Hate
1142 Words
I don't know what to feel... I hate this man so much for ruining our life and for taking my Mom away from me. I didn't even know he teaches here because I always distanced myself from him, but now? Arghh how I hate him so much. You don't know how many times they just do it in our home even though I'm still there. Kitchen, living room, bathroom, bedroom, even in the garage and garden — I can hear their moans everywhere! I know my Mom has been lonely for too long because of my Father choosing his first family, but must they really do it without restraints?
Right now, I just don't know how to feel after watching him teach decently. With his handsome face and voice, I can feel the other girls are wanting to jump on him. Looking at him so dreamly, like Serena.
"Stop that, Serene!" I whispered to her feeling annoyed at how she looks at him.
"What? I'm just admiring..." She pouted
I roll my eyes and stare back at the front, jaw tight.
It’s not just Serena. Half the girls in the class look like they want to throw themselves at him. Twirling their hair, leaning forward, laughing a little too loudly when he makes some dry joke about Wordsworth. It makes my skin crawl. Not because I care what they think. But because I know better.
They don’t know him. Not the way I do.
They don’t know what he looks like fresh out of the shower, towel hanging too low on his hips. Or the sound of his voice when it’s not controlled and polite but raw and unfiltered, murmuring filth into my mother’s skin. They don’t know how it feels to walk into the kitchen at midnight and catch him standing there shirtless, drinking water like he owns the house — because he does now.
And maybe that’s what stings the most.
He just... took everything. Quietly. Easily.
One day it was just me and Mom trying to survive. The next, it was candles and vitamins and morning runs and him.
She changed. She started smiling again, wearing lipstick again. And I told myself that was good. She deserved to be happy.
But I didn’t realize she’d disappear too.
“Eyes up here,” Nathan says smoothly, and the class chuckles like they’ve been caught daydreaming.
I blink, realizing I was staring. Not just at him. At the way his hand wrapped around the marker. At the way the veins in his forearm flexed when he wrote. At the way his voice dipped a little deeper when he said emotion.
Damn it.
I drop my gaze and scribble random notes I’ll probably never read again.
“Miss Hart?” His voice cuts across the room, calm and clear.
My head snaps up.
He’s looking directly at me.
My stomach drops.
“Would you mind answering the question?”
I have no idea what the question was.
A few people turn to look. Serena shifts beside me. My throat goes dry.
“I...” I start, then stop.
He raises an eyebrow. “You were paying attention, right?”
My fists clench under the desk.
He knows I wasn’t.
He knows.
I lift my chin. “Yes, Professor. You asked about the core value of Romanticism.”
“And?”
I force my voice to stay steady. “Emotion. Romanticism valued feeling over reason. Imagination over logic. The self over the structure.”
A pause.
Then a faint nod. “Correct.”
I look away first.
He moves on. Keeps talking. But something about the way he said correct makes my whole body tense. Like it wasn’t just about the answer. Like it was about something else entirely.
By the time class ends, I’m the first one out the door.
I walk fast, trying to escape the heat still sitting under my skin, but it follows me. It always does.
As soon as I’m outside the room, my legs slow down. My feet don’t know where to take me, so I just keep walking. Down the hall, past the stairs, until I’m somewhere quiet. A corner by the window.
I rest my back against the wall, close my eyes, and breathe.
But it doesn’t help.
Because every time I close my eyes, I see them.
Not just last night. Not just this morning.
All of it.
The way it used to be.
It used to be just me and her. Me and Mom. We were never rich, but we made it work. We shared clothes, shared food, shared laughter. She used to braid my hair before school and hum old 90s love songs while cooking rice in the kitchen. She worked long hours, but she always came home tired and soft, sinking into the couch beside me with a blanket and her cold feet under my legs.
She’d say, "As long as we’ve got each other, Ava, we’ll be okay."
And I believed her.
Even when Dad left. Even when he chose his first family over us and never looked back. Even when she cried in the bathroom at night thinking I couldn’t hear. I stayed by her side. I was the one who held her after every heartbreak, every disappointment.
Then Nathan happened.
He came in quietly. Clean-cut, polite, helpful. He fixed the broken sink and carried groceries and smiled at her like she was the only woman left in the world. And she lit up. Like someone had finally plugged her heart back in.
I tried to be happy for her. I really did.
She deserved someone to look at her like that.
But everything changed after he moved in.
The house felt different. His presence was everywhere. Protein powder on the counter. His shoes by the door. That cologne that smelled like cedar and leather and sin soaking into the hallway air.
And suddenly, I didn’t exist anymore.
She started dressing different. Wearing dresses again. Getting her nails done. Cooking breakfast every morning like she was someone’s perfect little wife.
She used to ask me about my day. Now she asks if Nathan got enough sleep.
She used to laugh with me during movie nights. Now she’s in bed by nine, curled up beside him like he’s her entire world.
Sometimes I wonder if she even sees me anymore. If she remembers I’m still here, still breathing, still waiting for the version of her who used to sit with me on the porch steps and tell me that we were enough.
But now everything is Nathan.
Her eyes follow him when he walks into a room. Her lips curve every time he speaks. Her body bends around him like he’s gravity and she’s weightless.
And I’m just background noise.
A ghost in the house I used to call mine.
- Writer
