One Plus Two Minus One

by Tess Mackenzie

  “Okay,” he said.

  “Fuck,” she said. “Don’t do that. You got off. I didn’t. I want to finish up, that’s all. It’s not weird.”

  “It’s kind of weird.”

  “Okay, it’s kind of weird, but we’re doing it anyway, so come upstairs and eat me out.”

  He grinned, and followed her up the stairs, and Beth lay there while he licked her and decided not to care about Robert. It wasn’t worth worrying, or caring what Robert was going to do, until he came back and told her. So maybe she had no feelings either, but at least she was getting head while she waited.

  *

  Robert reappeared about two in the afternoon. He knocked before he opened the door.

  “He’s gone,” Beth said, from the kitchen table. She was sitting there with half a bottle of wine, an empty glass ready for Robert, and another she was sipping from in her hand.

  “It’s a bit early to drink, isn’t it?” he said.

  “Not today.”

  He nodded, and sat down, and poured wine for himself. Beth watched him. He was calm. He was still weirdly calm, and Beth didn’t understand why.

  “You’ll be in shit if anyone finds out,” Robert said.

  She tried to decide if that was a threat or not. “That’s what you want to say to me?” she said. “Out of everything you could say?”

  He shrugged. “You will be in shit. I’m just being practical.”

  “So don’t tell anyone.”

  He didn’t answer. She assumed that was meant to tell her he might.

  “Yeah,” Beth said. “Or do what you want. If you want to hurt me, go ahead. I’ll just tell the department and get someone else to mark his work. It isn’t really a problem.”

  “Except for being the slutty professor who fucks her students.”

  She looked at him for a while. “Funny you said slutty then.”

  “So?”

  “You don’t think anyone else sleeps with their students? Except I’m a girl, so I shouldn’t?”

  “Don’t be stupid.”

  “I’m not. Don’t call me stupid.”

  “You’re trying to turn cheating into some half-assed feminism thing to make it okay.”

  “It wasn’t cheating, and it is a feminist thing, and nothing I did isn’t okay.”

  He thought about that for a while, she wondered if he’d argue about the cheating. “So you don’t mind me telling academic services?” he said.

  “Do what you want. Be a bully if you want. I don’t give a fuck any more.”

  Another silence. Robert was calm, wasn’t raising his voice or trying to hit her, but his eyes were angry and he was worrying about the wrong things. Beth tried to work out if it just hadn’t sunk in yet, or if it was something else. That he was so controlling he wasn’t going to let himself think about things that hurt him, and would worry about her career instead.

  “Tell me what you want to do,” she said. “And we can start talking about what happens next. At the moment I’m just waiting to see if you plan to call me names or walk out or what.”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Okay,” she said, and waited.

  “Will you stop with this guy?” Robert said. “If I ask you to?”

  “No.”

  “So we’re over?”

  Beth sat there for a while. “I don’t know.”

  “What do you want?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “I don’t understand you.”

  “Yeah,” she said. “I know.”

  She thought about Robert and ending what they had. She was strangely reluctant to let go of him, and she didn’t know why.

  “All the things we said we’d do together,” she said. “I still want to do. You should know that. None of that’s changed.”

  She meant it as a consolation, as something that might help. Robert thought it was a negotiation.

  “You just want to fuck your students too?” he said.

  She shrugged, was starting to get a little irritated. She seemed to be making all the effort.

  “Sorry,” he said.

  “It’s fine. I’m sorry everything got so complicated.”

  Silence again. Beth didn’t know what to say. This was them. This was how they’d always been, saying things that didn’t really matter instead of things that did. She sipped her wine, and Robert watched her, and she ignored him. She did actually want Robert, she thought, want him and almost need him. She needed what they were to each other. Needed the way they fit, the plan they had for their lives. It was just that lately she hadn’t liked him very much, and was losing track of herself and what actually mattered.

  She knew she was hurting Robert. She was hurting Robert, but she wanted Ethan, and somewhere along the line you had to do what was right for you. She wasn’t sure if she ought to care about Robert any more, or just get him out of her life. She didn’t know what to think about anything.

  She looked at Robert for a while and wondered how upset he really was. He wasn’t showing it, so she wasn’t sure. This was how she tore his life apart, she thought. She’d wondered sometimes how she would do it if she had to.

  Robert seemed to have been thinking too. “You still want us to be something to each other?” he said.

  “Yep. We don’t have to, though.”

  “What kind of something?”

  “I’m not sure. I don’t know what you can cope with.”

  “What, like forgiving you?”

  She sat there for a while and tried to work that out. “Forgiving me how?” she said.

  “For this. For what you did.”

  “I don’t want you to forgive me,” she said. “I want you to be okay being friends. Having each other in our lives.”

  “Oh,” Robert said, surprised. Like he hadn’t thought of that. Then he looked upset, as if he’d just realized this was all a lot worse than he’d expected.

  Beth felt a little sorry for him.

  “You’re really not ending it with him?” Robert said.

  “Nope. I don’t think so.”

  “You’re serious? I’d just assumed you’d stop with him now I’d found out.”

  “I just said I wouldn’t.”

  “I know, but…”

  “I thought you might,” she said. “Assume.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “Nothing. I thought earlier you’d assume I was ending things with Ethan. I was right.”

  “You really aren’t?”

  “I don’t know. Probably not.”

  “You’re ending things with me?”

  “That’s up to you.”

  “You want both of us? At the same time?”

  “Not really. And that wouldn’t be fair, anyway.”

  “You really have to decide what you want, Beth.”

  “I really don’t have to do anything. You really have to decide yourself. You’re still here, being vague, trying to find out what I plan to do. Just decide yourself, and tell me to get with the program or fuck off.”

  “Tell you that?”

  “Yeah. Then I’ll know. Then I can decide shit too.”

  Robert looked at her for a while. “Okay, Beth,” he said. “I’ll leave you if you do this. If you don’t end it with him.”

  “No, you won’t.”

  “I’ll try.”

  “So try.”

  She suddenly remembered that they’d been here before. That she’d wanted to break up, several times, in the first few months, and Robert had always talked her out of it. By nagging or begging or being sweet enough she felt guilty. It surprised her she’d forgotten that, and it only came back to her now.

  “Is there anything I can say to change your mind?” he said.

  “We’ve said too much. I’m sick of talking.”

  “And this is how you fix it?”

  “I told you. I’m not fixing us, I’m fixing me. The us doesn’t follow.”

  “You’re really a bitch, you know that.”

 
“Yep,” she said, and stood up. “And that pretty much settles it. I’m going back to work. There’s a couple of things I need to do.”

  “That kid?”

  “No, you dick. Review a paper. Proof-read someone’s grant application.”

  He looked at her for a moment as though he hated her, then slowly nodded. Beth suddenly realized that perhaps it wasn’t normal to go back to her office so quickly after all this, that it might look unkind.

  “Tonight,” she said. “Come up to bed when you’re ready. You don’t need to sleep on the couch or anything.”

  He looked at her for a while.

  “And I won’t make anything obvious,” she said. “I won’t be mean. You won’t see him again unless you go looking for it. I’ll go out of my way to make sure that doesn’t happen, while we work all this out.”

  “Thanks.”

  She decided she should be clear. “So don’t push if I’m being vague. Take a hint. Don’t come to my office without warning me.”

  “Yeah, I got it.”

  She kissed him quickly and got her shoes and coat and walked back to her office across the playing fields. On the way she phoned Ethan and said everything was all right.

  “Do you want to meet up?” he said.

  She thought. “Better not.”

  It seemed the thing to do. Like she should stay away from Ethan, grieve for a day she what she was losing with Robert before she got into bed with someone else.

  “Okay,” he said. “Call if you need me.”

  “Are you all right?”

  “Yeah, I’m fine. Glad it’s out there, now.”

  “Me too.”

  Silence.

  “Hey,” he said. “Can I ask what’s happening?”

  “With me and you?”

  “Yeah.”

  She hesitated. She wondered why she was so hard and uncompromising with Robert, and so willing to work around what Ethan needed from her. She didn’t really need to wonder, because she knew exactly why. She didn’t like Robert very much and she did like Ethan. It just didn’t seem fair.

  “I’d almost promise you nothing changes,” she said. “I’m that sure nothing will I’d almost promise. But I won’t actually promise.”

  “Okay.”

  “Does that make sense?”

  “Yeah, it does.”

  “Just give me a couple of days to get him out the house.”

  “And then?”

  “Then we’re back how we were. Everything is how it should be.”

  “Happy ever after,” he said.

  “Yeah.”

  “Be safe,” he said. “Okay.”

  “I will,” she said, and wondered what he was worrying about. “Nothing like that’s going to happen.”

  “Okay, but still be safe.”

  “Yeah,” she said. “Bye.”

  *

  Beth didn’t see Ethan for a couple of days, while she waited for Robert to do whatever he was going to do. She missed Ethan, and got horny, but made herself wait. She called Ethan a few times and explained she was trying to keep everything calm, to let Robert have some time, and Ethan seemed to understand.

  She was trying to give Robert space, let him decide things, and adjust, and be there to talk if he needed her, too. She felt guilty. She’d hurt him, and she’d loved him once, and she wanted him not to hurt more than he had to. She thought he’d get over this fairly quickly, if he wasn’t left alone to brood. It wasn’t like they’d been close the last year. It wasn’t like they were much more than friends. Everything that was upsetting him now was really just pride, not like a real partner had been caught with someone else. She also didn’t want him running off to report her sleeping with Ethan, wherever he might actually report that. She didn’t know if he would, and it wasn’t entirely about that, but part of it was.

  Robert was avoiding her, she thought, leaving early and staying in his office until late and pretending to be asleep when she was in the bedroom. He was drinking a bit. She could smell it when he came to bed. It was something he’d always done, when he was stressed or upset, and she didn’t really care. The silence was starting to irritate her, though. She was making herself available to help, and her help didn’t seem to be wanted. Worse, it seemed like indecision as an intentional plan, a delay by avoidance. As if he thought he could win her back by doing nothing until she got over her little tantrum. As if he thought she’d change her mind if he was just around. As if, since she was being polite enough to wait and finalize things with him before she moved on too much, he could just leave her hanging, indefinitely, making sure that if he couldn’t have her, no-one else could either, because nothing was resolved. He was probably just dealing with it all, she knew, and trying to avoid a confrontation, but it was starting to get annoying.

  By the second day of that she wanted to get on with things. She wanted Ethan. She’d almost decided she was just going to throw Robert out if he didn’t start talking soon, and then, the third morning, he did.

  He was sitting in the kitchen when she came downstairs.

  “Hey,” she said, and waited to see what he’d do.

  “We need to talk.”

  “Yeah,” she said. “I suppose we do. Let me wake up, okay?”

  She put on the kettle and went back upstairs and got dressed. She was a little surprised. She’d thought Robert would stall longer. Maybe she didn’t know him as well as she thought.

  She went back down and made coffee, ate toast, and Robert watched her while she did.

  After a while she said, “Okay.”

  “Could you tell me what happened?” he said. “I don’t understand this, and I really need to.”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Please,” he said. “Just try.”

  She thought for a while. “We’re a mess,” she said. “We’re so much a mess I don’t even know if I care how fucked up and distant we are any more. I think I’ve wanted to leave you for a while, but I’m not sure, because you weren’t here, and we never talked, so I never had to decide anything.”

  Robert looked like he wanted to cry. “Should I go?” he said. “Move out?”

  She shook her head.

  “You’re sure?”

  “Yes,” she said. “Not right away. If I say you have to leave, you’ll say you’ve only just started a job and have nowhere to live and can I wait a month, and then it’ll be another thing, and another, and on we go.”

  Now he looked like he wanted to hit her. She held her cup, got ready to throw it. He never had, had never hinted he would, but she’d never completely trusted him. He got too calm when he was angry, and he didn’t swear enough. Like he was holding everything inside.

  He just sat there, though. Strike two for not knowing him as well as she had thought.

  “I don’t know what to say,” he said.

  “You don’t need to say anything. We’re talking. To see if we feel better, I suppose.”

  “Are you going to keep seeing him?” he said. “That kid?”

  She shrugged.

  “You don’t know?”

  “It’s not your business.”

  “How’s it not my business?”

  “It just isn’t.”

  They sat there for a while.

  “It feels like I don’t know you any more,” he said. “Since you moved here. That being apart has broken us.”

  They were quiet for a while.

  “You’ll always be close to me,” she said. “This is about the worst conversation anyone can have and we’re having it together. That means something.”

  “Worst for me.”

  “I mean it. You’re closer to me than anyone. That isn’t going to change.” It was already changing, but she couldn’t tell him that either.

  “So we can be friends? You want to be friends?”

  “If you want us to be.”

  “Why?”

  “There’s a lot I like about you. About us. But I think I was starting to lose myself in us. I needed to get
me back. So I need this to end.”

  “I don’t want us to end.”

  “It has.”

  “I want to try again. Try harder.”

  “No,” she said. “It’s done. We’re over. You can’t have me back.”

  “Keep you,” he said.

  “What?”

  “I don’t want you back. I want to keep you. As far as I know you haven’t left.”

  She shrugged.

  “Would you have sex,” Robert said, “With me?”

  She thought about that. About how it might make him feel better, patch his ego a little. About how she still did actually like him, somewhere inside, and wanted him not to hurt.

  “Yeah,” she said. “If you like. Now?”

  Robert shook his head. “I don’t want to. I just wondered. If you said no then he’d have more of a claim on you than I did, and that’d mean I’d be losing you.”

  “Or I just didn’t feel like it…”

  He didn’t answer. So just some competition thing, Beth thought. Proving himself. Not trying to make himself feel better, or anything else involving feelings. She thought a little more, and decided she wasn’t actually that comfortable sleeping with Robert after all, so perhaps Ethan did have that claim. Or she had that claim, and no-one else did.

  Everything was getting confusing.

  “Actually,” she said. “Um…”

  “Don’t tell me.”

  “Okay,” Beth said, and decided this was just getting awkward. “I think I’m done,” she said. “I don’t want to talk to you about who I’m sleeping with.”

  “Yeah,” he said, sounding bitter. “Of course not.”

  “You can stay a while if you want,” she said. “I mean, it’ll be a bit weird, but stay if you need somewhere. I’m not going to throw you out.”

  He nodded, and didn’t answer, and after a while she went back upstairs to brush her teeth and get ready for work.

  *

  Beth stayed out late, saw Ethan in the afternoon in her office, but didn’t let him feel her up like he wanted to. Because it felt wrong, somehow, before Robert was sorted out, and because she was a little wary of who Robert might have told, and someone bursting in to catch her all sweaty with her student.

  She waited until after dark to go home, but Robert still wasn’t there. She went to bed, wondering if he’d be back at all.