But wait!

I swear there's a good explanation for why, when Lui called me at 3:00 this morning, panicked because he'd woken up to sirens and I wasn't in the bed next to him, I was actually sitting in a car just outside our apartment, holding hands with another man.

It was meant to be a group outing - the trip over to TGI Friday's to get a drink after work - and Lui had been invited too, except that he was concerned about his own early start time this morning, and was thinking of going out with some of his own colleagues instead. So of course, it ended up just being me and Irish, and we vowed to make an alibi of a couple of the other guys, have them say they'd come out with us too (I mean, it wasn't a total lie - they'd been invited, and they'd wanted to go, they just couldn't for whatever reasons).

"You know that's gonna make it even worse, though," he said.

"What do you mean?"

"I mean, they're gonna give me so much shit for having to cover for us. People already come up to me all the time and ask what's going on."

"Really? No one says anything to me..."

"That's because you're the girl. But I can't tell you how many times I've heard, 'So... You and the new girl?' Or like when Kali pulled me aside and warned me, 'Careful, you know she's married.' Or how Danny and Kaine keep coming up to me and saying, 'So, you hit that yet?'"

I beamed, devilishly pleased to be thought of as something to be hit. Yep, quarter-century and she's still got it. "So what do you tell them?"

"What do you think I tell them? First of all, I'm not ready to date yet, at all. And even so, I mean, you're married. I tell them that we're friends, that you're easy to talk to, and that's it. I asked Kali [also married], 'So what is it when you and I go out to dinner, just the two of us?' That shut her up."

...

Two drinks in, I had enough balls (stupidity?) to joke with him that some of his stories are too good to be true, and how do I know he isn't just fabricating his whole life?

"I wish I was," he said sadly, then added, "But if somebody were to make up a life, with everything I've been through, that's just fucking sick and twisted."

"Well - don't be offended if I ever play the 'prove it' card - like, in a worst-case scenario, 'prove your family really lives in Ireland; prove [fiancée] really existed and that she really died' - that sort of thing."

"No, I won't be. You're just being guarded. I get it."

And I was satisfied on that topic.

...

We pretty much closed the restaurant - not quite, we left around last call - and after trying to prove that his car could get up to 80 on a quarter-mile hill leading away from the store ("There are certain things about you that remind me of [fiancée], like how we can just sit for hours and talk about nothing, or how she was the only girl that liked my reckless driving - all the other girls who've been in the car with me think they're gonna die..."), we sat in his car out front of my apartment, debating whether I'd be ok walking up the stairs on my own, or whether he should brave the cold, Autumn Equinox air and walk me up.

And then somehow the conversation turned, and we were talking again about his life, his past, his world being turned upside-down. "I probably won't sleep tonight," he said. "I'm just gonna go home and stare at the ceiling - I do that a lot."

"You should paint something on the ceiling, so you'd have something to look at," I offered.

"I like it white though. Because then... it's blank... it's nothing... it's... me." It seemed a little contrived, or maybe a little too perfect. He went on. "If you don't think, you can't feel; if you can't feel, you can't feel pain."

I think that was the point when I reached out for his hand, and in an incredibly smooth move, hit the armrest between our two seats and made a loud noise, disrupting the moment just enough to make him look and make me feel stupid. I grabbed his hand anyway. He didn't hold mine back, just kept staring straight ahead, telling me how God had totally deserted him, how he didn't know what happens next. So I didn't let go. Then he gave me a couple anecdotes: the time he parked his car at Torrey Pines Beach as the marine layer was coming in, paddled out on his surfboard until he was exhausted, and then fell asleep, only to wake up on the beach about 20 miles south in Point Loma, having been pulled in instead of out as he'd planned; the time he drank a handle each of Jack & Jim before bed, but still woke up the next morning. ("Damn Irish blood," he joked.)

"See? You haven't been completely deserted," I offered.

"Yes I have!" he shot back emphatically. Then, "Or I had, up until about three weeks ago."

It took a second to register, and then I felt something I hadn't felt in a long time, that wash of cold blood inside you when you realize you're sharing a moment. I squeezed his hand a little tighter, but didn't say a word - I was at such a loss.

At some point, Irish turned his hand over and started holding mine back, and the blood was just starting to drain from my fingertips from all the active listening, when we heard the sirens go by. We started joking about how Lui had sent the cops out looking for... one or the other or both of us, really. "Mr. Même, we found your wife," I said sarcastically, and that's when the phone rang.

I fumbled one-handedly with my new flip phone before finally letting go of Irish's hand. Made my excuses to Lui - I'd just gotten back, I told him, we'd closed the bar and then talked in the parking lot for a while, I'd be right up - and then gave Irish an awkward, inside-the-car hug. "Take care of you," I said against his cheek. (I don't know why I keep using that line, but thanks to Monica, I finally know what movie I stole it from (Pretty Woman). I guess it just sounds less formal and threatening than the grammatically correct, "Take care of yourself.")

"I will," he said against mine.