One Plus Two Minus One (19 page)

He stopped
beside her, and stood there without a word.
She kept facing the whiteboard, holding the cleaner. She
didn’t turn around.

“
I want you,”
he said softly.
“I really, really fucking
want you.”

“
I know,” she
said.
She turned around and started
putting course guides and notes in a box. “I’m working out
how.”

“Your office?”

She shook her
head.
“People will see.”

“My place.”

“You have roommates.”

“Please,” he said.

“Just wait.”

People
started coming in, the students for the next class.
They would wait a while to come into a mostly
empty room, but not forever. She heard voices, the soft thuds of
fire doors swinging open and closed. She looked at Ethan and
ignored the rest of them.

“
Your
office,” Ethan said quietly.
“Just once,
tonight.”

She
hesitated.
“Okay.”

“Six?”

She bit her
lip.
She wanted to say later, that she’d
go down and let him in. She wanted them to be able to make more
noise, but she didn’t know what Robert was expecting from her yet,
or when he thought she should be home.

She realized
she was thinking like she was having an affair, and that she
shouldn’t be.
Even though she
was.

“Six,” she said, and picked up the box of
papers.

As she left
she glared at him, then looked at the other door to the
room.
He understood, and went the other
way, out the other door, instead of following her.

He got
her.
He got her well enough that any
choices she needed to be making should be easy, but somehow they
weren’t.

*

In her office, on her desk, with Ethan deep
inside her, Beth came, and bit his shoulder, and sighed into his
ear, “Fuck, I need you.”

He looked at her, and seemed surprised, then
she squeezed herself and licked his neck and he came too,
distracting him.

When he was done, even while he was
finishing, he said, “I heard that.”

“I know,” she said.

“
Was it
true?
Do you?”

She
nodded.
She didn’t want to meet his eyes,
was embarrassed for some reason, but she nodded.

He reached
back, felt around for the chair behind himself, and sat
down.
His knees were shaking. They often
did if he came standing up.

He looked up
at her, and she perched on her desk and looked back.
She should wipe, had picked up tissues to do so,
but he was looking right at her and he liked that kind of view and
she wanted him to remember her. She might not see him as much, for
the next little while. She squeezed a little again, tried to drip,
but wasn’t sure how well it worked.

She sat there
and let him look.
She was naked from the
waist down, because she hadn’t expected this and had worn jeans
today. She could have pulled them down to her knees and bent over,
got him to do her from behind, but she’d wanted to be held, wanted
to look at his face while he was inside her, and that surprised her
a little too.

She sat on
her desk with a bare ass and wasn’t bothered by getting caught any
more.
She relaxed after she came, was
less anxious about things like that. The door was locked and the
building was quiet and she didn’t especially care if they were
caught, not really. It would solve a lot of problems.

Ethan had
teased her about that before, about being anxious until she got off
and then not giving a shit.
He thought
that was funny, because he said most people were the opposite, only
started worrying after they came. She’d wanted to ask how the fuck
he knew that, but didn’t, because part of her was starting to get
possessive and jealous and she didn’t want to know. She’d surprised
herself one morning a week ago by getting herself off thinking
about his threeway, imagining the other two with him. Surprised
herself because she’d never fantasized about someone’s past
partners before, and also because she’d felt a sour little taste of
jealousy after she came. There were things going on she didn’t
quite understand, and she really didn’t like that kind of
confusion.

She sat on
her desk and looked at him and felt him, a little of him still
left, sticky inside her.
He looked at her
and was so serious he wasn’t staring at her naked bits, he was
looking at her face.

She put her
knees wide apart just to see if he’d look, and he did.
It felt too much like a medical exam though, a
bit of a weird one with semen up inside her, so she put her knees
together again and grinned instead.

“
What did
that mean?” he said.
“That you need
me.”

“I don’t know.”

He looked at her for a while.

“
Fuck,” she
said.
“I really don’t. I just said
it.”

“Did you mean it?”

She
nodded.
“I do, yeah.”

He was
thinking.
“So you’re not trying to end
this?” he said.

She was
surprised.
“Shit, of course
not.”

“Oh.”

“You thought I was?”

He
shrugged.
“Like a non-confrontational
thing, you know. Just ignore me, let it drift until it
ends.”

“
When we
talked,” she said.
“I said…”

“I know.”

She didn’t understand.

“
Well, I said
that,” she said.
“And it was only the
other day…”

“
You would
say that.
If you were trying to let
things end.”

It was true,
but still.
“That’d be kind of
cold.”

“Yeah.”

“Is that what you’d think I’d do?”

He
shrugged.
Then said, “No, I know you
wouldn’t. Just part of me wondered, that’s all.”

She should
remember he could be as insecure as she could.
She should remember he wasn’t really that cocky little fuck
she’d met at the party months ago.

He’d probably
actually feel worse, right now, more unsure, because she knew what
was going on, and was distracted by
Robert, and had Robert, and Ethan was just wondering,
suddenly missing her all the hours she’d normally have filled in
his day. Her worries about being used, being tricked, were probably
now his.

“
I’m sorry,”
she said.
“I didn’t mean you to think
that.”

“
It’s
fine.
I was just being…”

“
No,” she
said, and leaned forward to kiss him.
“No, I’m not doing that. Not ever.”

He looked at her.

“
Never,” she
said.
“I can’t promise you much, but I
fucking swear to you I’ll be honest with you no matter what, and
that I won’t be cruel.”

“Okay.”

“Fuck me again.”

He stood up
and slid into her again, slid in all slithery and warm because she
was still thick with him.
She liked this,
now they’d started doing it, him always wanting twice and not using
condoms. One time just became the next, in one long squelchy fuck.
He didn’t seem to care about the mess they made, almost seemed to
like it, and he never went completely soft, so she could just start
again when she wanted to.

She wanted to
tell him how she felt, to say how much she wanted him, but she
didn’t know how.
She didn’t know how to
say he was a better man than Robert without it coming out wrong,
and she didn’t know how to say how much she liked sex with him,
without it sounding like all she cared about was that, rather than
him, and who he was.

He was
thinking about sex anyway, not feelings.
She could see it on his face. He was being a guy, just
fucking her, not thinking about anything else.

She stayed
quiet, and kissed his mouth, and felt him inside her.
She hugged him as she came, held herself against
his chest so she could feel him close, and kept hold of him, made
him stay where he was, as he came too.

She held onto him a little longer, breathing
hard.

“
I just need
time to sort this out,” she said after a while.
“I want you. And if I want this to end, I’ll tell you. But
I don’t.”

“Okay.”

She looked at
him and wanted to ask, to know how much he wanted her too, but it
wasn’t fair to try and make him tell her.
He might be trying to protect his feelings, trying to hide
them from himself.

She pushed him back, and wiped herself.

He grinned at
her, happy enough because he’d just got off, she thought.
He kissed her, and she kissed him back, a bit
desperately, wondering how they were going to get through this, and
if it was even fair to want to.

“
Hey,” he
said.
“Don’t look like that.”

“
Yeah,” she
said.
“I know.”

He held her for a while, and told her it
would be okay, and she just nodded, and then said, “I should
go.”

He walked out with her, kissed her again in a
pool of darkness under a tree, and left her to walk home.

Robert
didn’t seem to have noticed she was gone, just
said hi and went back to what he was reading, and that irritated
her too. She’d wasted time she could have been with Ethan and
Robert didn’t even bother paying attention to where she
was.

She went and
had a shower, and only then thought she should have done that at
her office.
She still had Ethan inside
her, must smell of sex, and of another man on her skin, and she
hadn’t even thought to worry.

Maybe she’d
stopped worrying so much, or maybe she wasn’t very good at
cheating.
Or perhaps she really just
didn’t care if Robert caught her, even though she was going through
the motions.

She washed
herself, and made herself come again in the shower, and
Robert still hadn’t noticed how long she’d been
in there when she went downstairs to get something to
eat.

*

Robert
started going to political demonstrations. He’d
always done this sort of thing, and always seemed to think Beth was
going to go with him until she laughed and said no.

Sometimes she
actually laughed.
He had causes, dozens
of causes, and although she understood he thought a lot needed
doing to fix the world, she also thought a bit of focus might
help.

“
Beth,” he
said.
“Please. This is
important.”

“
No, it
isn’t,” she said.
“It’s a waste of time.
No-one cares.”

She took her
chance to sneak away and see Ethan while
Robert was distracted. And the rest of the time she schemed
to avoid having sex with Robert.

She started
going to bed early or late, so he was asleep when she got there or
she could pretend to be.
She started
sleeping in clothes, just so she didn’t turn him on by mistake,
even though she had trouble getting to sleep with anything on. He
noticed and asked why she was sleeping in a tee shirt now. She said
it was colder, so he turned the heat up, without asking, until she
said, sharply, that he should watch the fucking power
bill.

One night he
caught her, obviously still awake, and started kissing her, so she
lied and said she had her period.
Because
he was fussy, unlike Ethan, and had never wanted to then. It worked
for that night, and the next few, and she was pleased, except then
she had wear sensible undies for a week, and leave a box of tampons
out, and flush one every so often in case he checked, and then
remember to take her pill without a break, so she didn’t get it two
weeks later and make him think she was pregnant or miscarrying or
had ovarian cancer or something.

It pissed her
off she had to bother, because he wouldn’t leave her alone.
Having a period pissed her off at the best of
times, but it really irritated her now.

She saw Ethan
again, and got laid, and that helped, and then a week later
Robert asked her for sex directly, and she was
trapped. He said they hadn’t in a while, and should, and said it
all sweetly like he was worried they were drifting apart or
something.

So Beth had
to say no directly, or let him.
Or say
she’d been worn out by her toyboy, sorry.

So she got
undressed and he went down on her, and she didn’t feel a
thing.
It was strange. Even though she
wasn’t really interested, she’d have thought the basic mechanics
would mean she got something out of it. A tongue on her was a
tongue on her and he’d never been that bad at it before, but she
just didn’t care. She sighed a bit and gasped now and then and she
didn’t exactly mean to fake, but she started off implying she was
enjoying it more than she was, then followed through on the
lie.