Sonya and I tried. We dated seriously for a couple of months without doing the deed.

I came up to her house in the suburbs on the weekends for sleep overs, she came over to my place in the city on weeknights. It was bliss. My endless nights of swiping right only to find damaged goods that didn’t have time, energy or the heart for a real relationship were over. Strange enough, the girl who needed to be shackled at night to make sure she didn’t burn the city down was the least-damaged girl I had found in years of dating in LA.

Sonya and I made it work. There were ways around sex and I think avoiding it for a couple of months helped us build a better bond in a day and age when a lot of people start relationships on a one-night stand.

I have to say the issue was the elephant in the room of our relationship which grew larger each day. Well, more like a hideous monster. I felt that monster might grow so large that it pushed us out of our cubby hole of comfort if we didn’t confront it, but I said nothing. I didn’t want to sabotage what we had.

Sabotage ended up being something we didn’t discuss, we just did it one night, when two drinks with dinner turned into seven drinks and a late-night skinny dip in the pool. I interrupted our make out session when the REO Speedwagon song “Can’t Fight This Feeling” popped into my head. There was no getting away from it this time.

Sonya and I made love in her bed. We soaked the sheets with the chlorine water which still clung to us. We were so drunk, I don’t think either of us thought about the consequences until we were lying with our eyes to the ceiling, catching our breath with that post-coital urge of sleep filling our bodies.

“Well…at least it was worth it,” Sonya said.

Sonya got up and went into the bathroom. I almost feel asleep by the time she came back a few minutes later. She didn’t even come back to the bed, she just walked over to the closet and started locking herself in.

“Just come lock it and we can go to sleep,” Sonya said.

I walked over and locked up the closet. Sonya and I avoided eye contact when the door closed.

“Good night,” we said at the same time just before the door closed all the way.

I retreated to the bed. I was so drunk and tired, it didn’t take me long to drift away into sleep.

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