"The Damn Season" by Aaron H. Aceves
“Flaco.”
The word flew out of my mouth like a bird into a sliding glass door. Recently, I’d begun to notice that my actions were only sometimes my own. Other times, they belonged to a familiar stranger whose life I’d been consigned to follow.
“‘Sup, Hollywood.”
The green of his eyes was life. Leaves and grass and stems. It made the green of his apron look absurdly artificial, poisonous.
I placed the carton on the conveyor belt, and it rocked forward to him.
He picked it up. “Eggnog.”
“If we don’t have any in the house, my abuela will disown my mom. Or something like that.”
He nodded, scanned the carton, and tapped a couple of keys on his register.
“$4.13.”
I handed him a ten.
“How long you been back?” he asked, handing me my change.
“Few days.”
“Paper or plastic?”
“Uh… paper.”
He stared at me, unblinking, unspeaking, and I felt blood rush to my face.
“Can you wait?” he asked.
“For the bag?”
“My break.”
“When is it?”
“8:00.”
I glanced at the clock on the wall behind him. 7:53.
“I got time.”
“Ok.”
He handed me a bag with the eggnog and looked to the next customer.
It was cold outside, but I didn’t shiver until I saw his emerging shape. Instead of an apron, he wore a padded flannel shirt.
He walked past me without a word, and I followed him.
I stopped on the driver’s side of his Chevy. Nothing had changed—the chipping burgundy paint, the muddy tires, the blistered, tinted windows. I don’t know why I thought anything would’ve.
“I’m saving up for something better,” he said before pressing the back of his freezing hands to my neck.
I instinctively shoved him.
“Come on,” he said with a smirk.
He got in the truck, closed the door, and I stood outside, my heart racing.
It took me a few moments to realize I’d already made a decision, answered a question not asked yet. This time, I’d go where I wanted to go, which was wherever he wanted to take me.
He drove to our old high school. Well, not quite. He pulled into the parking lot of a church across from it and cut the engine.
We sat quietly. His breathing was impossibly silent, mine laborious, rasping against my eardrums. It didn’t take long for the windshield to fog over.
“How do you like that fancy school of yours?”
“It’s alright,” I said.
“Friends?”
“A few.”
“I thought you’d be popular.”
“Because I wasn’t in high school?”
He laughed.
I sucked in a long, smooth breath, and when it released, I relaxed for the first time since seeing him.
“Does this still work?”
I turned on the radio, and a Christmas song played, one of many about wanting someone instead of something underneath the tree.
“What’s it like being back?”
I’d already analyzed home to an unhealthy degree, hyper-aware of everything, collecting proof for a hypothesis I’d formed the moment my family picked me up from the airport.
“I don’t fit anymore.”
“What do you mean?”
“They talk and I correct them without thinking. I don’t even want to. I don’t care how they talk. I guess I just see them how people at school would see them.”
I turned to him, not knowing if I wanted him to admonish me or absolve me.
His expression, as always, was neutral. “You were always smart.”
It was comforting to know his indelible gift of imbuing everything he said with multiple meanings was still alive. There was wonder in his voice, but also, a reprimand.
I switched to another radio station. A slow kick drum beat, the whine of a steel guitar, a mandolin. “It’s been a while since I’ve listened to country music.”
I pictured a head on his chest, a similar song playing. Two bodies so close. I knew his smell, what he felt like.
“Last I heard, you were with Dorothy.”
He snorted. “Must have been a long time ago.”
“This was… mid-October, I think.”
“Oh. Feels longer.”
“What happened?”
“Got her pregnant. Proposed. She said no, took care of it.”
“Oh. I’m sorry.”
“It’s ok. She’s fucked up in the head.”
“You’re too young to get married anyway.”
“My parents were our age.”
“Are they happy?”
“You know the answer to that, kid.”
“So you lucked out.”
“I guess.”
The song ended. The next one that played was one I knew but remained unable to name. He twisted a knob, and its lilting guitar filled the truck.
“Were you gonna call me?” he asked after a while. “If we hadn’t run into each other?”
“I don’t know.”
He lifted his hand off of his thigh and put it on my shoulder.
“I want you to feel like you fit here. Even if it’s just with me.”
His face was open. I saw the tenderness, the care. I’d think of it—raw and undeniable—a week later at the airport. Looking into his eyes, I knew he had built a place for me inside him, finally, and felt like Queen Amytis seeing the Gardens, her Gardens for the first time. I’d tried so many times to kill what existed between us, but no matter what, it had survived.
Aaron H. Aceves graduated in 2015 from Harvard College and received his MFA from Columbia University. His story "Natural Affairs" is the prequel to "The Damn Season" and was published by jmww. His debut novel, This Is Why They Hate Us, is coming in spring 2022 from Simon & Schuster. He can be found online at aaronhaceves.com
