One Plus Two Minus One (18 page)

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, like 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.

So she had to wait.

She got horny
and irritated and got no work done, but she made herself
try.
And having to make herself do
anything always irritated her even more.

*

Beth hadn’t
seen Ethan for three days when she next had a lecture for his
course.
She’d been trying to work out how
to meet him safely, and had been trying to get herself over him and
pay attention to Robert, and it had halfway worked. She was texting
Ethan a lot, and they’d spoken on the phone twice, but she hadn’t
actually seen him. Then she walked into the lecture, and looked at
him, and wanted to grab him and fuck him right there.

She made
herself stop.
She made herself not even
look his way.

She was
wet.
She’d got wet walking over to the
lecture theatre, and she’d made herself look good because she knew
Ethan would be there. Right now, damp undies and all, she was
probably the closest thing he’d ever have to his professor fantasy,
and he didn’t even know it.

She
taught.
She avoided looking his way until
the class was over, then told them all to clear off. He started
dawdling up the back, packing up slowly, waiting until the room was
empty.

There were
always a couple of students who hung around after a lecture.
Usually one with a question, and one an older
student, returning to study, wanting to make friends or trying to
impress Beth. She chased them away, told them to come to office
hours, and wiped the board down slowly until the room was
clear.

She knew
Ethan was watching her, almost as if she could feel his
eyes.
She knew where he was without
turning to look, knew when he stood up from the squeak of his
chair, and knew when he was coming towards her from his footsteps
on the floor.