Beth listened, and felt her world coming apart, and made herself sound pleased, for Robert, made herself sound happy. She wasn’t. She really wasn’t. It was too soon for this. She didn’t know where things were with Ethan, and if there was anything real beyond the sex, and she didn’t know where things were with Robert, either, and if she still even wanted him. She needed more time to work both out, to let the fling with Ethan run its course, but she didn’t have it.
She was angry, a little resentful, that she wasn’t going to get that time.
She said goodbye, and went inside.
“What’s up?” Ethan said, as she took the coat off.
“Nothing.”
“Because you always go outside to make phone calls.”
“Nothing yet.”
He thought about that. “Tell me when there is something wrong, yeah?”
She nodded.
“Do you want head or something?” he said.
Because that was all they ever really did, she supposed. A solution to everything. And it probably made sense that he asked. He must have seen her a dozen times start off all stressed and angry and worried after a shitty day, and then half an hour later be calm and happy because he’d eaten her out.
“Nah,” she said, and sat down beside him. “Just hang for a bit, okay?”
He put his arm around and pulled her over, and after a while, despite herself, she leaned on his shoulder.
*
Robert flew in for the interview two days later. He stayed the night with Beth, and seemed glad to see her, but it wasn’t like it had used to be. They didn’t have sex. Beth would have, had expected to, but Robert was thinking about his interview.
She supposed it was the interview, but he didn’t actually say.
That was what decided her, though. Something wasn’t right between her and Robert, and she wasn’t sure she wanted to fix it. She wanted fun with Ethan over hard work with Robert, and she didn’t know quite how to tell Robert that.
She couldn’t tell him, not really, not while he was getting ready for the interview, and then not on the way to the airport afterwards, so in the end she didn’t say anything at all. He flew away, and was gone, and Beth decided telling him probably didn’t matter. It had been a year, and they weren’t really together any more, and he wasn’t likely to get this particular job, so they’d probably just drift apart, amiably, without anything needing to be said.
She’d told Ethan that Robert would staying with her, had asked him to clear his things out, and Ethan hadn’t seemed bothered. Not like Beth would have been if she’d been suddenly cut off from sex. Ethan came back a couple of hours after Robert left, and Beth knelt in the hallway and blew him, and then took him up to the bed and fucked him, and everything seemed normal again. Normal from him. She still seemed to be in a slightly odd mood, and she didn’t know why.
He finished behind her, and she knelt where she was, breathing hard, feeling him still solid inside her.
“Fuck me,” she said. “Again. When you’re ready. Like this.”
He nodded, still panting. She knelt there still and waiting, watching him in the mirror. He started moving again, after a few minutes tried to turn her over, but she shook her head.
“I want to see your face,” he said.
“No, like this.”
“What’s wrong?”
“I don’t know. I feel odd. Like everything’s ending.”
He stroked her back, and held her hips, and said, “Are you okay?”
“I’m okay. I just want to fuck like this.”
He nodded, and started moving faster, and that made her forget whatever her mood had been. She leaned on her arms and watched him in the mirror, and thought she caught him doing it back to her. Like he’d worked out the trick, the right angle to see, and he was watching her as she came.
After sex, she felt better. Ethan kept stroking her back while she knelt there, and looking at her like he was worried.
“I’m fine,” she said, and slid off him. “I’m good now.”
“Okay,” he said, agreeable.
She would have gone and wiped, but he liked her to drip, so she flopped onto the bed and dripped slowly instead.
“Are you sure you’re all right?” Ethan said.
“Yeah. Just people from the past. It put me in an odd mood.”
“The guy?” he said.
“The guy.”
“Is everything all right?”
“Yep. He’s gone now.”
Ethan nodded, and kissed her, and went to get a textbook. Beth watched him and was pretty sure she’d done the right thing. Robert was gone and it seemed like that was the last of him, and she was actually relieved. She wanted this, with Ethan, and to see what came of it without complications.
*
Two nights later Robert phoned again, and said he’d got the job. They were in a hurry, everything was happening fast, and that he could start immediately had helped with his application.
“You got it?” Beth said, wanting to make sure.
He got it, he said. They needed him to start in two weeks. He was so glad he’d be back with her, he said, that he was packing already.
“I’m glad too,” Beth said, dully. “I’m really pleased.”
She hoped her voice didn’t sound odd on the phone. She was horrified inside.
*
It happened that Ethan hadn’t stayed that night, that he’d been out with his friends and gone home to sleep. She phoned him the next morning, at ten, as early as was reasonable for him to answer the phone. She phoned rather than sent a message because she had no idea how to explain in a few words.
“Could you come over?” she said. “As soon as you can.”
“What’s wrong?”
“Nothing’s wrong. Nothing sudden or urgent or important. Don’t worry. I just need to see you.”
“Is it the guy?” he said.
“Just come.”
“Is it me?”
“Please,” Beth said. “Don’t do this over the phone.”
“Half an hour,” he said. “I’m on my way.”
After twenty minutes she got undressed and sat on the couch, watching the door. After twenty-five he knocked. She stood up and opened it.
He came in, realized she wasn’t wearing anything, and stopped. She pushed the door closed, kissed him, and started pulling off his clothes.
“What’s wrong?” he said.
“Fuck me.”
“Is that all?”
She looked at him and shook her head. “There’s something wrong but fuck me first, okay?”
She unzipped his pants and he was already hard so she climbed up onto him, and he leaned her against the wall behind the front door. She’d miss that, the wall thing, if she had to give it up. They’d been doing it there so often she’d started leaving a cushion behind the door, for whoever was kneeling down with the other in their mouth.
Today wasn’t giving head, though, it was just sex. He held her up and had her against the wall, then carried her up the stairs without pulling out. He dropped her on the bed, and kept going but every so often he stopped and looked down at her, holding her face in his hands, and each time she shook her head and said, “Just fuck me. Later.”
He did twice, and she liked that, would miss that too, if she had to give this up. She liked the way he filled her, then rested for a moment and fucked her again, and how all the semen he’d left inside her all oozed out. She liked how messy and fun sex was with him. How he came inside her, and carried her around, so she dripped these splattery trails all through the house, from the door to the stairs to the bedroom. She liked how when she sucked him he tasted like them both, himself and her mixed together on his cock. She liked that togetherness.
She lay there and watched his face as he was inside her, and suddenly started kissing him, quite desperately. She wanted this. She didn’t want Robert. He was too cold, and dry, and impersonal. He was self-important, and worried about serious things, l
ike Beth ought to be, but wasn’t. She didn’t want Robert, she wanted sticky fun sex with Ethan, all dripping and sweaty and hours of fucking. She wanted to be lifted up against walls and bent over chairs and she wanted to be looked at like his cock in her mouth was the most beautiful fucking thing he’d ever seen.
She wanted that.
Ethan came again, and went down on her until she was done, and she didn’t want to stop yet. She wanted this to be epic, in case it was the last time. He lay back, grinning at her, smug and thinking he was done, so she blew him again, just to make it last. Sat there and bent over and sucked him slowly, half-hard, until he came.
Then she was done. She went and got a drink of water and came back to the bed and looked at him sadly and said, “We need to talk.”
He nodded. He looked at her too, like he was trying to take her in. Looked at the sweat on her breasts and the shape of her legs and a little smears of drying semen on her thigh.
“Don’t.” he said. “Please.”
“Ethan…”
“Beth, please. I know this is complicated, but don’t end this. Just don’t.”
She sat there and wondered what to do. He was good for her, and good to her, and the sex was brilliant.
“I’m not begging,” he said. “I’m just saying. This is a good thing. You and me are good. Don’t end this over something stupid, something that isn’t a problem yet.”
She wondered what he thought the problem is. There wasn’t any reason not to ask. “What do you think I want to talk about?”
“Someone found out? Someone at college?”
She shook her head. “Not that.”
“So what?”
“Robert,” she said. “The guy in the photo.” She didn’t know what to say. “He got a job here. He’s moving here. I’m sorry.”
Ethan lay there for a while. Beth stroked his arm, his shoulder.
“I don’t really understand,” Ethan said. “What does that mean?”
“For us? I don’t know.”
“Are you going back to him?”
She sat there for a while, still stroking, thinking about guilt and obligations. “I don’t think I was ever not with him.”
“Yeah,” Ethan said. “Fair enough. Is that what you want? Us to end?”
“I don’t know.”
“I’ll just go if you want me to. Quietly, I mean.”
Beth nodded, and leaned over and kissed him. “I don’t want you to.”
“But I might have to?”
She smiled a little sadly. “Maybe.”
“Do you want me?” he said.
“Yes.”
“Him?”
“I sort of owe him.”
“But do you want him?”
“I don’t know.”
“So, what? You want us to be an affair?”
She’d thought of it, but hadn’t. She hadn’t known what Ethan would say. “I suppose it’s kind of the obvious thing to do,” she said. “Isn’t it?”
“I don’t know if I’m okay with you fucking someone else.”
“I don’t know you get to decide that.”
He seemed hurt. “Yeah,” he said. “Fair enough.” He slid over, sat up at the edge of the bed, like he was about to leave.
She grabbed his hand. He tried to pull free, but she held him. “Sorry,” she said.
He waited.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “I’ve just had all this in my head all of last night, and I don’t know what to do. I’m going a bit crazy.”
“Talk to me.”
“I’m trying.”
“Okay,” he said, and looked at her for a while. “So what do you actually want?”
“I want everything to be how it was until now.”
“Why can’t it be?”
“Robert needs to stay here.”
“So they’re not paying him?”
Beth smiled a little. She deserved that. “Robert has no reason to think he can’t stay here unless I tell him otherwise,” she said carefully “Which I haven’t.”
“So tell him.”
“I don’t know if I can.”
“You don’t know if you want to,” Ethan said.
She looked up, didn’t quite understand.
“You don’t know if you want to,” he said. “That’s what you mean. Not that you can’t.”
“Yeah,” she said. “You’re right. If I want to.”
She sat there and thought about everything he was, everything he’d begun to mean to her. She kissed him, and said, “I don’t want to lose this. To lose you.”
He seemed wary.
“We’ve never really talked about what’s happening here,” she said. “Not really. What this all is.”
“I know.”
“And we’ve never asked each other for anything more than what this is. Than what we are when we’re together. So I suppose I never really thought about it. Never realized I wanted more. And how much I’d miss you if you were gone.”
After moment he said, “Me either.”
She squeezed his hand.
“So what do we do?” he said.
“Have an affair, I suppose,” she said. “Just until I work out what’s happening.”
He was looking at her, still thinking.
“I know I’m being unfair,” she said.
“Not really. You told me about him, and never promised anything else.”
She nodded, but didn’t want to agree. She had, on purpose, and she was glad he wasn’t resenting her for that caution.
“Can we try it this way?” she said. “Please. Just see what happens? Work around this for a while.”
“Work around this?”
“Just see what happens.”
“I don’t know what you mean,” he said, after a while. “I’m not trying to be difficult, just… Are we still fucking? Are we still not sleeping with anyone else?”
“If that’s okay,” Beth said. “Just for a while.”
“Except Robert,” he said. “For you.”
“I’ll try not to sleep with Robert without talking to you first.”
He sat there and looked at her and seemed completely baffled.
“I’m being honest,” she said. “That’s what people really mean when they promise each other things. So I’m saying that to you. I’m not promising you forever, but I’ll try to be fair. I’ll try not to let anything happen that changes things for you until I’ve told you what’s happening first.”
“Okay,” he said. “Yeah.”
“That’s okay?”
“It’s not okay, but I see what you mean. It’s fair.”
She looked at him for a moment, and wanted to be sure he understood. “And if something happens with Robert,” she said. “And it doesn’t turn out how we want?”
“Then something happens with him, I suppose, and I live with it.”
“And that’s enough for now?”
He shrugged a little bit, looked like he was annoyed at himself. “Yeah, it’s enough.”
“Is it really?”
“I don’t want to lose you. This is complicated. So yeah, for now, I’ll deal with it. It’s enough.”
She sat there for a while and waited, in case he wanted to say anything else, but nothing seemed to come.
“Thank you,” she said, after a while.
“What for?”
“Letting me fix this my way.”
“It’s fine,” he said, and kissed her. “We’ll sort it out.”
She nodded, and kissed him back, and for some reason felt like she wanted to cry.
“Fucking thank you,” she said. “I mean it. I was terrified for a moment you’d just go.”
“You’d care if I did?”
“Of course I’d fucking care if you did, you prick.”
He grinned at her for a while, and seemed suddenly a bit more cheerful, and kissed her.
Then she did start to cry. She didn’t know why, right then, but tears started running down her face, and
he held her and stroked her hair and told her it was okay, and she sobbed and hated herself for being so weak and wondered what the fuck was wrong with herself.
*
The day before Robert arrived, Beth spent the whole day in bed with Ethan. She stayed awake half the night and had sex until she could hardly walk, until she felt tired and achy and dehydrated. She kissed him goodbye, hugged him in the lounge, clinging like she’d never thought she would to anyone, desperately not wanting to let him go.
She didn’t want to let him go, and she didn’t know how to fix this, and she wasn’t used to feeling either of those things.
Ethan left, and she had a shower and changed the sheets and walked through the house checking for any sign of Ethan. Like she was having an affair.
Then she went to the airport and collected Robert and brought him home.
It wasn’t like it had used to be with Robert. It was polite and proper and filled with assumptions he’d never have made when they were first together. He didn’t know her any more, but he thought he did, so he didn’t bother checking before he acted. He put his things places she didn’t want them, and spread papers out where she sat to read, and suddenly her home wasn’t hers any more, it was theirs, and he hadn’t even asked if that was okay.
He didn’t suggest sex for several days, either, which offended her a little. She’d been expecting to have to fight him off, and didn’t know why he wasn’t trying. When he eventually did, he wasn’t especially serious about it. He let her put him off with a shrug and by saying she was tired.
She felt invaded and unsettled and annoyed he didn’t want to fuck her. She missed sex, because she’d suddenly gone from twice a day, every day, to none.
What really irritated her was Ethan was there, and had never got in her way, and wanted her so much he’d probably fuck himself to death like a lab rat if she let him, and all she had to do was tell Robert to go away and she could have Ethan back.
And she didn’t.
Because she’d once loved Robert, and once he’d meant a lot to her, and even now he still wanted all the same things from life as she did. She and Robert fit together, and Ethan was ten years younger and a fling, and in her heart of hearts she was calculating and sensible and couldn’t make herself throw away everything she had with Robert without being completely sure that was what she wanted.
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