Graham has such a virgin-ized PG-13 interpretation of “liking it rough” that we don’t even need a safe word when we fuck. It involves a pathetic kind of dirty talk and ass slapping that gets even more dull when he’s high. He thinks “I fucking love you” is what I want to hear when he hits my face and throws me against the headboard. “You’re so fucking hot,” when he pins my arms down and sits on my chest. “You feel so good,” when I’m gagging on his dick. I masturbate more graphically. But it’s cute that that’s what gets him hot. That he’ll slap my cheek but the second I wince he stops, shaking. “Oh my God, are you okay, I’m sorry, that was too much,” he’ll say in one long breath as if I haven’t seen worse. As if I didn’t want worse.

When we finish—and we always both finish; Graham might be tame but that doesn’t mean he doesn’t know what he’s doing—he falls asleep within seconds in that annoying way some people can. He can sleep anytime, anywhere, and I hate him for it. I haven’t been able to sleep since college. I hear every noise: every pipe draining is like metal chains dragging on tin; every soft upstairs footstep is a person waiting to pounce. Every move Graham makes—rolling over, yawning, smiling in a dream—numbs my hands and feet in fear and leaves me lying so still, barely breathing, hoping to disappear into the darkness I’m so afraid of.

After an hour, I slip out of bed. I have a routine, you see, silent and effective; a kind of muscle memory doing its job in the darkness.

I keep a clean pair of leggings, a T-shirt, and a Uniqlo thin down jacket hidden in the two-inch gap between the bottom of my dresser and our white Moroccan rug. I can slip everything on in silence—even the jacket’s light crackling blends into the night. My sneakers are by the door, where Graham insists we keep all our shoes—so the outside stays outside, or so he likes to say. And within five minutes, I’m out the back door that leads to the service entrance—the one you’re supposed to use for dogs and big deliveries. I duck into the stairwell, and the lights turn on with my movement. The cameras on each floor back here are fake, I learned. No one uses the stairs. Especially not anyone on the eighteenth floor.