I can’t tell if I’ve been asleep or awake all this time when my eyes open fast, but lagging, just lagging an immeasurable bit behind Sadee opening the front door downstairs. I keep them open but still don’t move, and now listening for everything. It’s a process of analyzing barely audible evidence and translating it into the actions I imagine as she gets into the house, locks the door, and then—

And then I hear shoes, no feet in them now, hollowly being pushed into a space just inside the door. The keys dingle onto the hook. And then, and then—just silence. She’s not clanking any dishes around. She may be walking but I wouldn’t be able to hear sock feet on hardwood. I have lost her location. The radar line swings around and I don’t know if she’s lounging on the couch or on her way upstairs or—

I have a moment when I imagine that I might install a small camera with a panoramic view of downstairs, a couple of them even, and so I could track her like the dangerous intruder she is in the house. Camera 1, kitchen. Switch to camera 2, living room. No, no, no. Camera 3, our shared office with the computer. In the midst of these crazy thoughts the door to our bedroom is pushed open and emits the telltale squeak we’ve never been able to get rid of, and she’s in the room, the perp is in the room, and my eyes close on their own but it seems that she must be able to hear my heart pounding, in protest, or to get out, or primally to keep me aware of the danger.

I hold my position as she makes her way into and out of and back into and then finally out of the bathroom, and that light goes off and in seconds there’s a ruffling next to me and it feels like she is lying on her back. My heart, oh, my heart, it’s going to snitch on me, it feels like it’s rumbling the bed, but the last I hear is a sigh from her, her night table light going off, and then feel just some small tugs and adjustments of the sheets and then—

Silence apart from breathing. My heart slows its pace either because it realizes that the situation has resolved peaceably, or because it has surrendered. Minutes go by and everything seems to set, to dry like a painting, so that this is the finished work, Sadee on her back likely with the taste of her girlfriend not quite toothbrushed away, and me clinging to the edge of this cliff.

It’s in this quiet that I realize that I’ve been in this position for a few hours now and everything is hurting. I do the calculation and conclude that I can fall ninety degrees and be on my back. It feels wonderful and there has only been a muffled nothing of a sound from Sadee and she has remained asleep. I feel like I’ve escaped and I quickly come to another conclusion: there is no way I can be in bed when she is returning home from a date with Shar. I’m sweating. I’m parched. I’ll tell her tomorrow morning, with the practicality of working out some division of chores, that on, well, those nights, I’ll sleep on the couch in the office. That’s better. Close the door. She can pad around and have a snack or masturbate to replay the pleasure she has just come from, and I will be, or so the plan would be, sleeping.