One Plus Two Minus One Ch. 07

Then she phoned Robert and said he needed to go to a hotel tonight, that she had girls' poker night and she'd forgotten, sorry. It would go late so not to bother coming back.

Then she phoned Ethan and said, "What are you doing tonight?"

"You, I assume."

Ha ha, she thought, but was glad he was free. She hadn't thought to check first.

"Yep," she said. "Hope so. Want to meet my friends too?"

"Sure. Are you okay with that?"

"These friends, yeah. Do you play poker?"

"Not really."

"Do you know how?"

"Kind of."

She thought for a moment, suspicious. "Like don't right up until you hustle me, or really don't?"

"Really don't. I get lost with the seven card draw and all that shit."

"Yeah, that's okay. It's just basic poker. You sure?"

"Yeah. I'd like to meet your people."

"Come to my place. After seven. Be a bit late, I'll text when it's clear."

*

Poker night happened once a month and was loud and rude and they all got very drunk. Beth didn't text Ethan until she was sure Robert had gone for the night, so the others were there, drinking, teasing her, making her wonder if this was a terrible idea.

When Ethan knocked she got up and met him at the door. She was holding a cigar. She handed him whiskey, and kissed him like she'd been wanting to for a week, all open and needy and desperate.

He pulled a face when he tasted her mouth.

"Man up," she said, grinning. "That's the taste of testosterone."

"Yeah," he said. "Just what I always wanted in a girlfriend."

"More," she said, and kissed him again, and he didn't seem to really mind her smoky mouth.

He was touching her back, sliding his hand around. He reached up her front and put his hand on her tit.

"Yep," she said into his mouth. "Poker night. No girly shit. This is a night to be men and do manly things."

He thought about that for a moment, then said, "That's just creepy."

So she flashed him, and he stared, and got interested in kissing her again.

"Nope," she said. "Come and meet everyone."

She pulled him backwards towards the lounge.

"Oh yeah," she said. "By the way. You perve, we all kill you. Just so you know."

"Perve at what?"

"Ah, dude. A night to be men, manly things?"

He looked blank.

"No-one's got a bra on, you dick, and some of them are your professors. So you perve, and first I kill you, and then they all do too."

He grinned, and nodded. "Okay."

They were sitting around the kitchen table filling her lounge with vile smoke. She had the ranch sliders open and the kitchen extractor fans on in the hope it would help, but it didn't really. It never did.

Beth pulled Ethan over and told him everyone's name, and felt like she was fourteen and introducing her first boyfriend. They said hi, and Amanda said they knew about him, but he didn't seem too worried.

"Hi Doctor Dimitrova," he said to Sofia.

"You know each other?" Beth said. Sofia was looking blank too.

"Last year," Ethan said. "Information theory."

"Right," Sofia said. "How did you do?"

"Shit," Ethan said. "Not you as well."

Everyone looked at him.

"Yeah," Beth said. "Her too. I asked him that."

A few smiles.

"So how did you do?" Anna said.

"An A. In both."

"Good," Anna said. "Can't let Beth have a sub-standard toyboy."

For a horrible moment Beth thought this was going to come unstuck. Ethan stood where he was, surprised. The others looked at him, wondering what to do.

Beth grabbed his hand, and squeezed, a bit worried.

"Fair enough," Ethan said, and kissed Beth. "I'll try not to be."

Anna grinned. Sofia looked annoyed, like she was jealous. Ethan seemed to be okay. Beth decided she'd had enough, and pushed Ethan into a chair, the one next to hers. "Sit," she said. "Play. You know the rules?"

"I'll remember."

Beth got him beer, poured him a whisky, stuck a cigar in his mouth and lit it. Then sat down, and pushed a stack of chips towards him.

He looked at the cash in the chip box. "Are we playing for money?"

"I paid yours," Beth said.

He took out his wallet, and she wondered if she should have warned him about that. She leaned over and whispered, "Don't be a fucking asshole in front my friends."

"I should pay."

"We all earn a lot. A lot more than you. And we're playing for a fair bit of money."

"How much?"

She held up a chip. It had a ten printed on it.

"Dollars?" he said.

"Yeah."

He looked at the rest. Some fifties, one or two a hundred. "How much is on the table?"

"Don't worry about it." She kissed him. "We'll talk about it later."

He didn't seem sure, but let her talk him into it. They started playing, and played fast. Ethan was the slowest one to make decisions for the first few hands. Beth wondered if she should have warned him. About the money, and that they did this a lot, and were all quite good. Part of her wanted to see how he'd react. The others had brought guys to poker night before, despite Amanda making a fuss. Most of the guys got sulky being beaten by a bunch of girls, even the sensitive academic ones. Robert wouldn't take it very well, Beth was pretty sure. The couple of times they'd played strip poker she'd got him naked while she was still mostly dressed.

Ethan lost money for a few hands, and people folded a lot. Then Beth beat Amanda, bluffed Amanda while Amanda tried to bluff her back.

Ethan was watching, and thinking. Beth could see him out the corner of her eye, and it was a bit distracting.

"What?" she said.

"You're good."

She was pleased, but didn't let it show. She sucked on the cigar. "Yep."

"How? Why?"

"What do I do?"

He looked at her for a moment and didn't understand. She liked when people didn't think this through. Everyone know probability theory was invented by eighteenth-century card hustlers looking for an edge. They knew it, and they never thought about it when it really mattered.

Beth looked at Amanda and smirked.

"Hey Beth," Amanda said. "What's the odds of getting dealt a full house in five-card poker?"

"Six hundred and ninety to one. Roughly. Hey Amanda, what's the odds of getting dealt two pairs?"

"Twenty to one, about."

They both looked at Ethan and grinned.

"Oh, fuck," he said.

Beth liked that. She liked it a lot.

"I thought you hated statistics?" Ethan said.

"This is combinatorial maths, that's completely different."

"No, it isn't."

Beth kept grinning.

"It's much worse," Amanda said. "Hey Beth, seven-card draw. What's the odds of completing an inside straight draw on the turn?"

Beth sat there for a moment and worked it out. It was a pretty basic binomial calculation, n choose k where n was the outcomes you wanted and k was the cards left in the hand. She'd expect any of her grad students to be able to do it, but she was the only mathematician in the room so she could impress. "Ten and a half to one," she said. "Ten point seven, maybe?"

"Is that right?" Ethan said to Amanda.

"No fucking idea."

"It's right," Beth said.

"Which is why we play five-card draw," Amanda said. "We can all memorize these odds. Otherwise, she wins all the time, just sits there looking expressionless so you can't even bluff. Because she knows she's the only one at the table who can work out the odds as she goes."

"Shit," Ethan said. "That's awful."

"Isn't it?" Beth said. "Play cards."

Anna shuffled and dealt.

"I thought you didn't like real numbers," Ethan said to Beth.

"This is probability. One minus some shit. It's a fraction."

"I really don't think it is."

"That one multiplies out to eight hundred and fifty-one over a thousand. That's a fraction, not a fucking real number."

He looked at her. Just sat there and stared. There was something in his face, like there had been the first few days.

"What?" she said.

"I really fucking like you, you know that? I really do."

"Get a fucking room," Amanda said.

"Stop trying to distract me," Beth said. "Play the fucking cards."

They were loud. They swore too much. They drank a lot. Anna sat there and blew smoke rings and looked smug while everyone else tried. They were all themselves here, with each other, and Beth watched Ethan out the corner of her eye and hoped he liked them. It almost mattered more than if he liked her.

It was hard being them. It shouldn't be, and it was easier than it used to be, but it was still a little hard. They were all pushing into places that some people assumed they didn't belong, and the little irritations grated sometimes. When people asked about Beth having children and how long she'd be around, as if her career didn't actually matter to her. When she was asked why she'd chosen the field she had, as if it was something unusual, but no-one ever thought to ask the guy standing next to her. They were tiny irritations, nothing more, but they became a burden when it was day after day. She pushed back. Everyone had their own way of pushing back. Beth was rude and bad-tempered, to show she was an unstable genius, and it actually worked, people treated her as if she was. The others all had their tricks too. They all kept up a pretence a lot of the time, and then they came here, and had their monthly game, and were loud and themselves, and it was fun.

The strange thing was, Beth had noticed, the average woman in science was always slightly smarter than the average guy. You didn't do this if you were a girl and only average, you didn't even try.

She watched the game, and decided Ethan was able to deal with them. She liked him a lot more for that. She poured another round of shots and put her feet up on his lap, and smiled when he looked over.

Ethan seemed to be able to cope. He could cope with fucking his maths professor, and he seemed to be coping with drunken high-stakes bra-less poker with his compsci professor too. He was trying to blow smoke rings while Anna told him what to do, and as far as Beth could tell he hadn't glanced down once.

Robert wouldn't have managed. He wouldn't have been able to fit in. Ethan was younger and a student, and that might have made a difference, but it was probably mostly because he was him. He didn't have to control the room, like some guys did. He just went along with everyone else.

Beth looked at him and wondered if she'd found the only smart guy who could stand her in the whole world. The only one without an ego so big it got in the way.

They played more cards. Ethan was slowly losing but didn't seem to mind. They reached a hand in which everyone folded except Beth and Ethan. Beth kept bidding, pushed out a couple of hundred dollars in chips, all the time looking at Ethan and pressing her foot against his leg. He got the hint and kept going, right up until she folded.

"You bitch," Sofia said. "That's cheating."

The others seemed to think so too.

"What? I decided I was wrong about what he had."

"You never fold."

"I did that time."

"Because you're fucking him."

"Maybe because I know him better."

Anna tried to grab Beth's cards, turn them over, but Beth snatched them up and shuffled them into the deck.

Two hands later, Beth and Ethan ended up in another bidding contest and this time, because Beth had given Ethan a stack of chips, it was her who was running low.

"You're out of chips," Ethan said.

"You're playing with my money."

"So?"

The others laughed.

"How do you guys do this?" Ethan said. "Do you go all in or something?"

"Nope," Amanda said. "You can take an IOU if you want."

Ethan grinned. "Yeah," he said. "I don't think so."

"Low," Anna said "Really low."

"I want to call," Beth said.

"You don't have enough," Amanda said.

"I know. I call with me."

Everyone looked at her. "How do you mean you?" Ethan said.

"You win, you get me."

"Don't I anyway?"

"Probably not if you're going to be a dickhead playing cards," she said, but grinned.

He looked at her.

"Shit," Beth said. "You get me anyway, just in less of a trophy kind of way."

He thought about that. "So put something in the pot."

Beth looked around the table.

"Dare you," Ethan said.

Beth pulled her top off, and threw it on the table. Sat there with bare tits, grinning and puffing on her cigar, while everyone else laughed.

Ethan was staring at her.

"What?" she said.

"You're the sexiest thing I've ever seen."

"Good," Beth said, and took the cigar out her mouth. "So we're all in?"

He nodded.

Amanda stood up. "I really want to see how this ends, but you know, I don't. Time to go I think."

She started counting chips, cashing herself out. The others did too. Ethan and Beth sat there and stared at each other. Everyone left, and he kept staring.

"Go on," she said. "Dare you."

He leaned over and kissed her. Pulled her shorts down and tipped her backwards onto the table and ate her out, then fucked her, with the cigar still in her mouth. Beth kept wanting to giggle, right up until she came.

When they were done, still beneath him, she reached over and picked up his cards and looked. "You shit," she said. "I'd have won."

"I know," he said.

"You just did that so I wouldn't call," she said.

"Yeah."

"Dickhead," she said, grinning.

"You're a cool fucking woman," he said, looking down at her. "Dude."

"I am," she said.

"I really fucking like you," he said, then stopped quite suddenly.

She understood. "Don't," she said.

He kept looking at her.

"Hop off," she said, and pushed until he let her up.

He was still watching her. She started picking up chips, putting them back in the box.

"Beth..." he said.

"Not yet," she said. "It's too sudden."

"No, it isn't."

"Just let me sort out what's going on," she said without looking at him. "Then we can start saying that shit to each other."

Ethan nodded slowly.

She looked up. "Thanks."

"It's okay."

"So what did you think?" she said. "Of the girls?"

"Scary."

She laughed.

"Seriously. I thought you were a one-off."

"Yeah," she said. "You should see the staff club on a Friday. Real lampshade-on-the-head shit there."

He looked like he couldn't decide if he believed her.

"I'm lying," she said. "That isn't true. Those four are special people. Pretty much everyone else around the place is boring as fuck."

"That's kind of a relief."

She looked at him, a little concerned.

"I liked them," he said. "I really did. Don't worry."

"Okay," she said, relieved.

"Seeing you like that, with them. You're different."

"You keep saying that. About lots of things."

"You are."

She wasn't sure if she should be pleased. She reached into the chip box, took out the remaining cash. It should be about six hundred dollars. She pushed it over.

"I can't take that," he said.

"It's yours."

"You won."

"My cards would have won. You called. I didn't have enough money. You won the hand, so you get this."

"What about your shirt?"

"Didn't count," she said. "You said you wouldn't take an IOU."

"You're not annoyed?" he said after a moment.

"Not much."

He seemed undecided, until she grinned. He still hadn't taken the money.

"You paid anyway," he said. "It doesn't matter who won, it's still all yours."

"Fair enough," she said, left the money where it was, and went to the stairs.

"Should I be following you?"

"If you want."

She heard him coming up the stairs behind her. "I'm going to have a bath," she said. "If you want. Just because."

She lay in the bath and finished the cigar and blew smoke towards the extractor fan, and Ethan stared at her breast and the way her nipple poked up all hard and wet through the bubbles they were sitting in.

"I love how smart you are," he said. "But fuck you have nice tits."

She grinned.

"Are you sleeping with him?" Ethan said. "The guy."

"Sleeping," she said. She pointed. "One bed."

"Having sex," he said.

She sat there for a while, then said, "Are you sure you want to know?"

He looked like he was suddenly wondering that himself. "Yeah," he said.

"Three times since he got here. And I didn't like it."

"Okay," Ethan said.

"I want you," she said.

"Not enough to have me."

She didn't answer.

"That's true, isn't it?"

She shrugged. And her tit moved. And he watched it, like he was hypnotized.

She stretched, and let the water run down her, and that seemed to be the end of talking about serious things.

Later, after more sex, after she'd tasted him and felt him and remembered everything she was missing, she lay there exhausted and said, "You can stay if you want, but you have to go at six in the morning. No bullshitting around, just go."

"Six?" he said. "Not later?"

"I can't risk it."

"Yeah, I'll stay, of course. But shit, we couldn't wait a bit later?"

Beth looked at him. "Seven. With an alarm at five to, and you're out by seven exactly. Out and down the road."

"Okay."

"Promise."

He smiled at the ceiling. She watched him and didn't think he realized.

"I promise," he said.

She stroked him, and almost said something, said she liked him or wanted him or couldn't stand to be without him, but none of that was fair to say, so she stayed silent.

Later, though, going to sleep, she whispered, "Fuck I've missed you at night, like this."

"Yeah," he said, "Me too," and she thought his voice sounded a little hoarse when he spoke, but it might have just been the cigars.

*

When Robert came home the next day he sniffed and said, "You don't want hippies in the house because they smell?"

She looked at him and said, "What?"

"Years ago. You said you didn't want people around because they smelled."

"Did I?" Beth said. "What do you mean people?"

"My people."

"That seems kind of rude," she said. "Are you sure I said that?"

She was in a good mood. He just looked at her, and she grinned.

"Cigars smell better than pot," she said. "And it'll clear in a day or two. Stop fucking moaning."

He shrugged, and looked annoyed. Him looking annoyed irritated her, and suddenly she was angry, wanting a fight.

"My house," she said. "My rules."

"You never used to smoke inside."

"I never used to smoke. Now I do."

He shrugged.

"Just fucking deal with it," she said. "Okay?"

He nodded. "Okay."

She waited a moment more, in case he wanted to add anything else, but he just went and sat down and picked up a book and that seemed to be the end of it.

She was being a bitch on purpose, trying to provoke something. She knew why. She knew exactly what had got into her, and she wasn't sure she wanted to stop.