One Plus Two Minus One Ch. 04

Half an hour passed, and Ethan kept kissing her. He was halfway hard again, but didn't seem to want to fuck, especially. Was just hard, like maybe guys that age were always hard around a woman they were into. It was flattering, Beth thought, a cheap thrill. She tried to remember who she'd slept with when she was his age, and couldn't. Maybe nobody, she thought. She might have been working too hard, caring too much about exams. He was stroking her ribs, her armpit, light, but firm enough it was just bearable, and didn't quite tickle. He had played with her breasts for twenty minutes. He was touching her silky-light on purpose, she thought. Teasing her, turning her on again, very slowly. Turning her on, but also just wanting to touch her because she was there.

"You want something to eat?" she said suddenly. She'd realized he would lie there all day if she didn't make decisions for them both.

"If you do."

She slid out of bed, reached for clothes.

"Don't," he said. "Stay naked."

She stopped, looked at him. "Nah."

"Please. I want to look at you."

She liked that he wanted her that much. But still. "Nope," she said. "Another time."

She put on an old tee shirt, shorts, didn't bother with anything else. Her nipples stuck out through the cloth and he looked at them. A lot.

He stayed naked, so she pulled the curtains. The front ones were always shut so people on the street couldn't see in. She hadn't bothered earlier with the back because it was only a private courtyard, but she did now.

She stood in the kitchen and opened cupboards, opened the freezer. "What do you want?"

He stood behind her and looked too.

"Pasta?" she said. "Burgers?" Cheese on toast?"

"Pasta?" he said.

She nodded, put water on to boil. He went sat on the other side of the counter, on a stool. Kept looking at her legs. Hitching up on his elbows to see.

"Don't," she said, but didn't really mean it. She'd needed someone to want her like this all year, and was only just starting to realize. She'd needed something like this all her life, probably.

"Take your shorts off," he said.

"No."

"Your top."

"No," she said. Then, curious, "If it was one or the other, which?"

"Is it?"

"Just answer."

He actually looked unsure. Worried, like the choice really mattered. It was flattering and sweet, and for that, terribly sexy.

"Choose," she said. Lifted the shirt a little, pushed at the shorts.

"Top," he said.

She pulled it off and got things out the cupboards with bare tits. He watched. Watched very carefully.

She kept grinning at him. She was relaxing. He seemed so into her, she was starting to believe he was.

"Why maths?" she said. Then suddenly thought she sounded like a professor and disgusted herself a bit. Then realized he wasn't listening anyway, and put her shirt back on, and asked again. She was fucking a guy who was so into her his brain actually shut off when her boobs were out. She couldn't quite believe it.

"Take it off," he said.

"Nope."

"Please?"

"Not safe to cook with that much bare skin," she said. "Why maths?"

"I'm good at it."

She nodded. "Same here. But there's more than that."

"Not really." He seemed to be thinking. "You're better than me. That makes it different."

She didn't answer because it was obvious. She chopped garlic instead.

"It's different for you," he said. "I think, one lecture..."

She glanced up. He looked a bit guilty, like he'd done something wrong. "Just say it," she said.

"Last year. You were talking about real maths and what people think maths is. How it isn't mechanical, it's like art."

She waited.

"It isn't like that for me. I don't think it is for most people. For you, it's a different thing. You can see these beautiful things all around you that the rest of us can't."

He sounded almost envious. She looked at him, and thought, really thought, what a horrible thing it would be to lose that. Thought how it was for most people, how blind they were.

She was starting to feel guilty. That she had this thing he couldn't share. Normally, when that happened, she'd got angry and bitchy and resented the other person for being stupid. Now, she felt bad, and wanted to make it right. Either she was changing a lot, very suddenly, or she was really into him.

"I could show you," she said, then wondered if that was too much. She didn't want to get locked into some long-term arrangement, didn't want to waste hours on a guy that was just a one-off fling.

"Yeah," he said, and his voice was odd. He was actually a little sad, she thought. "I mean, thank you, but I don't think you could. I think it's something that's there or isn't, not something anyone can learn."

Beth had thought the same herself. She suddenly wondered how it was to be around people like her, people seeing all these wonderful things, and know you couldn't see them yourself. A little like being blind in a world of artists, she thought, and wasn't sure it was a very nice thing to be.

"I'm sorry," she said.

"What for?"

"I don't know. You're upset, and I don't want you to be."

"Not upset."

"It's like I showed you something you can't ever have, and that's a bit unfair. Showed all of you that. All the students."

He shrugged.

She didn't know what to do. It was all getting too personal, was turning into more than great sex with a random man she'd found at a party. First talking about Robert, now this.

"You really like that I'm smart?" she said. "Not just... available."

"I really like that you're smart."

She thought about that. She didn't think anyone had before, not really. They all said they did, even Robert, but what they really meant was they'd put up with it. Like small tits. They'd accept her with that flaw, but wouldn't miss it if it suddenly disappeared. She hadn't realized before, but smart was everything she was, the most important part of her. Maths was everything, a secret part she very rarely shared, and only tolerating that, only putting up with that, meant they didn't really know her at all.

Like her tits. Exactly like her tits. She liked them being small, liked how she fit into clothes. She always had, and actually pitied girls with big tits who couldn't wear what they wanted, right up until some asshole made her feel inadequate. But if someone was really into her, they should want her exactly as she was, not have this mental catalogue of shit to change. Ethan was into her tits, and her mind, and it was starting to seem like he might really be into her.

After a while she leaned over and kissed him. She had to climb up a bit on the bench to reach across.

"Thank you," she said. "I think that's rare, and I really fucking like that you do."

He looked at her for a while.

"Liking me smart," she said.

He smiled.

"I don't see software," she said. "Some people do, I know people who do, but I can't see what software is meant to be by looking at the source code. Not like I can a function."

"That's just knowing the language well."

"No shit. Same with maths. Just a bigger language. But it's also thinking a particular way, and I can't. And I think you can."

He was nodding slowly. He seemed unsure, and for a moment she had a horrible feeling he was remembering her wanting to know his grade and thinking she might not fuck him again if he said he couldn't, and came across as stupid. She didn't know what to say, but in the end he nodded, and said yeah, that made sense. She was relieved. She hadn't meant to put him on the spot.

She started cutting an onion. She didn't cry, never did, because she used a sharp knife, and Amanda was the only person who'd ever believed her when she said that made a difference. Amanda had said, yeah, dick, because bruising the flesh releases sulfuric acid, which irritates your nose. So somehow that didn't count.

She chopped, and thought, and after a while said, "So I sound like a total wanker saying this, but maths is like seeing into the mind of god. All that Bertrand Russell, supreme truth and beauty, cold and austere and all that shit."

He was looking at her.

"If you want to know me you have to know this."

"I know," he said.

"This is important to me," she said, feeling a little defensive.

"Yeah," he said. "I know. You said it last year, in..."

Her first lecture. Trying to get them interested. "Yeah, I did. And stop."

He grinned.

"Did I say about Hardy and his inevitability?" she said.

"Yep."

"Oh."

She cut a little.

"Can I again?" she said.

"Please."

"You're sure? I don't want to be boring."

"I'm sure. This is you, right?"

She nodded.

"I want to know you."

She kissed him again, and almost cut herself leaning over.

"Tell me," he said.

"You remember Hardy?" she said.

He nodded.

Hardy thought a good mathematician could see a result and just know it was right before they started on all the tiresome proving, and that this ability was important and powerful and what maths really was, what made maths an art. You used intuition to discover things, and reason merely to confirm what you already knew was true.

"Just once," she said. "I got that thing he was on about. A couple of years ago. And honestly, it was like being fucked on a beach at midnight by someone whose name you don't know."

He grinned.

"Hey," she said. "I mean it. Number theory's sweaty dirty fucking, not some symphony floating around the rafters of a cathedral."

He was grinning.

"What?" she said.

"You said that last year."

"Oh. Did I?"

"Twice."

She looked at him, tapped the knife on the board. After a minute, "I was trying to make an important point."

"And everyone heard it."

"Yeah?"

"Oh yeah. You know you said sweaty dirty fucking, right?"

"Fucking is sweaty."

"And the second time you said good sweaty dirty fucking."

"Shit, really?" She probably had. "I mean, fuck. I shouldn't talk like that in lectures."

"You only do when you get excited."

"Yeah," she said. "But still. Try and, I don't know, wave or something if it starts happening again."

"Okay."

She pushed onions into the pan, started frying.

"You know I fell for you because you swear in lectures about important things, right?"

"You didn't fall for me," she said, not turning around. Trying to be cool, to keep him at arm's length.

He didn't say anything.

"You hardly know me," she said. "You can't fall for me."

"Not yet."

She turned around. "Hey," she said. "Be a bit careful...."

"Got a crush, I mean."

She nodded. "Just..."

"I know."

She fried for a while, wondering if this was a bad idea after all. She needed him, really needed what he made her feel, but he seemed to be falling hard, taking this too seriously. At least for what it was at the moment.

"I can tell you it," she said. "The maths. I'll tell you all of it, if you want me to. It'll take years. But if someone does, properly, you might understand."

Another promise, she thought. Another long-term commitment if he went for it. But it didn't seem to bother her as much all of a sudden.

"Yeah," he said. "You'd probably lose me."

*

Beth started chopping tomatoes for the pasta sauce. She thought. She wanted him to understand. She wanted to try, even if it meant she was making implicit promises she wasn't really ready for. While the onions were frying, she looked at him and thought. She looked across the room. She had two big framed pictures on the far wall. Dots arranged in grids, looking random but not. The one on the left was all the primes from one to a million. A dot was a prime, with white space left where a non-prime would go, and different colors to show different types of primes. She liked to look at the internal structures within the primes, and know there was a deeper structure she could describe if she wanted to. That picture told her that the universe had order, down to its most fundamental, basic, level. Derivatives of order, in that the underlying structures had structures of their own.

The other picture was similar, a spiral rather than a grid, black dots on a white background.

She pointed to it.

"That's an Ulam spiral. If you write numbers in a spiral out from one in the centre, the primes are black dots and the non-primes are white dots, all the primes line up along diagonals and axes. No-one knows why, but it works out to huge numbers. That picture graphs all the numbers up to two hundred thousand."

"You showed us that last year."

"Yeah," she said, looking at him. "I did."

"And I shouldn't point that out each time?"

"Probably not."

He grinned. "Sorry."

"You remember the rest? No-one can explain it. It just works. The guy who discovered it was doodling on a pad at a meeting and realized there was a pattern. Seriously."

"I remember. And that's kind of cool."

"That's completely awesomely fucking cool, actually."

He grinned at her. "Yeah."

"Just saying. It's fucking brilliant. Just the random chance in that. Welcome to the chaotic universe."

"I get it."

"I have a book somewhere that lists all the numbers from one to a thousand and their significance. Odd patterns and unusual factors and all. If you're interested."

"Maybe another time."

"Yeah," she said. "Right." She stood there for a while, thinking. "Okay, so abstract algebra is simple. And elegant. It's one thing, no bullshit with real numbers and limits. Like..." She ran the tap and dabbed spots of water across the bench, in a line. "Just simple, neat, tidiness. Like prime numbers. They're so clear and obvious what we're talking about, you can explain it to a child, and we can start counting them off, work it out in our heads, but you never stop. Never."

He nodded.

"If you think about the sequence of primes for too long, you start realized how fucking big it all is, compared to you, and you come face to face with... eternity. Mortality." Not infinity, because that meant something different. "With life and death and everything. Because you suddenly realize it's so big you can't count up to the biggest prime we know of even if you did nothing else for your whole lifetime."

He was looking at her.

"We're tiny, against the universe. But we can think about anything we want to, with the right symbols, because underneath it all, anything is just a language, and that's something we know how to do. Once you have the language in your head, 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 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."