The storm knocked out the power for the whole block. In the dark, we stopped pretending.

I am thirty. Malik is thirty-two. We have lived in the same walk-up in Fitzroy for ten months, a terrace split into three apartments, bluestone laneway at the back, plane trees out the front that drop their skins all spring. He has the ground floor. I have the one above. I know the sound of his kettle. He knows the…