Free One Plus Two Minus One by Tess Mackenzie Page A

you have the symbols to describe reality. And so much more.
You can think your way into universes that can’t possibly exist,
and that’s very fucking cool.”
    They looked at each other.
    “ You being so
passionate,” he said. “Really turns me
on.”
    “Really?”
    “Yep.”
    She stood
there for a moment. “So last year must have been fun. Sitting funny. Not standing up until ten minutes
after I finished.”
    He smiled at her, and she smiled back, and
she was pretty sure there was something here.
    “ Thank you,”
she said. “For letting me
talk.”
    “I want to hear you talk.”
    “ Yeah,” she
said. “I mean, thank you for that. For
wanting me to.”
    He shrugged.
    “No-one has before.”
    “ Not even the
guy?’ Ethan glanced over at the face-down
photo.
    “ Don’t talk
about him,” Beth said. Then, after a
moment. “Not even him. But don’t talk about that, okay?”
    He nodded.
    She stood
there for a while, thinking. “Listen,”
she said, and put down the knife. “I know I already said this, and
I don’t really know for sure, but I think I could get in shit if
anyone find out about this. It looks bad, you know?”
    “I’m not going to tell anyone.”
    “ No-one? Not even your best
mate?”
    “I’ll say I hung out with someone, but I
don’t have to say anything about you.”
    “Okay.”
    “ I
swear.” He sat there for a while, and
started to smile, looked like he was trying not to.
    “Just say it,” Beth said, resigned.
    “I’ll tell everyone I met you in a lecture,
and went home with you.”
    She looked at
him for a moment. “Dickhead.”
    He grinned.
    “ What’s weird
is I think people would think it’s worse than the other way
around. If I was a guy and you were a
woman it feels like no-one would care. But by fucking you I’m
being…”
    “Unladylike?”
    “ Yeah. It’s fucking stupid, isn’t it?”
    He nodded and looked at her tits through her
shirt.
    She dumped the tomatoes in a pan and started
stirring them.
    “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