Because the Night

tomorrow is coming

By Friday night, the day before the tribunal, Diego knew everything there was to know about her. Fine—not everything. He didn't know how she would handle lost luggage in Peru. Or what she looked like when she was caught in the rain, two miles from home, without an umbrella .

But he knew a lot. And the miracle was, the more he learned about her, the more he liked her. He knew that she majored in anthropology and economics, and that her favorite thing in the world was a well-organized spreadsheet. He learned that she volunteered with a literacy program while she was in college, and still texted her favorite student. He learned that her mom, Annabelle, was obsessed with setting her up with her best friend's son—but it hadn't happened yet. 

And if Diego had any say in the matter, it never would.

Before starting the preparation, Lily made Diego agree to something. "You can't keep skulking around, like a mysterious man of the evening." 

They were cuddling in his bed. He was twirling her hair in his fingers, marveling that hair could be brown—and contain so many browns within it. In that moment, his father could've told him, "If you don't get up from this bed, you're automatically ruled out from running this place. Forever!" And still, Diego would have considered never leaving. 

"I'm not a man of the night, Lily," he said. "And I don't like whatever implications that label entails." 

"Last night, you definitely seemed like a man of the night." Then he got got distracted thinking about last night. "Quit zoning out. Fly back, the earth needs you," she said, turning around and laughing at his face, which was parsing the events of last night in detail. The kisses. The acrobats. The shouts of the variety that his neighbors would either be jealous or calling the front desk. Or heck, even inspired. The sound she made when he did that thing, and why didn't he try that thing again,  and—oh, right. He was turning 30 in two days. 

Time to get to work. 

"What are you trying to say, Lily?" 

She nuzzled into him farther. "So, I was thinking. If I'm going to splay myself on the table, tell you everything—do the thing that is required of me. Then I think you should do the same. Every question I answer, you should answer, too." 

Diego's heart sunk at the thought of that. What if she found out something about him, and she didn't like it? What if she learned who she really was, and decided to go home? And what if she wasn't good att driving, and didn't make it down the mountain? He was spiraling enough that the easiest solution was just going along with her plan, even if it was terrifying.

"Fine. Hit me with your best shot."

That's how Lily learned that Diego's fantasy was having sex in front of a fireplace ("so vanilla! how adorable!"), and how Diego learned that Lily's was the bathroom of an airplane ("less fun than it sounds, Lily—trust me"). 

 The questions ping-ponged until the night. By 3 a.m., Lily had accumulated enough facts about Diego to begin a dissertation. The weird thing is, she felt the same as she had before. 

"Can I be honest with you?" She asked. It was 3 in the morning, after all. Now was not the hour of the day for lying. 

He was nearing sleep. When he was with her, he was so comfortable that sleep often snuck up on him unwittingly. Like she turned off all his defenses. "Sure," he whispered. He wanted her to sleep, too, so he could store up on energy, then wake her up in the middle of the night with his kisses. He was already looking forward to the next round. 

"I feel like I already know you," she said. "I mean, now I know you. All the details. Where you went to high school, and all that. But when you turned around the first time, out on that porch. It was like someone tapped me on the shoulder and said to pay attention, because things were about to get more interesting, here on out." 

Diego had spent so long trying not to let himself feel hope. 

So when he felt it, at first, he mistook it for a sneeze. Diego sneezed, and then apologized. "Sorry, I know that was a mood kill. I have no idea what that was. Anyway." 

"What?  Is this your way of saying you don't feel the same?" 

She was always so quick to doubt him. He wanted to gather those anxieties up, and extinguish them. But they didn't make fire-fighters of that variety. Instead, he gathered her into his arms, and turned her around so they were looking at each other. He couldn't believe that for the past few weeks, she'd been in those dorms, when she so obviously should've been here. With him. 

"Feel my heart," he said. "I know you a lot about me, but you might not know my resting heart rate. And this is fast. Being with you, it's like my life is heightened. Like my heart's  working extra hard so I can take it all in."

"So you do feel the same." 

"I feel like I'm making the right decision, for me," he said. "But I can't speak for you."

"I don't want to hear you start going on about how I can leave you, Diego. This is happening. Tomorrow. We have to be ready for it." 

"But I don't want you to—"

"If sitting through your family's firing squad is what it takes for me to be with you, then I'll do it. What time do we have to be up again?" 

"Eight," he said. "The hike." 

"Right. Should we have done training for that, too?" 

"We could—but even I don't know what's next." 

Normally, a statement that foreboding would've kept Lily awake all night. Once, her college professor announced that the finale would be a "doozy," and she couldn't sleep for two days. But Diego had ways of tiring her out, and so she slept deeply. So deeply she hardly considered the fate the hours were pulling her closer toward. So deeply she hardly worried about what came next. 

But if she'd seen that rock scramble, she would have worried.