Because the Night

happy birthday diego

Diego was a Cancer. He always hated that about himself. He didn't know what it meant to be a Cancer, but cancer, really? When everyone else got Pisces, and Sagittarius, and Capricorn? 

Even if he were any other sign in the Zodiac, though, Diego would still find himself trudging to his father's office on his 30th birthday, to have The Talk. 

If he'd ever forgotten what it was like to  be a teenager, he definitely remembered it now. There he was, stuck in perpetual youth. He had to have a "big conversation" with his stern father about his future. Meanwhile, his stomach was churning, flip-flopping, and doing all sorts of acrobatics at the memory of Lily's face lit up by the campfire. He had to keep reminding himself that she had flitted here, and would eventually flit away, like a butterfly at the end of the summer, once all the flowers have been sucked for their sweetness. This was a hotel. No one stayed year-round—except for him. Lily would be one of many who left before he was saying goodbye. 

Maybe now it's time to pivot into a career of writing YA novels, he thought to himself. They can all be about 17-year-olds who leave their families far behind. 

Then he remembered how he tried that. 

And how it didn't work out. 

And by the time that full-circle came to pass, he was standing outside his father's office. 

"Come in," he heard his dad say, through the door. They hadn't seen each other much since their last tense meeting, in which his dad instructed him to fix the Lily and Annabelle fiasco. Then, Diego informed—not asked, but informed—his dad that Lily would be working there over the summer. 

"Put her in the daycare," his dad said. "We lost a good one." Well. It stung when his dad referenced his ex-girlfriend, Adriana, who taught classes to the kids last summer. But that didn't mean she wasn't right to leave. She was. 

Ultimately, Diego wanted to be with someone who could accept the obligations that came with being a Moody. Someone who could help him accept them, too—because Diego spent a long, long time running with what it meant to be a Moody man. And Adriana definitely couldn't do that. She spent most of the last year trying to get him to leave. 

 In the year since his break-up with Adriana, Diego expanded the list of what he was looking for in a—well, girlfriend seemed too casual of a word for what he needed, and life partner far too cheesy. 

No matter the label, he needed someone who wanted to be at the hotel in the deserted off-season expanse of January, and wouldn't complain that it was "haunted," or "right out of a Stephen King novel, seriously, Diego, why are we here?"  He wanted his girlfriend to use the mysteriously creaky floors and somewhat gloomy decor as an excuse to hold him tighter in bed. And honestly? He wanted someone who would find the breakfast buffet to be as endlessly wonderful as he did, not get sick of the waffle bar by day two. 

Before moving to Highland, Diego and Adriana had a romance worthy of a novel, or perhaps a segment leading into their Dancing With the Stars introduction. They met as tango partners. All that dipping and spinning led to something powerful brewing between them, of course. Soon, they were tango-ing out of bed, in bed, and through each other's minds, and they called it love. Diego and Adriana were intertwined on stages in Bangkok, in hotel rooms in Madrid, on cruise ships where they performed. 

But once their relationship was forced to settle in one place, it transformed into a weight around both of their necks. Adriana couldn't spin like she used to. Diego couldn't move, without worrying about Adriana's happiness—or lack thereof. 

The idea was that Diego and Adriana could help start a dance program at Highland. Rotating classes, from salsa to the graceful spins of the waltz. Weekly performances, him and Adriana back on stage. Together, they would turn Highland into a premiere spot for ballroom in New York's Upper Hudson Valley. Along with the spa and the miles of trails, ballroom would be another commodity guests couldn't get elsewhere.