There is something so pure in late night Facetime. Sleep settling in the bottom of eyelids and conversations trailing off into comforting quiet. The soft movement in the background of other people getting ready for bed and the solidarity in staying together.
“How are you doing?”
“Tired,” she takes a breath, “tired of being in the house.”
I nod, somewhere in the background the sound of slippered feet shuffling across carpet.
“How much longer do you think this is gonna go on?”
“I don’t know,” I shrug, “but I wish I did.”
“Yeah, me too.”
“I—I keep telling myself to be patient, but I’m not good at that.”
“No,” she laughs, “no, you’re—at least you’re trying.”
I nod.
“Skipper” (that’s her cat) “got into the pantry today and knocked off a bunch of food.”
“At least he didn’t get the toilet paper.”
From her side of the call, a low, bellowing laughter rings out. Her dad. Her bedroom door opens, evident from the widening crack of light across her face, “That was funny.”
“Thanks, Mr.Wilins.”
The crack of light narrows until it is swallowed by the darkness. We sit for a moment, basked in the soft glow of our phone screens, and think.
“How much longer do you think we’ll be inside?” Her voice was soft yet endearing like a melting marshmallow.
“Fam,” I press my hand to my face, almost to hide from the question, “I don’t know, I don’t want to know. I just know I gotta stay inside to protect the ones who can’t afford to get sick. Ya know? It’s like, my duty, or something,” I take a deep breath, “I don’t know.”
She nods and her face makes a weird scratching noise against the surface of the pillow.
We pause again.
“I saw a cute boy today.”
“Oh, where?”
“Out, walking on my street. I couldn’t go say hi though because social distancing.”
I laugh, really loud, way too loud for being on the phone at 1 am. “Right, because that’s the only thing stopping you.”
“I could flirt with him.”
“Could’ve but wouldn’t’ve.”
“Shut up.”
“No,” I laugh.
Below me I can hear the creaks of my father getting out of bed, hopefully just to get a drink of water, both from the wood floor and his knees.
“I’m more likely than you.”
“Maybe,” I shrug, listening for footsteps on the stairs.
“Not maybe.”
“Maybe.”
“I’m way flirtier than you.”
“Maybe.”
“No! I am!”
“Maybe.”
“No,” she leans in closer to the phone, “no maybe. Admit it.”
“Admit what?”
“That I’m flirtier than you.”
“Oh, no.”
My door flies open, and my dad is staring at me, the stress of quarantine and social distancing settling in the wrinkles on his face. “You need to be quiet. It’s 1 am.”
I nod, and the door closes again. Once more, the darkness settles in.
“I gotta go.”
“Yeah.”
“Goodbye, I love you. Stay healthy and stay inside. Definitely no cute boys,” I smile.
“Yeah, whatever. Love you too.”
The call ends, and I turn off my phone. For a moment, I lay in the darkness and wonder. Do we say ‘I love you’ to our friends because we just know, we know, that one day it’ll all end? Is it some unspoken rule that one day a virus or climate change or a shooting will take away another light? I lay in the darkness, feeling its warmth wrapping around me.
No.
No, there’s no way. We say ‘I love you’ because we do. We just love. We endure the darkness and love. Because there’s no other way to be. We reach out, in the blank of the night, and talk. In the darkness, that is when we reach out.