One Plus Two Minus One (13 page)

Beth looked at her.

“I checked the rules,” Amanda said.

“Okay.”

“You know there’s rules, right?”

“I know there’s rules, I just didn’t want to
look at them.”

“
As long as
you didn’t pressure him into it, it’s okay.
I think that’s what it’s saying. And don’t be stupid
during.”

“
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.