Need You Now

45

A round eleven o’clock I went outside and sat on the front stoop. Every unit on Connie’s block had the same facade-a couple of concrete steps leading to a storm door with duct tape on the cracked glass. On such a frigid January night I was the only lunatic in the neighborhood sitting outside as if it were mid-July. Connie’s tiny one-bedroom just didn’t offer a place to escape, and after three hours, I desperately needed time away from her and Scully. I was alone for only a few minutes when Lilly joined me.

“Good news,” she said as she sidled up next to me on the top step. “We finally got the sleeping arrangements figured out.”

By “we” I knew she meant Connie. “What was the scoutmaster’s decision?” I asked.

“Connie and I will take the bedroom. The men are in the living room: Scully gets the couch, and you get the air mattress on the floor.”

“Ah, the air mattress. I knew we’d break out the camping equipment. When do we start the campfire and make the s’mores?”

“Be nice,” said Lilly.

I smiled, but Lilly was right. As we sat together in the cold, Lilly’s head against my shoulder, it occurred to me that I had yet to give Connie a proper thank-you for all she had done.

“Something bothers me about Scully,” she said.

Lilly’s remark had taken me aback. We were seated side by side, so I couldn’t read her expression, and my attention had been drawn across the street, where a kitten seemed to be losing the race against time to find a warm place to spend the night.

“Bothers you how?” I asked.

“It’s mostly a feeling I get.”

“There must be something behind it.”

“Well, for one, I don’t like the way he’s been trying to talk you into a gunfight.”

“He’s training me to protect myself so that I don’t end up like Evan. That’s all.”

“Maybe. But even more than the guns, it worries me the way Agent Henning cut you loose tonight-just like that. Two hours after Evan was shot, the three of us were in Chinatown trying to figure out how the FBI could help us and how we could help the FBI. Another two hours later, we’re sitting at the kitchen table with Scully-whom you haven’t seen since you were a teenager-and Agent Henning calls to tell you that we’re on our own.”

“Scully didn’t have anything to do with that.”

“I’d hate to think he did,” she said. “But why does it keep gnawing at me?”

I didn’t have an answer, but she didn’t seem to be waiting for one. It was just something she wanted out in the open, off her chest. I was about to suggest that we rescue that kitten across the street, but a neighbor opened his front door and called the nearly frozen feline inside.

“Don’t you love happy endings?” asked Lilly. She’d been watching, too.

“Yeah, I guess I do.”

She paused before asking the follow-up, but I could feel it coming.

“Patrick, what do you think is going to happen with us?”

No easy answer came to me, so I ducked it. “I think Shia LaBeouf will play me and Jillian Michaels will play you in a summer blockbuster that will spin off into a reality show called Wall Street Three: The Biggest Losers .”

Her puff of laughter crystallized in the night air before me. “Seriously,” she said. “So much has happened in the last few days, but we haven’t really talked about us. I’m just asking: assuming we don’t get shot, strangled, or arrested, where do you and I end up?”

“That’s a pretty big question,” I said.

“That’s a pretty vague answer.”

She was right. “The fact that after four full days of hell we’re sitting here next to each other says a lot, don’t you think?”

I had intended to speak from the heart, but I could feel from her reaction that my words had fallen short. Maybe I was too tired to do better. Maybe she wished I wasn’t so afraid to say the wrong thing at the wrong time. Maybe all the stress since Lilly had dragged me into Puffy’s Tavern on Monday morning had made our six months in Singapore seem like the distant past-made us seem like two different people, even.

Lilly squeezed my hand gently as she rose and said good night. The cold metal hinges creaked as she pulled open the storm door.

“Lilly?” I said.

She stopped and looked at me.

“I’m glad you’re here,” I said, then tried to do better. “I’m glad you’re with me.”

There was warmth in her eyes, but she offered no words. She pushed open the front door, and I heard the loud slap of the metal storm door as she went inside. I was alone on the stoop, and the night felt colder without her. I started a mental list of perfect responses to Lilly’s question, but I fought off the second-guessing. It suddenly occurred to me why I was having so much trouble with the thrust of her question- What’s going to happen to us? It wasn’t that I didn’t care about Lilly and me, the relationship.

I was more worried about Lilly. Really worried.