One Plus Two Minus One

by Tess Mackenzie

  He thought about that. “So put something in the pot.”

  Beth looked around the table.

  “Dare you,” Ethan said.

  Beth pulled her top off, and threw it on the table. Sat there with bare tits, grinning and puffing on her cigar, while everyone else laughed.

  Ethan was staring at her.

  “What?” she said.

  “You’re the sexiest thing I’ve ever seen.”

  “Good,” Beth said, and took the cigar out her mouth. “So we’re all in?”

  He nodded.

  Amanda stood up. “I really want to see how this ends, but you know, I don’t. Time to go I think.”

  She started counting chips, cashing herself out. The others did too. Ethan and Beth sat there and stared at each other. Everyone left, and he kept staring.

  “Go on,” she said. “Dare you.”

  He leaned over and kissed her. Pulled her shorts down and tipped her backwards onto the table and ate her out, then fucked her, with the cigar still in her mouth. Beth kept wanting to giggle, right up until she came.

  When they were done, still beneath him, she reached over and picked up his cards and looked. “You shit,” she said. “I’d have won.”

  “I know,” he said.

  “You just did that so I wouldn’t call,” she said.

  “Yeah.”

  “Dickhead,” she said, grinning.

  “You’re a cool fucking woman,” he said, looking down at her. “Dude.”

  “I am,” she said.

  “I really fucking like you,” he said, then stopped quite suddenly.

  She understood. “Don’t,” she said.

  He kept looking at her.

  “Hop off,” she said, and pushed until he let her up.

  He was still watching her. She started picking up chips, putting them back in the box.

  “Beth…” he said.

  “Not yet,” she said. “It’s too sudden.”

  “No, it isn’t.”

  “Just let me sort out what’s going on,” she said without looking at him. “Then we can start saying that shit to each other.”

  Ethan nodded slowly.

  She looked up. “Thanks.”

  “It’s okay.”

  “So what did you think?” she said. “Of the girls?”

  “Scary.”

  She laughed.

  “Seriously. I thought you were a one-off.”

  “Yeah,” she said. “You should see the staff club on a Friday. Real lampshade-on-the-head shit there.”

  He looked like he couldn’t decide if he believed her.

  “I’m lying,” she said. “That isn’t true. Those four are special people. Pretty much everyone else around the place is boring as fuck.”

  “That’s kind of a relief.”

  She looked at him, a little concerned.

  “I liked them,” he said. “I really did. Don’t worry.”

  “Okay,” she said, relieved.

  “Seeing you like that, with them. You’re different.”

  “You keep saying that. About lots of things.”

  “You are.”

  She wasn’t sure if she should be pleased. She reached into the chip box, took out the remaining cash. It should be about six hundred dollars. She pushed it over.

  “I can’t take that,” he said.

  “It’s yours.”

  “You won.”

  “My cards would have won. You called. I didn’t have enough money. You won the hand, so you get this.”

  “What about your shirt?”

  “Didn’t count,” she said. “You said you wouldn’t take an IOU.”

  “You’re not annoyed?” he said after a moment.

  “Not much.”

  He seemed undecided, until she grinned. He still hadn’t taken the money.

  “You paid anyway,” he said. “It doesn’t matter who won, it’s still all yours.”

  “Fair enough,” she said, left the money where it was, and went to the stairs.

  “Should I be following you?”

  “If you want.”

  She heard him coming up the stairs behind her. “I’m going to have a bath,” she said. “If you want. Just because.”

  She lay in the bath and finished the cigar and blew smoke towards the extractor fan, and Ethan stared at her breast and the way her nipple poked up all hard and wet through the bubbles they were sitting in.

  “I love how smart you are,” he said. “But fuck you have nice tits.”

  She grinned.

  “Are you sleeping with him?” Ethan said. “The guy.”

  “Sleeping,” she said. She pointed. “One bed.”

  “Having sex,” he said.

  She sat there for a while, then said, “Are you sure you want to know?”

  He looked like he was suddenly wondering that himself. “Yeah,” he said.

  “Three times since he got here. And I didn’t like it.”

  “Okay,” Ethan said.

  “I want you,” she said.

  “Not enough to have me.”

  She didn’t answer.

  “That’s true, isn’t it?”

  She shrugged. And her tit moved. And he watched it, like he was hypnotized.

  She stretched, and let the water run down her, and that seemed to be the end of talking about serious things.

  Later, after more sex, after she’d tasted him and felt him and remembered everything she was missing, she lay there exhausted and said, “You can stay if you want, but you have to go at six in the morning. No bullshitting around, just go.”

  “Six?” he said. “Not later?”

  “I can’t risk it.”

  “Yeah, I’ll stay, of course. But shit, we couldn’t wait a bit later?”

  Beth looked at him. “Seven. With an alarm at five to, and you’re out by seven exactly. Out and down the road.”

  “Okay.”

  “Promise.”

  He smiled at the ceiling. She watched him and didn’t think he realized.

  “I promise,” he said.

  She stroked him, and almost said something, said she liked him or wanted him or couldn’t stand to be without him, but none of that was fair to say, so she stayed silent.

  Later, though, going to sleep, she whispered, “Fuck I’ve missed you at night, like this.”

  “Yeah,” he said, “Me too,” and she thought his voice sounded a little hoarse when he spoke, but it might have just been the cigars.

  *

  When Robert came home the next day he sniffed and said, “You don’t want hippies in the house because they smell?”

  She looked at him and said, “What?”

  “Years ago. You said you didn’t want people around because they smelled.”

  “Did I?” Beth said. “What do you mean people?”

  “My people.”

  “That seems kind of rude,” she said. “Are you sure I said that?”

  She was in a good mood. He just looked at her, and she grinned.

  “Cigars smell better than pot,” she said. “And it’ll clear in a day or two. Stop fucking moaning.”

  He shrugged, and looked annoyed. Him looking annoyed irritated her, and suddenly she was angry, wanting a fight.

  “My house,” she said. “My rules.”

  “You never used to smoke inside.”

  “I never used to smoke. Now I do.”

  He shrugged.

  “Just fucking deal with it,” she said. “Okay?”

  He nodded. “Okay.”

  She waited a moment more, in case he wanted to add anything else, but he just went and sat down and picked up a book and that seemed to be the end of it.

  She was being a bitch on purpose, trying to provoke something. She knew why. She knew exactly what had got into her, and she wasn’t sure she wanted to stop.

  Chapter Eight

  Beth and Ethan went to a hotel for a night. She told Robert she was going out with her poker friends and would stay over
where she ended up, and he just nodded, and didn’t ask her anything else. She’d been anticipating another complicated lie, like with the condoms, so she could get out the house without him making a fuss, but he didn’t seem bothered at all. She couldn’t decide if he was confident enough not to care where she was, or worried enough he didn’t want to start a fight. She was pretty sure it wasn’t worry, though. Robert never saw problems until they slapped him in the face.

  She felt a little self-conscious checking into the hotel with Ethan, as if everyone knew why they were there, and knew he was her student, and half of them were on their phones right now to all their friends. She looked around at a roomful of strangers ignoring her and told herself she was imagining things. Like the time they’d gone out to the bar, no-one noticed them and no-one cared what they were doing.

  They made out in the lift. They made out in the lift so Beth got weak and dizzy and felt like she just wanted to stay where she was until she came. She mumbled a protest into his mouth when they got to their floor, not wanting to stop kissing. Ethan picked her up, over his shoulder, and carried her down the corridor looking for the room. It hurt her tummy a bit, and she gasped that he should put her down, but he ignored her and held onto her by her ass and she didn’t really mind.

  Which was odd, since Robert doing anything at all like that would have infuriated her.

  The hotel room was what they needed. They had sex on the floor which turned into sex on the bed, and then got mostly undressed and had sex again, while Ethan tried to get a drink of water and Beth kept saying she wasn’t done yet. They lay there a while, panting, then Ethan turned on the air conditioning and they had sex again, and after a third time, they finally seemed done for a while.

  At least with the sex.

  “I missed you,” Ethan said, and she kissed him for five minutes then said, “Me too.”

  “So what now?” Ethan said. “Is this how we do it?”

  “I suppose. Is that okay for a few weeks? Just until things sort themselves out.”

  He nodded slowly. He was lying on his back, stroking her hand, staring at the ceiling. He seemed to have gotten into a gloomy kind of mood since they’d finished fucking.

  “Are you sure?” she said.

  He shrugged.

  She was sitting cross-legged in the middle of the bed. She moved, deliberately put her knees in front her chest in case that helped him concentrate.

  He hadn’t looked, though. She wasn’t sure what that meant. “I don’t know,” he said.

  “I’m doing my best,” she said.

  “I know.”

  “I really do want you. How we were.”

  He nodded slowly.

  “Just until things get sorted out,” she said. “I promise.”

  “I don’t know they will,” he said, still staring at the ceiling. “Unless you make it happen.”

  She didn’t know what to say, so she decided to ignore him. She leaned over and got the room service menu and started looking at food.

  “Want anything?” she said.

  “I’m fine.”

  “I’m getting something.”

  “Okay.” After a moment. “Can you afford this?”

  “Food?”

  “The room. A lot of rooms, if we keep doing this.”

  “It’s fine.”

  “You’re sure?”

  She was surprised. She wasn’t sure where this was coming from. “Go look up how much we’re paid,” she said. “Really, it’s fine.”

  He nodded.

  “Want something to eat?”

  “Yeah,” he said, and took the menu she was holding out.

  *

  Beth spent whole days horny and didn’t really like it. She wasn’t seeing Ethan as often as she was used to, and she was seeing him with their clothes on, and both those things seemed to make her horny even worse. As if merely talking and looking at each other reminded her what she wasn’t getting and made her concentrate on that. She knew she should avoid him, just not see him except for sex and lectures, but she didn’t seem to be able to actually do that. She made excuses to see him. She agreed to meet when he texted her. She wanted to talk to him, and touch him, and see the way he looked at her. She wanted contact any way she could have it, even just messages through the day or the accidental brush of fingers as he passed her sugar in a café.

  She was avoiding sex at her house, because she didn’t want to get caught and didn’t know if Ethan wanted the reminder Robert was around, and she was avoiding sex at her office so she wasn’t in there with Ethan all the time, and she didn’t know how they were going to manage except by spending whole days in hotels. Which was a little planned and organized for how she usually was.

  She was distracted and horny and needy, and she didn’t like it.

  She was sensible, though, and managed to keep her head, right up to the day she suddenly couldn’t stand it any more, and just phoned Ethan and said, “I need to fuck you. Just come here, okay?”

  “Where?”

  “My place. I miss you.”

  “Is the guy around?”

  “Shit, of course the guy isn’t around,” she said. “Sorry. He’ll be a couple of hours.”

  “A couple of hours?”

  “Yep.”

  “So I should hurry?”

  “I would.”

  He was ten minutes and didn’t get more than five steps inside the house. She met him at the door, and he pushed her against the wall, and kissed her. He seemed to kiss her for half the time he was there, and she liked that he wanted to do that so much. He kissed her, then she got impatient and knelt down, and suddenly realized Robert had moved the cushion she’d left behind the door, but it didn’t matter. He was quick. He came in her mouth, and she came in his, and then they had sex against the wall again.

  And then he left, and she went upstairs and had a shower and wondered if that, just fucking, was enough to make a couple. If constant, very good sex could actually keep them together, as people, for years and years.

  She was getting self-indulgent She almost thought it could. Whatever she and Robert had, all the sensible things, that wasn’t working, so maybe sex alone would be enough.

  Or maybe she was thinking with her clit and needed to stop.

  *

  Beth hadn’t really thought about how difficult the situation might be for Ethan, not properly, until he said one day, “I’m going to take your advanced course. So I can see you.”

  They were in her office, in the middle of the day, dressed and talking while she ate her lunch. He had been fingering her, gently, just enough she knew he’d been inside her, not enough to come. He’d stopped when she started eating.

  “My advanced course,” she said. She was torn. “I wouldn’t.”

  “Why?”

  “It’s too hard.”

  He looked at her.

  “I’m not being a bitch. It’s a tough course. It’s meant to be.”

  “I’m not good enough?”

  She thought about that. “You’re not a maths major.”

  “I’ll cope.”

  “You should be taking papers to push your GPA up,” she said. “Not getting side-tracked.”

  He nodded slowly.

  “You could just sit in the lectures,” she said. “Not actually enroll.”

  “How many students are there?”

  “Five, at the moment.”

  “So I’d kind of stand out.”

  He was right.

  “I don’t care about the grade,” he said. “I’ll take it anyway.”

  She decided he was serious. She decided he was sweet. “I’ll help you,” she said.

  “Thanks.”

  “Go through things with you again, extra tutoring.”

  He nodded. “I need you to sign a form. To say it’s okay for me to enroll without the prerequisites.”

  He looked in his bag and gave her a form. She wrote her name, signed it.

  “And the head of department,” he said.
“Could you talk to him?”

  “Just take that to him and say I said it was okay and I’ll talk to him next time I see him.”

  “Will you?”

  She grinned. “He’ll forget.”

  She sat there for a while and looked at him and thought she had someone who was willing to fuck up their career to see her. It was touching and terrifying at the same time.

  She kissed him for a while, longer than was really safe in case someone opened the door, then chased him out so she could work.

  *

  After two weeks Beth was still horny and Ethan was already struggling with her paper.

  She tutored him in an empty tutorial room. There was a window in the door, but they could sit down the side wall, and be out of sight. Enough to touch, to hold hands, not enough for anything more.

  Even so, Ethan just wasn’t understanding. She kept going over the same proofs, but they didn’t seem to stick. The material she taught, her course structure, hadn’t changed much in two hundred years. You sat down and worked through some equations and eventually they all fit together, into an evolving structure, so after a few years you understood the whole thing.

  Before he’d started, Ethan had been vague on some of the basics. He was sitting in her class, but he wasn’t understanding the details she was trying to teach him. Maths was a process, and everything new built on the last thing learned, and Ethan had never learned the basic things he needed.

  He wasn’t just struggling, he was falling further and further behind, so far he was never going to catch up to where the rest of the class had been weeks ago.

  Beth sat in their tutorial room, watching him struggle through a proof, and knew she’d done this to him. He was going to end up with a bad B on his record, and since he was barely holding an A average, that could cost him jobs or scholarships after he finished. More than that, treading water in her course was going to take up all of his time, and that might mean he didn’t do as well in everything else.

  “Stop,” she said, and closed the textbook they were using.

  “I’m almost there.”

  “You’re not,” she said. “Just stop.”