethan looked around, then pushed her down onto her knees and took his cock out.

  She knelt there for a second, and looked at it, and couldn’t decide. She should be horrified, she thought. She really should.

  Then she opened her mouth.

  On her front doorstep. In the middle of the day. Hidden from the road, but only just.

  He came in her mouth, then pulled her back up and kissed her.

  “Hey,” she said, and pushed him down.

  He grinned, and let her. She had a skirt, which helped, but he pushed it up so high she was bare from the waist down, so not really. Did it on purpose, she thought.

  He was grabby and pushy and a bit too into holding her down, she thought, but he was always fair. She got a turn too.

  She came, and almost couldn’t think to stay upright and pressed back so she was hidden, then peeled herself off his face and got the door open, finally, and pulled him inside. She’d left condoms in the hall cupboard because it was pretty obvious neither of them had any self-control, and eventually someone would want to fuck at the front door.

  So they did.

  She quite liked how Ethan didn’t seem to know men were supposed to come once and then go to sleep.

  Afterwards, sitting on the hallway floor, facing each other, breathing hard, he started looking at her all meaningful and touched.

  “Oh, for fuck’s sake,” she said, and got up to get water. “If you’re going to do that you can fuck off.”

  “Sorry.”

  “Just stop.”

  “I have.”

  “Fucking do.”

  “Can I just say…”

  “Nope. Don’t. Ever.”

  He hesitated.

  “I’m serious.”

  Because saying things like this out loud made them real. The world was an awful place, but you didn’t have to go around talking about it all the time. You could just do what you could, and hope a thousand other people each did a little of the rest, instead of blathering on and on about it all the time. She didn’t want another Robert. She didn’t want anyone remotely like Robert, and if Ethan didn’t get that without her saying it they might have a problem.

  He shrugged and said, “Okay,” and told her a long story about the professor of computer science and a goldfish tank and someone forgetting whiteboard pens, which she couldn’t really follow.

  He realized she wasn’t listening and said, “Want to again?”

  She wasn’t getting much work done. Then again, him asking was enough to get her wet.

  “Yep,” she said, and they went upstairs.

  Chapter Six

  Beth liked Ethan around. He was at her place a lot, often fucking her, but also just keeping her company as well. He was fairly quiet, when he wanted to be. He would talk to her while they ate, then leave her alone while she worked, and she was surprised to realize she could actually work when he was around.

  She usually had to fuck him into exhaustion first, but she didn’t really mind.

  The sex was good, although she
couldn’t quite work out where some of things he did to her came from. He carried her around and fucked her up against walls and held her down by her wrists. One afternoon they finished with her lying on her back along the kitchen bench with her chest above the sink and the cold tap running water over her tits. It just happened, and it was kind of weird, and made enough of a mess she needed a mop afterwards, but it felt good too. Very good, the contrast of cold and sex and his body against hers. She’d never really got into untidy before, but she was starting to learn. He wiped pasta sauce on her tits, and left condoms on the floor, and didn’t bother washing between sex and oral. She’d forgotten the arrogance of young guys, and was surprised sometimes when he just did what he felt like, without warning her. He grabbed her wrists, or slipped his finger into her ass, or pulled out of her during sex and turned around to sixty-nine without bothering to check she wanted to.

  She didn’t actually care, and that surprised her too. Inconsiderate partners had always infuriated her, so she assumed the difference was either that it was Ethan, or that she got to be inconsiderate too. She did what she liked as often as him, made him wait while she came or changed positions or wandered off during sex to write something down. That they both took turns holding the other down and humping their mouth made a big difference, she thought.

  She was still sometimes surprised, though. One afternoon he pulled out of her mouth while she was giving him a blowjob and pointed himself at her face, wanking.

  “Hey,” she said, and pushed him away.

  “I want to come on you.”

  “No way.”

  “Why not?” he said, and actually seemed surprised.

  She wasn’t completely sure she should even be kneeling down in front of him so much, and now he wanted to blow his load on her face.

  She looked up at him, and couldn’t decide. He was being pushy, but he also seemed to think this was normal. She was only eight or nine years older, and she seemed to be having some kind of generational thing, and that annoyed her, a lot.

  “You really want to do this?” she said.

  “Please?”

  Brainwashed by porn, she thought. Then realized she wasn’t that horrified either, so perhaps she was too. And she supposed she was curious to see him wank, even if only the last fifteen seconds of it.