Susan x Neil

(1+2)=(3)

Her parents went out shopping Saturday afternoon, as usual. Neil sat in Susan's chair looking at her laptop.

"What's this?" His finger pointed at the red dot moving around a street map.

"The GPS in Mum's phone," said Susan from behind him. "So they don't surprise us by coming home early. Clever, huh?"

"Wow," said Neil. "This is like some crazy CIA shit."

"Okay, you might as well have a good look at them."

Neil swivelled round and nearly fell off the chair. Susan had stripped off her jogging bottoms and t-shirt, and stood there in lemon-coloured panties with horizontal blue and purple stripes.

Her backside felt super-wide and she wasn't very keen on how her stomach bulged out in various places, and the less said about her thighs the better, but she refused to suck anything in or cover anything up. She stood with hands on hips, letting him look wherever he chose to. If he wanted to see her like this then that was his problem.

Despite Susan's determination, her body reacted of its own accord. Heat rose in her cheeks and moisture formed along the bridge of her nose and at her temples. No doubt her face reddened the moment he turned around. She took it. Eventually, she would acclimatise to the situation and these sensations would calm down. She hoped.

After his initial reaction, Neil's expression settled into one of quiet observation, like someone staring out a window at the view. It was hard to tell if he was deliberately underplaying or if he had expected something more. Either way, he also seemed to not want to make too big a fuss.

"Right, that's enough of that. Move." She shoved him off her chair and sat down. Taking her hair in both hands, she pulled it back, twisted it up into a bun and pinned it in place with a clip. She put on her glasses—they stressed her eyes a lot less than contacts—and stopped worrying about trivial things like leering boys. She was in work mode.

"I like the glasses. They suit you," said Neil.

Susan bowed her head forward and the glasses slid halfway down her nose. "Shut up."

"So, here we are then." Neil waggled his eyebrows. "Alone in your bedroom. Parents out for the day. You with no clothes on. You must have a lot of faith in me."

She said, "I have no faith in you whatsoever," which was a lie, "I just think I could take you in a fight," which was true.

They started from the beginning. Neil went over the basics of trigonometry. Susan found his explanations straightforward and easy to understand.

Neil had prepared lists of basic problems. They solved the first one together, step by step. Triangles were drawn, erased, and redrawn. Susan quickly picked up the methodology and answered all the question with no mistakes.

Then, Neil presented her with a question from the previous year's GCSE papers, and Susan stared at it until Neil snapped his fingers in front of her face.

He went over the solution. Then he went over it again. And then once more. After ten minutes, Susan began to think maybe, even with Neil's help, trig would remain forever out of reach. But they kept at it, first from one direction, then another.

Calculating answers proved to be the easy part. Once you knew the equation to use, you punched in the numbers and the calculator spat out the answer. Exam questions turned out to be more like a puzzle where you had to work out what you needed to work out. You had a shape, you knew this angle and the length of this side, now, who killed Miss Scarlet in the library with the lead pipe?