Because the Night

the inevitable

Of course he ran toward her.

And of course he probably shouldn't have. But at that moment, he wasn't thinking about what he shouldn't do. 

He was thinking about her, Lily, suddenly so confident in what she wanted — and what she wanted was him. What was he supposed to do? Turn around? 

Before he could convince himself to turn around and head back to his cavernous, empty room, Diego took two big steps toward Lily and wrapped his arms around her. He rested his head on top of hers, just to prolong the few moments between now and later, when he would do what he swore he wouldn't do since she walked into dance class the first morning. Don't kiss her, Diego. 

Then, despite himself, he tilted her chin up so they could stare at one another. Around him, Diego heard the crank of a train as it leaves the station. The noise speeds up. The train hurtles on. Whether or not he wanted to be on this train, here he was, and it was about to start going fast.

So that meant their first official kiss was imbued with a certain velocity. After all those mornings of tango, their bodies were already familiar with each others'. He knew how Lily moved, how her spine felt in his palm, how her left felt in his right one. He knew how her body hesitated before she moved, and that she was always a second ahead of the rhythm. He felt like he knew her. 

Their kiss was filling in a missing piece to a puzzle he'd been constructing each morning since he met her. 

Diego held Lily's face in both his hands. He kissed her slowly, at first, just pecks. Her fingers in his hair, trying to bring him closer. Show him that she was brave so that he could be braver. Then she blossomed underneath him. Their mouths melted into one another. He wanted to take a breath, he never wanted to come up for air. 

The next thing he knew, he was choreographing her body without words. He raised her up onto his torso, so that her legs were wrapped around him. Then, while their faces were still locked together, Diego fell backwards so that he was sprawled on the hiking path and she was straddling him. 

It was only then, in that compromising position, making out with a guest on his family's carefully manicured trail, did the enormity of Diego's decision smack him. He groaned partly out of self loathing — for going down this doomed path again, for dragging someone along with him. And he groaned partly because she was on top of him, finally. They were together horizontally, not vertically. And he wanted to stay intertwined with her like this in the woods, which were governed by a different set of rules than the rigid humanity of the Mountain House. 

Please, don't let anyone catch me. 

***

They let themselves kiss each other for a while longer. Long enough that hours later, Lily was still raining tiny twigs from her hair. Long enough that Diego could tell exactly what he needed to do with his mouth to make a certain sound come out of hers.

But the entire time he was down on the hiking trail with her, Diego imagined a clock. The clock's hands ticked in time with the beating of his heart: Boom, boom, boom. The clock was a reminder that this, too, would expire, the soaring feeling he had in his chest when he was around her.

Diego was trying to be realistic, and realistic meant he couldn't continue on with Lily. Because while this feeling was so precious for him, so sweet and welcome after the year he'd had, it came at too high a price for Lily.

What girl with her future ahead of her would choose to give it up for him?

So Diego listened to the clock and, in time with the beats, kissed her on the lips, then on the forehead, then on the nose. He completed the universal cycle from romantic to platonic to "you're a little kid" kisses, and hoped she'd get the message: He couldn't do this.

Diego couldn't get up, either. He was strong enough to stop kissing, sure. But strong enough to walk away? He was almost waiting to be kicked out. That way the engine that powered him away from the woods and towards Highland was her anger, not his own volition. To choose to give this up? Nothing prepared him for that.

He didn't have to wait long. Lily propped herself up on her arm. "Is this where you're getting off?" She asked, quietly.

He couldn't turn over to look at her.

"I knew it," she continued.

What could he say other than "sorry?" He was sorry. He wished he could kiss her, then live his life. He wished that kissing her didn't mean he had to think about his life and future, too.

He said sorry, then waited for the fallout.

"I don't use this word lightly," Lily continued. "And I don't want you to think I'm insulting you. I'm just assessing what I see here. I think you're pathetic."

Now he was up on his arm. "Pathetic?"

God, he was handsome. Would this fact ever stop feeling like such a surprise to her? Because now, each time she looked at him, she saw the shock of his face. His eyebrows pushed together the vertical creases in the middle of his forehead, which he'd have to watch out for when he was older, which she'd never get to see. His lips were full and angry. His hair mottled from the grass. His chest broad enough to curl up on with her whole body, like some trembling kitten looking for the hum of another person.

He was all those things, and he was pathetic.

"Yeah," she said. So didn't owe him an explanation as to why.

Lily decided to leave. On the ground, she was leaving a mystery that she wanted to unravel, a man so handsome she could show his picture to her enemies and make them respect her (but she wouldn't).

"Wait," he said. "You might get lost without me."

A few steps ahead of him, she laughed. He couldn't hear her. She had been thinking exactly that: How would she find her way out of the woods?

He cleaned himself off and walked her back in silence, this time barely helping as she crawled up the steep inclines. They separated at the foot of the path.

"See you tomorrow morning," she said. She couldn't help reminding him.

"Come pick out a dress later," he said. Because he couldn't help it, either. He stopped the kissing earlier today. But what Diego wouldn't do is shut all the doors to it happening again. Fate was playing this game, too, and he would give it a seat at the table.