One Plus Two Minus One

by Tess Mackenzie

  “Stop drinking so much.”

  “I will.”

  “Some fucking social justice activist,” she said.

  “That’s not…” He stopped.

  “You’re a cock,” she said.

  “Are you hurt?”

  “What, like bruised or something? No.”

  He looked relieved. “Are you okay?”

  “Emotionally?” she said.

  He nodded.

  “You tried to rape me, you fucking asshole. I’m a little bit upset.”

  “I didn’t really…”

  She threw her coffee at him.

  It was hot coffee, and she thought about that and then threw it anyway.

  The cup hit his face, bounced onto the floor, and broke.

  He stood there and looked at her and touched his face. She hoped it had burned him. She threw the next thing she could find, a bowl. That hit his chest, hard, like it would leave a bruise. Bounced off and broke too.

  Then she turned around and went upstairs.

  She sat on the edge of the bed for a while and realized she was shaking. She wasn’t sure what she should be doing now. Telling him to leave, telling him never to come back. She didn’t want to do either, but didn’t know what she did want to do.

  She went back downstairs and sat on the step two from the bottom. Feet on the bottom step, sitting on the next one up. Not touching the actual floor.

  “Hey,” she said.

  He sat up. He’d been lying on the couch.

  “I don’t know,” she said.

  He waited.

  “I don’t know if I want you to go. I also don’t know if I want you to stay.”

  He nodded.

  “That can never happen again. Nothing to even make me think it will. Nothing to worry me.”

  “I promise.”

  “No more drinking. Not more not listening when I tell you something.”

  “Okay.”

  “If I ever do get worried, I’ll cut off your balls and then call the police.”

  He looked at her.

  “I fucking mean it. I’ll get a kitchen knife and do my best to stab you. I might not get it right, but it won’t be much fucking fun for you. Then I’ll call the cops while you’re lying there bleeding.”

  “I believe you.”

  “Okay.”

  She sat a bit longer.

  “You need to keep trying to find somewhere.”

  “I am.”

  “Actually try. Not putting it off. Not some bullshit where you tell me you are, but end up getting your own way and staying because it’s too much hassle for me to get you to do anything.”

  “I don’t…”

  “Yeah, you do,” she said. “So shut up.”

  He went quiet.

  “I won’t have Ethan around here for the next few days,” she said. “Probably. But no promises.”

  Robert looked upset for a moment.

  “Yeah,” she said. “Tough shit. I can’t go to his place, but we’ll make do.”

  “Okay.”

  “And you’re not living here, you’re a guest, you’re staying, and I’ll throw you out at a moment’s notice if I get worried. I’m not promising you a thing.”

  “Beth, please…”

  He looked miserable. He had no right to look miserable, but he did.

  “Oh yeah, and fuck you,” Beth said. “By the way. You caused this.”

  “Do you actually want me to stay?”

  “No.”

  “So why this?”

  “I feel guilty. I owe you.”

  He was looking at her.

  “Guilt,” she said. “That’s all. So do it my way, or make it easy for me to tell you to fuck off now.”

  “Okay.”

  She looked at him.

  “Okay,” he said. “There’s nothing I can do about it, so okay.”

  “Good. You’re down here, don’t come upstairs.”

  He nodded.

  “Okay,” she said, and didn’t know whether to be upset or relieved that he was staying. “I want you gone. Try and make it quick.”

  *

  Beth was letting Robert stay, but she was still angry with him. Twice the next day she threw things at him, for no real reason, just walked past and was unaccountably angry and hurled whatever was to hand. It actually helped. It was strange, but having him around to treat like that made her feel a little better.

  “Hurry up and find somewhere else,” she said after she’d thrown her wooden fruit bowl towards his head. There were four apples on the floor.

  “I’ll go,” Robert said, picking them up. “Do you want me to go right now?”

  “Yes,” she said. Then, “No.”

  She went upstairs, then came back down, and said, “You have until the weekend.”

  Then she phoned Ethan and told him that too, that Robert would be gone in a week, no matter what, and then everything would be fine.

  She avoided Robert. They didn’t see each other that much, and part of her was glad. She hoped maybe they could just drift apart, and he would go, without them really seeing each other any more.

  It seemed to work. Robert stayed out later, was at his office more. Beth got used to wandering around the flat alone, being in bed before he got back. She saw Ethan, but not at home, and kissed him, and wanted him, but managed to make herself wait.

  Except one night when they had sex in her office, and she was glad of that too. Everything was normal. Everything was fine. Robert hadn’t changed anything with Ethan, as far as she could tell.

  She came home late that night, and Robert asked where she’d been.

  “Fucking, Robert. What the fuck do you think I was doing?”

  “Oh,” he said.

  “Why ask?” she said. “Why push it when you know, and make me actually say it, and hurt you?”

  “I was worried,” he said.

  “What?” she said. “That I’ll get raped?”

  Robert went pale and looked away and didn’t speak to her again that night.

  *

  The next evening, the Thursday, she got home and found him in the kitchen eating a sandwich and drinking whiskey.

  “Sandwich for dinner?” she asked, and ignored the liquor.

  He nodded.

  She held up a supermarket bag. “Frozen dinner.”

  “Have dinner with me?”

  She stood there for a while, then said, “Yeah, okay.”

  She put her box in the microwave, and watched it spin around. “How are you doing?” she said, feeling she should ask.

  “Honestly?”

  She shrugged. “I suppose.”

  “It could be worse.”

  She turned around. She didn’t quite understand, but she was glad that he felt that way. “How so?”

  “You could be with someone I envy.”

  The microwave beeped. Beth got her dinner, peeled the plastic off the top, and left it to sit for a minute.

  She decided not to ask about the envy thing. Robert was older, she supposed, and had a career. Something like that.

  “The hardest thing,” Robert said. “Is knowing you’re doing things to someone else you used to do to me.”

  “To?”

  “Yeah, to. Does that make sense?”

  “Like not with? What I do is what counts? Not what he does to me?”

  Robert nodded.

  “Yeah, that kind of makes sense.”

  “Thank you for giving me time to find somewhere,” he said.

  She shrugged.

  “And I am sorry,” he said.

  “Don’t.”

  He nodded.

  Beth scooped up her dinner and went and sat at the table. Robert pushed a placemat over, so she didn’t get steam on the wood, and she thought for a moment that they did actually fit together, as a couple, surprisingly well. Except for how he was a shit.

  “I always respected your work,” Robert said. “And I don’t think you ever did mine.”

  Beth
didn’t answer. She couldn’t, because it was true, and had been from the very beginning.

  “It’s not you,” she said at last. “It’s just I don’t get…”

  “Anything that isn’t abstract algebra?”

  “Yeah.”

  “I just thought it might make a difference if you knew that. That I respect you, and your work. That I never meant to put you down or anything.”

  “Okay,” she said.

  They sat there for a while.

  “This is nice,” Robert said.

  “Yeah,” Beth said, and actually meant it.

  “You look like you’ve lost weight,” Robert said.

  “Yeah, maybe.” Hours of sex a day for months. “Not eating properly.”

  “Take care of yourself.” He seemed to be looking at her. “Are you wearing a bra?”

  She wasn’t. She’d been with Ethan in her office, had only dressed enough to get to the supermarket and home. It was in her bag.

  It was the strangest thing. She felt grubby and awkward, like her dad had caught her without one on, and that was a really worrying sign for how she felt about Robert.

  “Nope,” she said.

  Robert just that there. He seemed to feel awkward too.

  “Just trying something,” she said.

  He nodded.

  They talked about work for a while. About where they’d always wanted to go on holidays. Beth wondered if they’d ever get to travel together after all, then realized they wouldn’t, and realized that planning those trips they’d never taken might have been the strongest connection they’d ever actually had.

  “Hey,” Beth said, because she’d been needing to say it for days, and they were actually talking. “Don’t say anything about Ethan and I won’t say anything about rape.”

  “Yeah,” Robert said. “I know.”

  She looked at him for a while.

  “Of course that’s what we’ll do. I assumed. I know you. I haven’t said anything.”

  “What do you mean of course?”

  “You’re kind of calculating, Beth. Of course you don’t care what I did to you, and of course you’ll use it to get what you want.”

  “I care,” she said.

  “You’re using it to get me to do what you want.”

  “I’m not,” Beth said, astonished, unsure where this had even come from. “You don’t know me at all.”

  “And yet I’m right about that.”

  She sat there for a moment, hurt and angry and filled with this horrible darkness inside herself. “I wish I’d never loved you,” she said quietly. “I really do.”

  She’d had enough to eat. She wasn’t hungry any more. She put what was left of her dinner in the bin.

  Robert was watching her.

  She was about to go upstairs to bed, then changed her mind.

  “Get the fuck out,” she said.

  “What?”

  “Go. Fuck off. I want you out my life.”

  “Beth…”

  “I’ve had enough. I want you to go.”

  He looked like he couldn’t decide if she was serious.

  “You heard me. Get the fuck out of here. I tried to be nice, but I don’t want you around any more.”

  “I haven’t got anywhere to go.”

  “I don’t care. Get a fucking hotel. I had to, when I wanted to fuck Ethan.”

  He didn’t move.

  “You’d better start looking like you’re going,” she said. “I fucking mean it.’

  “You want me to go right now?”

  “Yeah. I don’t want you in this house. I don’t want you in the house tonight.”

  “What difference does it make?”

  “It does.”

  He stood up and walked over and put his plate in the sink. He looked annoyed, and she decided she might be being unreasonable. Now he was doing what she wanted, she gave a little ground.

  “You can stay tonight,” she said. “But you have to pack first. You have to be ready to go first thing in the morning. And you actually have to go, just fuck off, without making a fuss.”

  He stood there looking at her like he didn’t know what to say.

  “Do it my way, or fuck off,” she said. “How is this hard to understand?”

  “All right,” he said.

  He went over to the couch, and started to pack, to pick up clothes and put them in his suitcase.

  “Do you have to be in control all the fucking time?” he said.

  It was meant to be a last jab, an insult, and she looked at him and wondered if he knew her at all. “Of course I do,” she said. “Fuck.”

  She stood there long enough to make sure he was actually putting his things in the suitcase, was actually packing, and then went upstairs and texted Ethan, tomorrow.

  *

  In the morning Robert had left before she woke up, and she was actually surprised.

  He’d left the key on the kitchen bench.

  He left a note. He said he’d get in touch about a few things he’d left, and some he didn’t know if they were his or hers. He said goodbye.

  He’d still be around, she supposed. He’d still be somewhere on the campus, and she might run into him, but he was actually gone from here.

  She felt relaxed for the first time in weeks.

  *

  Beth was going to meet Ethan.

  She’d realized a while ago that she’d never worn the dress for him again, the one she’d had on the night they met. She realized she’d never let Ethan fuck her in it, or even see her in it again, and that she wanted to do something good and sexy and nice with him, and forget Robert and his weird and threatening shit.

  She needed to be her as she started with Ethan, or at least the her she was becoming, and wanted to be. It didn’t quite make sense, but it seemed right. She put on the dress, and heels, but not the actual heels. These ones she could walk in easily. She texted him when she was ready and said to come and meet her outside the maths building.

  She wanted to be somewhere new for this. In the dress, and some different place, without all the memories of sneaking around making it sordid.

  There was a waist-high concrete retaining wall around the front of the building, and the students sat there a lot, waiting for each other.

  Ethan was there, waiting for her. There were a few other students around, but none of them were hers.

  She walked over, and he looked at her, and the dress, and grinned and said, “Fucking wow.”

  That was enough. That was exactly, perfectly enough.

  “Help me up,” she said, and he held out his hand and let her pull herself up onto the wall beside him.

  She sat there for a minute and swung her feet. It was the middle of a winter day and the air was cool on her skin.

  “He’s gone,” she said. “It’s over. I have lots of time again.”

  Ethan leaned over and kissed her.

  “Hey,” she said. “Don’t.”

  “We can’t do that?”

  She looked around at students and the building and decided she didn’t care.

  One of the students was looking at her, a woman, but Beth was pretty sure it was the dress getting noticed, odd here in the middle of the day, not her.

  “Yeah,” she said. “We can do that.”

  He kissed her again, and looked really happy, and she was pleased. He looked like waiting for her was worth it.

  He kissed her for a moment, then tried to take her hand.

  She moved it. “Don’t get carried away,” she said, and he grinned.

  They sat for a while.

  “What happens now?” Ethan said.

  “Yeah,” she said. “I was meaning to talk to you about that. I hadn’t really got a plan from here on in.”

  He looked at her and grinned.

  “You want me?” she said. “You really fucking want me.”

  “Yep.”

  “Like be a couple and live with me and get all my crazy all the time. Like me leaning over your sh
oulder telling you when you’ve made a mistake, and everyone looking at you thinking you only got where you are because you’re the teacher’s pet.”

  “Yeah, I do.”

  “You’re sure?”

  “I don’t mind you fixing my mistakes, and I don’t really care what a bunch of maths professors think.”

  “And the rest?”

  “You’re not that crazy.”

  She sat there for a while, and felt tremendously relieved.

  “You wondered?” he said.

  “Of course.”

  “I told you. Crush since your first lecture.”

  “That might have changed.”

  “Nope.”

  She kissed him, then slid forwards, wriggled off the wall. “Something I need to do,” she said.

  He nodded. He didn’t look disappointed. She was pretty sure he really didn’t mind how much she worked.

  “You’re glad it got to this?” she said, wanting to check one last time. “You don’t want to change your mind?”

  “I’m glad.”

  “Okay,” she said. She took a folded sheet of paper out her bag, rummaged around and found a pen. “Sign that.”

  He looked. “I’m out your course?”

  “Yep. You don’t need it to see me any more.”

  “So I don’t get an A?”

  She looked at him for a moment. “Nope. Do you care?”

  “Shit no,” he said, and scribbled his name. “Didn’t want it in the first place.”

  She was relieved by that too. “I’ll make sure it doesn’t go on your record, okay?”

  He nodded, gave the form back to her.

  “Now we’re honest,” she said. “No more secrets.”

  “Except…” he said.

  “Yeah,” she said. “Thinking of which. I’d better go talk to the head of school. There’s a couple of things I need to sort out.”

  He grinned, and kissed her again, right there, outside the building, and she didn’t mind at all.

  “Bye,” she said. “Come over later.”

  “Yeah,” he said. “I will.”

  “Do,” she said. “I really fucking want you right now,” and then went inside to own up.

  # # #