So, did Marcia Clark and Christopher Darden ever hook up? It’s the question that viewers of The People v. O.J. Simpson can’t help but ask, and one that tonight’s episode seems to pretty firmly clear up—they let their best chance, a drunken night in Oakland, pass them by, and then the courtroom tension following the infamous glove moment dissipated whatever romantic spark they’d had.

But in real life, it turns out, the answer’s even trickier—and anyone shipping Clark and Darden can certainly keep hope alive. “Fact of the matter is, Chris Darden and I were closer than lovers,” wrote Clark in her memoir, Without a Doubt. “And unless you’ve been through what we went through, you can’t possibly know what that means.”

As Nicole Jones pointed out in the fact check of last week’s episode, Darden wrote about Clark with equal affection in his own memoir, In Contempt, and even admitted that a relationship with her had crossed his mind:

Still, why not have a relationship with Marcia? She was attractive and I was impressed by her intelligence and toughness, intrigued by her vulnerability. We were working together as many as fifteen or sixteen hours a day, watching each other’s backs in court and commiserating over the media and other things that no one else understood.

Their trip to Oakland, which Clark describes as “euphoria,” really happened; Darden even remembered saying goodnight to her in the hotel, though with less sexual tension than appears in the episode. It’s not so hard to imagine that they hooked up and, well aware of the media scrutiny surrounding them, opted to keep it to themselves forever. In a trial where seemingly every detail was eventually dug up and examined, it’s a lovely thing to imagine, lingering now only in the memories of the two people who know what happened for sure.