This Is Why They Hate Us by Aaron H. Aceves

Many times, I tried to come and forget, to toss my intoxicating obsession with him away as easily as a wadded-up paper towel. I’d always known that the difference between lust and love is what remains after orgasm. There was a seriousness in it that I was unaccustomed to, a tired look that had nothing to do with my lack of sleep. Gazing into the mirror, I took stock of my face. But after an hour of sharing him with others, I felt like a failure for not already getting him home with me. That night in our mutual friend’s apartment was the first time I’d seen him outside of the office, and for that reason I had expectations. In the ensuing weeks, I subsisted on crumbs: listening to him talk about his favorite books, ones I hated but assumed I just wasn’t cultured enough to understand examining the meditative photos he took of the city’s rare natural landscapes and posted on Instagram gushing about him to anyone who would listen and watching the disinterest build up in their eyes like cataracts. There was something in the shape of his bearded jaw, its almost leporine nature, that stopped me. I was at work, on my way to the bathroom, when I saw him hunched over a computer a few cubicles down. The first time I saw him- truly saw him-came weeks before that night in the apartment. I was buzzed from one beer, a worrying feat, and my suspicion was that the smell of him changed my brain chemistry.

He sat across from me at that tiny table, in that tiny apartment, gesticulating and performing for others, and how I wished it would all fade away, every pixel in the scene blank except for him and me.

This Is Why They Hate Us by Aaron H. Aceves