One Plus Two Minus One (10 page)

“Take off your top,” he said.

She shook her
head.
“Later.”

“Please,” he said.

She put down
the spoon and pulled her shirt off and didn’t look at him while she
stirred the sauce.
Then, while it
simmered, she sat on the bench in front of him and he kissed her
for a while.

*

They sat at
Beth’s dining table and ate.
She liked to
sit there, liked the feel of smooth polished wood and the rituals
of owning furniture. She’d spent ten years as a student on broken
sofas, renting year by year, giving away what she had each time she
moved and starting again. It was good to be settled, to have a
table. To have polished wood that was big and heavy and an utter
shit to move.

They sat
across a corner, at one end, and she watched him as they
ate.
She still had her shirt off, and her
tits were moving slightly every time she moved her arm. Not much,
because she didn’t have much to jiggle around, but enough Ethan was
watching. She liked that he was. They weren’t really talking
much.

She wasn’t
sure if she still wanted to talk, or if she was just being polite
before they fucked again.
Liking her mind
implied they should talk, though.

She got up
and put her shirt back on.
He watched
her, and grinned.

“You were distracted,” she said.

“Yep.”

She sat back
down and wondered what to say.
Nothing
came to mind except another lecture about maths. She supposed they
didn’t have that much in common.

“Have you ever been in love?” Ethan said
suddenly.

Beth was
surprised.
“What?”

“Have you?”

She chewed
for a while.
“Why do you
care?”

“I just wondered.”

She
shrugged.
“I don’t know. Why?”

“I just wondered.”

“So don’t.”

“I wondered who you are, when you stop being
a professor.”

She sat there
for a while, thinking about people liking her mind, and how far
that went.
He’d jumped straight past
small-talk to really big shit and she was a little annoyed, feeling
a bit pressured. Like he should have asked her favorite color
first.

“I’m me,” she said.

“I want to know who that is.”

“
Yeah,” she
said.
“How about we fuck for a bit first,
then we decide if we want to be best friends forever?”

He
shrugged.
She ate for a while, and now
felt guilty. She supposed there was no real reason he shouldn’t
ask. “You really want to know?” she said. “To know me?”

He nodded.

She
thought.
“Nerd at school. Geek, whatever.
Not cool. Not that many friends. I used to skate a bit.”

“I can see that.”

“Oh really?”

“
Yeah.
The tattoos, the swearing. And you’re
fit.”

“I walk to work.”

“
Yeah,” he
said.
“Of course. That’s it. Do you still
skateboard?”

She pointed
to the hall cupboard.
“I used to commute
on it, when I was a student. Decided it was a bit undignified in a
professor. And you can’t with heels on.”

He nodded, said, “What else?”

“
You tell
me.
What have you worked out?”

“
You like
sex.
A lot. More than you like to admit
to yourself.”

“Yeah, that’s probably true.”

“
It’s
true.
You’re taking risks, having me
here. But are. So…”

That made sense.

“You’re ambitious,” he said.

“Obviously.”

“You aren’t sure if you need more people in
your life.”

She looked at him.

“
Because
you’re talking to me like this.
Not just
fucking me and telling me to go. Or telling me to stop asking
personal stuff and actually meaning it.”

“
Okay,” she
said.
“You’re good at people. Smartass.
Better than me.”

“
You used to
be more nervous about lecturing.
When you
started.”

“
You can
stop,”
Then, “Why’s that?”

“
You used to
dress up.
Now you don’t.”

That was
true.
“It got hot, too.”

“Not in the middle of winter, when I’m
talking about.”

She glared at
him.
After a while said, “Yeah, fuck you
too.”

“Why do you swear so much?”

“No fucking idea.”

He grinned.

“
Okay,” she
said.
“What about you? If we’re doing
this, tell me about you.”

“
Same,
really.
Too smart for school. Not many
friends. More than some people because I had music and girls, but
not many. College was a big thing. Like starting life over
again.”

“Same here.”

“
It’s a pity
all the same people follow you here though.
You know, the ones you’ve always been hoping to
avoid.”

“
Stay a
bit.
They’ll get bachelor’s degrees and
piss off. Then it gets better. I never really talked to anyone
until honors.”

Ethan nodded.

“
I hate high
schools,”
Beth said. “Everyone in them. I
really fucking hate them. And teachers. I don’t have time for
people who are just going to end up there.’

“That’s obvious.”

“How’s that?”

“
In
class.
You pretty much ignore questions
from people you think are stupid. Don’t give them any time. Try and
shut them down if they want to talk.”

“I’m not that bad.”

“Yeah, you are.”

She chewed,
decided to be honest.
“Maths is hard. If
they can’t do it, they can’t. The whole class doesn’t need to hear
me explain everything two or three times because someone doesn’t
get it.”

“The whole class might not understand
either.”

“One person does.”

“What if they don’t?”

“
One person
always does.
That’s the one I care
about.”

“
And the rest
of us?
Me?”

She shrugged.

“Seriously?”

“
Yep,” she
said.
“I don’t give a shit.”

He looked at her and she just looked
back.

“
It’s a
university,” she said.
“I teach at the
right speed. I teach the speed I was taught. And the people who
taught me. And people before them. All the same, at the same pace,
for hundreds of years. We know how to do this, and it’s not an
evolving field. Most of it doesn’t change. Just now we have all
this white noise, all these pointless people running around buzzing
in the air about how I should do my job.”

He seemed to be waiting.

“
I teach at
the speed you need,” she said.
“You and
three or four others like you. That’s who I’m there for. The rest
of the class are just high school teachers waiting to happen. They
don’t need to understand what I’m talking about, they just need to
sit there for three years and leave with a degree.”

“That’s pretty fucking brutal.”

“That’s what a university is.”

He kept
looking at her, and she wasn’t sure if he was offended or upset or
something.
“I said I was teaching you,”
she said, in case he hadn’t noticed.

“
What if I’m
not as smart as you think?” he said.
“What if I slip?”

“I’ll still fuck you.”

“
You
sure?
Because sometimes it doesn’t seem
like it.”

“I’m sure.”

He looked at her for a while longer, and she
wondered if he was getting insecure.

“
Maybe I
wouldn’t have at first,” she said.
“But
I’m getting used to you. I’ll still fuck you if you turn out to be
stupid.”

He looked at her for a while, then said,
“Thanks.”

Beth
grinned.
“Yeah, that might have sounded a
bit up myself.”

“A bit.”

She ate another forkful.

“
Don’t
worry,” Ethan said.
“I’ll give you a
really nice teaching survey. Since everyone else is going to hate
you.”

“
No offence,
but they’re all twenty.
With
twenty-year-old brains. I’m hot and I’m rude so they give me good
scores. And I don’t give a shit anyway.”

“
Sexy,” he
said.
“Great fuck, tastes better than any
other professor.”

“Don’t you dare.”

“It’s anonymous.”

“Yeah, sure it is.”

He looked surprised.

“
I know all
your handwriting.
Or I would, if I read
the surveys or cared.”

“
You
do.
Whoever collects them
doesn’t.”

“
And if you
write that it means one of my students thinks I’m a good
fuck.
Or want to find out. They just
don’t know which one.” She thought. “And they’d probably hunt you
down anyway thinking you were a danger to me. So don’t.”

He grinned
and chewed and looked at her.
“What’s
with the guy in the photo?”

Beth shook
her head.
“You don’t need to know that
yet.”

“
Another
thing about you,” Ethan said.
“You’re
controlling.”

“
No
shit.
I’m your professor.”

She grinned at him and said, “Eat, I want to
fuck you again.”

*

They went back upstairs and he looked at the
vibrators, still on the floor, and said, “Which is your
favorite?”

“
Nope,” she
said.
“No way. I don’t know you nearly
that well.”

He kept looking at her.

“
No,” she
said again.
Sharply.

“Use one.”

“Not a fucking chance.”

“Please,” he said.

“
Eat me
instead,” she said.
“Then we’ll
see.”

He made her
come with his mouth, then looked at her all expectantly, like she
was actually going to get herself off again with a dildo.
She shook her head and laughed at him when he
reached for one anyway. Reached over hopefully, but didn’t really
seem to mind when she refused, like he’d known she wouldn’t all
along.

He was still hard, though, from thinking
about that, or from having her in his mouth, or something.

She lay there
and looked at his cock and wondered how to get him off.
She’d come a few times, and didn’t need sex
again, and she’d never quite understood the rules about oral. You
definitely didn’t have to the first time, if you were a girl and he
fucked you, maybe not the first few times, but at some point you
started looking like a selfish bitch, and she didn’t want that. He
was a bit ahead of her on giving each other head, and she wanted to
even it up.

“Lie down,” she said, and sat up.

He kissed her, and grinned, and did.

She bent over
him, then stopped.
“It won’t be as good
as the other times,” she said. “In the bar and
downstairs.”

“
Don’t
care.
And it will.”

“
Nah, not
without all the rest of it.
All the hurry
and horny.”

“I don’t care.”

“
I’m just
saying.
Don’t be disappointed. Don’t
think badly of me.”

“
I’m not,” he
said, and looked at her, and she wondered for a moment if she
shouldn’t have said that, if he was going to worry she’d meant
something else, that it hadn’t been good for her.
He seemed to just be horny, though. He reached
up and grabbed the side of her face, and kissed her, then pulled
her slowly onto his cock.

She shouldn’t
let him do that.
She shouldn’t like it
when he pushed her around like that, but she did.

He was hot
and hard in her mouth, felt him twitch as she tasted him with her
tongue.
Her hair kept getting in the way,
and she didn’t want to stop and find a hair tie, so he held it for
her, stroked her shoulders, and told her how wonderful she
felt.

She was
pretty sure it was some head from the teacher fantasy, but she was
starting not to mind.
She was here too.
She slid off the bed, said, “Over here,” and knelt in front of him,
on the floor. He stood over her, and she slid her mouth up and down
his cock, and kept her hands away, behind her back, except for when
he popped out. If she was going to be a fantasy, she may as well do
it properly.

He
came.
He came a lot, even now, so it
spilled out onto her lips and chin. She swallowed him and licked
him clean and got back up on the bed. Kissed him with some of his
come still sticky on her lips, just to see if he would.

He seemed to know what she was doing. “I
don’t care,” he said.

“Good.”