One day, you look at the person and see more than you did the day before, like a switch was flicked somewhere. And the person who was just a friend is suddenly the only person you can imagine yourself with.

More from The X-Files

• For the first time, I feel time like a heartbeat, the seconds pumping in my breast like a reckoning; the numinous mysteries that once seemed so distant and unreal, threatening clarity in the presence of a truth entertained not in youth, but only in its passage.
• The truth? The truth... there is no truth. These men just make it up as they go along.
• Did you really think you call up the devil and ask him to behave?
• Hey, Scully! Is this demonstration of boyish agility turning you on at all?
• I thought everyone believed in ghosts.
• It looks like I'm going to have to tell Skinner his suspect is a giant bloodsucking worm after all.