Because the Night

this explains everything

"The thing is," Diego said, "I really can't."  But his face was so close to her face that she didn't really hear what he was saying. She saw what he was saying — and that was quite different than the words. 

What he was saying with his strained, exasperated glance, and his stern voice on the brink of splitting, was this: God, I want to kiss you. And the fact that he couldn't, wouldn't for some reason made her think it was her job to make it happen. If he wasn't brave enough, she would be.  

So to her surprise, to her real surprise, Lily did. Kiss him, that is. She bent down to where he was perched on the edge of a rock, and she kissed him. 

What did she think was going to happen? Fireworks? No: Just the trees swaying, happy to witness a bit of drama, maybe, or maybe just the wind. Just a second. And a second is not long enough for fireworks. 

His hands were on her shoulders, gently pushing her lips off of his. 

"I want to," he said. "But I can't. I promise it has nothing to do with you." 

Lily laughed because Lily had heard that line before. Most of us have, at some point. To spare our feelings, a person blames themselves for the relationship, when really, you were to blame. Something about you that's so close it's invisible to you, but repugnant to them. 

Lily wondered what about her turned him off, ultimately. Was her hair too short? She remembered Bella from high school, who wore her hair in a mesmerizing long ponytail and always had a boyfriend (and another in the decks, waiting to metamorphose into the main man). Was she so bad of a dancer? Was she too young, too plain, too boring? Too herself? 

Now that the game was over, she figured she might as well try to find out what killed it.  

"What was it, in the end?" she asked, softly.  

"What are you talking about?" 

"What was it about me that turned you off?" 

He turned his head and looked at her with almost bored exasperation. She felt like as much of an idiot as she seemed to think she was. Their age difference was obvious. He was in his late 20s; he knew things. She just graduated. She didn't. 

"Lily," he said. "Lily." As if saying her name were going to make things better. "Lily, it has nothing to do with you. I want to, obviously." 

Oh, so the game wasn't over. Lily placed her right knee on the rock and bent her torso over it, so her chin was on her knee and her eyes were on him. 

"You want to...what?" 

Instead of finishing the sentence, she looked at his lips. Instead of responding, he nodded. She was right. 

"You know what." 

"I want to hear you say it," she said. 

He ran his hands through his hair, the universal symbol of a man at the end of his rope. Then he leaned in toward the wall her raised and torso were making, a wall of Lily. 

"I want to put my hands on your face, like this," he said, and then he hooked his hands under her hair, around the back of her neck. "I want to sit like this for a while, and just look at you, so that you're guessing what I'm going to do next." 

"There's only one thing that you can do next." 

"Exactly," he said, smiling, but not necessarily in a friendly way — rather wistfully, the face of someone who's done this routine before,  who's mastered it. 

He ran his finger over her lips. She closed her eyes, expecting to feel something else soon. Something soft and that could use a little bit of chapstick, but she could work on that. 

Instead, when she opened her eyes, he was sitting back on the rock. He looked at her and shrugged. "That's what I want to do, but I can't." 

Lily was angry. Here they were, agreeing on something for what seemed like the first time. They should be kissing, not engaged in some cold war. 

"Why are you ruining this?" she asked.

"This isn't anything," he responded. "And it shouldn't be." 

Lily put her hand on his knee. He flinched. "It could be." 

When he looked at her this time, something was different. "How much do you know about me, Lily?" 

"I know you're a Moody, and I know I should stay away." 

"Ah. Emma got to you, clearly. But you don't know about the agreement, do you?" 

The agreement? Emma hadn't mentioned that. 

"Right," he said. "Let's walk. I can't have this conversation sitting down."

And so off they went, deeper into the woods, where Lily would learn what she was up against.