One Plus Two Minus One Ch. 08

Beth and Ethan went to a hotel for a night. She told Robert she was going out with her poker friends and would stay over where she ended up, and he just nodded, and didn't ask her anything else. She'd been anticipating another complicated lie, like with the condoms, so she could get out the house without him making a fuss, but he didn't seem bothered at all. She couldn't decide if he was confident enough not to care where she was, or worried enough he didn't want to start a fight. She was pretty sure it wasn't worry, though. Robert never saw problems until they slapped him in the face.

She felt a little self-conscious checking into the hotel with Ethan, as if everyone knew why they were there, and knew he was her student, and half of them were on their phones right now to all their friends. She looked around at a roomful of strangers ignoring her and told herself she was imagining things. Like the time they'd gone out to the bar, no-one noticed them and no-one cared what they were doing.

They made out in the lift. They made out in the lift so Beth got weak and dizzy and felt like she just wanted to stay where she was until she came. She mumbled a protest into his mouth when they got to their floor, not wanting to stop kissing. Ethan picked her up, over his shoulder, and carried her down the corridor looking for the room. It hurt her tummy a bit, and she gasped that he should put her down, but he ignored her and held onto her by her ass and she didn't really mind.

Which was odd, since Robert doing anything at all like that would have infuriated her.

The hotel room was what they needed. They had sex on the floor which turned into sex on the bed, and then got mostly undressed and had sex again, while Ethan tried to get a drink of water and Beth kept saying she wasn't done yet. They lay there a while, panting, then Ethan turned on the air conditioning and they had sex again, and after a third time, they finally seemed done for a while.

At least with the sex.

"I missed you," Ethan said, and she kissed him for five minutes then said, "Me too."

"So what now?" Ethan said. "Is this how we do it?"

"I suppose. Is that okay for a few weeks? Just until things sort themselves out."

He nodded slowly. He was lying on his back, stroking her hand, staring at the ceiling. He seemed to have gotten into a gloomy kind of mood since they'd finished fucking.

"Are you sure?" she said.

He shrugged.

She was sitting cross-legged in the middle of the bed. She moved, deliberately put her knees in front her chest in case that helped him concentrate.

He hadn't looked, though. She wasn't sure what that meant. "I don't know," he said.

"I'm doing my best," she said.

"I know."

"I really do want you. How we were."

He nodded slowly.

"Just until things get sorted out," she said. "I promise."

"I don't know they will," he said, still staring at the ceiling. "Unless you make it happen."

She didn't know what to say, so she decided to ignore him. She leaned over and got the room service menu and started looking at food.

"Want anything?" she said.

"I'm fine."

"I'm getting something."

"Okay." After a moment. "Can you afford this?"

"Food?"

"The room. A lot of rooms, if we keep doing this."

"It's fine."

"You're sure?"

She was surprised. She wasn't sure where this was coming from. "Go look up how much we're paid," she said. "Really, it's fine."

He nodded.

"Want something to eat?"

"Yeah," he said, and took the menu she was holding out.

*

Beth spent whole days horny and didn't really like it. She wasn't seeing Ethan as often as she was used to, and she was seeing him with their clothes on, and both those things seemed to make her horny even worse. As if merely talking and looking at each other reminded her what she wasn't getting and made her concentrate on that. She knew she should avoid him, just not see him except for sex and lectures, but she didn't seem to be able to actually do that. She made excuses to see him. She agreed to meet when he texted her. She wanted to talk to him, and touch him, and see the way he looked at her. She wanted contact any way she could have it, even just messages through the day or the accidental brush of fingers as he passed her sugar in a café.

She was avoiding sex at her house, because she didn't want to get caught and didn't know if Ethan wanted the reminder Robert was around, and she was avoiding sex at her office so she wasn't in there with Ethan all the time, and she didn't know how they were going to manage except by spending whole days in hotels. Which was a little planned and organized for how she usually was.

She was distracted and horny and needy, and she didn't like it.

She was sensible, though, and managed to keep her head, right up to the day she suddenly couldn't stand it any more, and just phoned Ethan and said, "I need to fuck you. Just come here, okay?"

"Where?"

"My place. I miss you."

"Is the guy around?"

"Shit, of course the guy isn't around," she said. "Sorry. He'll be a couple of hours."

"A couple of hours?"

"Yep."

"So I should hurry?"

"I would."

He was ten minutes and didn't get more than five steps inside the house. She met him at the door, and he pushed her against the wall, and kissed her. He seemed to kiss her for half the time he was there, and she liked that he wanted to do that so much. He kissed her, then she got impatient and knelt down, and suddenly realized Robert had moved the cushion she'd left behind the door, but it didn't matter. He was quick. He came in her mouth, and she came in his, and then they had sex against the wall again.

And then he left, and she went upstairs and had a shower and wondered if that, just fucking, was enough to make a couple. If constant, very good sex could actually keep them together, as people, for years and years.

She was getting self-indulgent She almost thought it could. Whatever she and Robert had, all the sensible things, that wasn't working, so maybe sex alone would be enough.

Or maybe she was thinking with her clit and needed to stop.

*

Beth hadn't really thought about how difficult the situation might be for Ethan, not properly, until he said one day, "I'm going to take your advanced course. So I can see you."

They were in her office, in the middle of the day, dressed and talking while she ate her lunch. He had been fingering her, gently, just enough she knew he'd been inside her, not enough to come. He'd stopped when she started eating.

"My advanced course," she said. She was torn. "I wouldn't."

"Why?"

"It's too hard."

He looked at her.

"I'm not being a bitch. It's a tough course. It's meant to be."

"I'm not good enough?"

She thought about that. "You're not a maths major."

"I'll cope."

"You should be taking papers to push your GPA up," she said. "Not getting side-tracked."

He nodded slowly.

"You could just sit in the lectures," she said. "Not actually enroll."

"How many students are there?"

"Five, at the moment."

"So I'd kind of stand out."

He was right.

"I don't care about the grade," he said. "I'll take it anyway."

She decided he was serious. She decided he was sweet. "I'll help you," she said.

"Thanks."

"Go through things with you again, extra tutoring."

He nodded. "I need you to sign a form. To say it's okay for me to enroll without the prerequisites."

He looked in his bag and gave her a form. She wrote her name, signed it.

"And the head of department," he said. "Could you talk to him?"

"Just take that to him and say I said it was okay and I'll talk to him next time I see him."

"Will you?"

She grinned. "He'll forget."

She sat there for a while and looked at him and thought she had someone who was willing to fuck up their career to see her. It was touching and terrifying at the same time.

She kissed him for a while, longer than was really safe in case someone opened the door, then chased him out so she could work.

*

After two weeks Beth was still horny and Ethan was already struggling with her paper.

She tutored him in an empty tutorial room. There was a window in the door, but they could sit down the side wall, and be out of sight. Enough to touch, to hold hands, not enough for anything more.

Even so, Ethan just wasn't understanding. She kept going over the same proofs, but they didn't seem to stick. The material she taught, her course structure, hadn't changed much in two hundred years. You sat down and worked through some equations and eventually they all fit together, into an evolving structure, so after a few years you understood the whole thing.

Before he'd started, Ethan had been vague on some of the basics. He was sitting in her class, but he wasn't understanding the details she was trying to teach him. Maths was a process, and everything new built on the last thing learned, and Ethan had never learned the basic things he needed.

He wasn't just struggling, he was falling further and further behind, so far he was never going to catch up to where the rest of the class had been weeks ago.

Beth sat in their tutorial room, watching him struggle through a proof, and knew she'd done this to him. He was going to end up with a bad B on his record, and since he was barely holding an A average, that could cost him jobs or scholarships after he finished. More than that, treading water in her course was going to take up all of his time, and that might mean he didn't do as well in everything else.

"Stop," she said, and closed the textbook they were using.

"I'm almost there."

"You're not," she said. "Just stop."

He looked up at her.

She had no idea how to say it. She had no idea, because she'd never cared about someone who wasn't as good as her before. Not someone in maths, where she could compare. He'd be worrying too, thinking she'd lose interest in him if he couldn't hold his own, and didn't know how to say that wasn't how she felt any more.

She took his hand. She held both of his in hers, and he looked worried.

"Thank you for trying," she said. "But drop out."

"I can do this."

"No, you can't. Drop out. If you do now, it won't go on your permanent record."

"No," he said.

"You can't do this. You can't keep up."

He shook his head. "I'll manage. And if I don't, seeing you is worth it."

She looked at him, and couldn't make up her mind.

"It is," he said.

She thought. She thought hard. What she was about to do was terrible, but actually it wasn't. The point of a university was to do research, and train new researchers. Despite all the students as customers bullshit that was taking over, undergraduate courses didn't matter. Undergrads didn't matter. There was nothing she did in the classes with Ethan counted for anything, except to select the new research candidates coming through.

It was a terrible thing to think about doing, but it actually wasn't. Not to anyone who understood why she was really here.

"I'll give you an A," she said. "You have an A right now. So don't spent more time on this than you can afford."

"No."

"Yes. You're going to struggle, and it's going to take up time you don't have. And no-one will ever know. So make sure no-one else in the class sees your work, and hand in what you have, and I'll give you an A."

"What if you get caught?"

"I won't."

"Beth, you can't do this."

"One guy in your class is going on to something else important, and I already know who he is. He's competing with half a dozen others in the department, and their marks really matter, and I won't fuck with those. There rest of you are just..."

"Future high school teachers?"

"Not you. You aren't one of those, but you aren't going to be a star either. You're in the middle somewhere, so your mark doesn't really matter."

He didn't answer. He was thinking.

"I'm taking something from the high-school teachers, and giving it to you," she said. "It's a little unfair to them, but I'm not going to cost you your future. I'm just not."

He opened his mouth.

"I'm doing this," she said. "You can't stop me. All that matters is whether you waste time studying for a mark you've already got."

He opened his mouth again.

"So don't fucking argue," she said.

"Okay," he said, after a while. "Thank you."

"This is my fault. So I'll fix it."

*

Over time, Beth found herself becoming more and more obsessed with sex. Where to have it, and when, and how to meet. She was being fingered in empty lecture theatres, and in odd corners of the campus around behind the maintenance buildings, she was getting head in her office, and giving it empty tutorial rooms, and masturbating in the shower most mornings which made her too happy to work properly for the next few hours. She was filling her day trying to work out how to have sex with Ethan, and not with Robert, and it was getting far too complicated.

She was getting mopey too. She was organizing her day to see Ethan in a lift, or a stairwell, somewhere she could touch him for a moment, and that was costing her research time.

She was supposed to be a rational person. This kind of horny shit wasn't meant to take over her life, but it was.

"You're going to have to come to my place," she said in the end. "I can't think of any other way."

"Okay."

"Can you deal with knowing Robert's there?"

"I think so."

"And we'll have to be careful. Fucking careful."

He nodded.

"All right," she said, and kissed him for a minute, until she couldn't breathe. "Soon."

She went home and told Robert she was going to start tutoring one of her students there, that she'd do it when he wasn't around. Then she sat down with Robert's timetable, and hers, and Ethan's, and worked out four hour-long slots a week when she and Ethan were free and Robert wasn't.

She started dashing home in those four hours, meeting Ethan, fucking him frantically for forty minutes, then rushing back to college before anyone caught her. At her place, often in her bed, since Ethan didn't seem to care if he fucked her where Robert slept.

They met in her office at the weekend, or in the evenings, when she couldn't stand to not see him for a whole extra day. When Robert asked, she said she needed the mainframes in the department for her work. Like everyone else, she wasted time big-prime hunting as a hobby, and she needed the department's mainframes for that. Not as much as the analysis people did, but sometimes.

Robert was too proudly technophobic to point out she could have logged in from home.

She saw Ethan, and breathed and moaned and panted into his mouth, and felt his skin against hers, and tasted him in her mouth, and they still hadn't talked about what they actually were, what this thing between them should be, but it didn't seem to matter any more. It just was. They both understood that, and needed it, and she kept going, with a kind of madness, needing to see Ethan.

*

Amanda met Robert, at Beth's, by accident one afternoon. Robert came home early, and Beth didn't chase Amanda out because she didn't want Robert to wonder what the problem was. Beth told her to be careful, and watch what she said, and Amanda said she would.

Amanda talked politely for a few minutes, and then left, and outside, getting into her car, she whispered to Beth, "I like the other one better."

Beth looked at her. "Shut up."

"Just saying."

"Shut the fuck up. Just don't."

Amanda looked at her face, and saw something there.

"Yeah," she said. "Sorry."

"It's fine," Beth said. "But don't. Be careful, okay?"

Amanda nodded.

"Please," Beth said. "I mean it."

Amanda hugged her quickly and said, "I will, no shit, okay?"

"Thank you."

Beth went back inside and listened to Robert and wanted to strangle him.

She was finding him annoying, so annoying she couldn't stand him, and she knew it was only because she wanted him gone so she could fuck Ethan, and that wasn't fair.

Being unfair to Robert made her feel guilty, and guilt made her annoyed, and that made her even more of a bitch. She wasn't sure where it would end.

*

There had been a man with a drill outside Beth's office for an hour, and she couldn't think with him there. The tempo was just erratic enough she'd decide it had stopped, and then it would start again. She was trying to be patient, because she knew she was in a bad mood all the time, and didn't want to take it out on bystanders.

Then he got a phone call, and stood right outside her door, talking about his weekend to a friend.

She opened it, and said, "Go somewhere else."

"Hold on," he said. "I'll just be a minute."

"Go away," she said. "Please."

He looked at her but kept talking.

She closed the door, furious, then decided that actually, she was going to make a fuss after all. She opened it again.

"Hold on, love," he said.

"Go the fuck away," she said. "Right fucking now."

He looked at her for a moment. "You don't need to talk like that."

"Hang up. Pack up. Fuck off."

He hesitated, then started packing up his tools.

"And if you call a woman in this university "love" again, I'll have your fucking job," Beth said.

"I'm going," he said.

Beth looked up, and realized Ethan was down the corridor, watching. "Yeah, and fuck you too," she said to him. "What do you want?"

He looked at the maintenance guy. "I needed some help with my assignment."

"So ask a fucking tutor." Beth stood there a minute, and then said, "Come in."

The maintenance guy seemed about to leave. "Sorry," Beth said. "But just have some sense about where you are and who you're talking to."

He ignored her, offended, and walked off.

"Or be a fucking dick," Beth said after him.

"You're an angry woman," Ethan said.

"So fucking what?"

"It's hot."

"Oh," Beth said, and grinned and calmed down right away.

She was having mood swings. Maybe Ethan had given her early menopause.

Ethan was looking at the note she had taped on her door. Do not clean this office. Do not maintain this office. Do not empty the bin or open the window. Do not touch my papers. Do not ever touch my fucking whiteboard.

"What?" she said. "The whiteboard? Someone did once."

He nodded.

"And once I threw something away and I realized I needed it a week later, so I don't want the bin emptied."

"Right. Don't people mind the swearing?"

"They don't have to look at my fucking door if they don't fucking want to."

Ethan grinned. "And that guy just then?"

"He'd been making noise for an hour. He could work around my lectures."

"Do they?"

"Nope," she said. "And that's the fucking problem with this place."

"Are you okay?" he said.

"Yep," she said. "Now." She closed the door and kissed him. Kissed him for a long time.

"Was there something?" she said. "Or just to see me?"

"Just see you."

She kissed him a little longer. "That's fucking cool," she said.

"I know."

"I was trying to do something," she said.

"I'll go."

She hesitated, still kissing, not sure if he would be offended. "Do you mind?"

"Not at all."

He opened the door, kissed her again, said, "Bye."

She watched him go and grinned to herself and wondered what was wrong with her.

Three hours later she got an email from the head of maintenance about her abusing one of his staff. It had been copied to her head of school. She deleted it without bothering to reply.

*

Robert was getting more involved with his political friends. There was going to be an election, or a law change, or something. Beth didn't really care. Robert talked about it a lot, about his new friends who cared as much as he did.

"It's nice you have a hobby," Beth said, and that shut him up for a few days.

Not forever.

"I wondered," he said a week later, "If it would be okay to have a meeting here."