We promised again to not get too drunk and let our desires get the best of us. It was a nice short-term promise, but I still had my doubts about the long-term plausibility of how this would all work. Were we going to spend our whole lives sober and celibate? We might as well have become Mormons. Neither of us seemed to have a solution.

I would prod Sonya with questions whenever the time felt right. She swore up and down that all doctors had no idea what it was. Night terrors or something, was about the best explanation I ever got. She showed me official documentation from physicians. Confirmed that she had tried a bunch of medications, but none of them ever worked. I saw the half-empty pill bottles.

We went on with life. Every day together was a joy. We went Facebook official. I knew we were only a few months away from having to decide if we want to move in together full-time. The obvious choice would be to move into her already paid-off house with the pool, but I had my hesitations, for obvious reasons.

Those hesitations picked up some momentum when Sonya and I slipped up again on Halloween. We had too much to drink. Had incredible sex (it’s amazing how good it is when you let it linger for months at a time) and I locked my love in a god damn closet with iron clasps around her limbs.

The sounds from the closet started before I could fall asleep this time. A low growl, like the one a mean dog gives when you start to get to close to its food dish. I stared up at the ceiling and listened to it drone on for minutes before it was replaced by soft crying in Sonya’s usual soft feminine tone. It took everything I had to not run over to the closet, throw it open and pull out Sonya, but she promised that addressing her once it all started was the worst thing to do.

I listened to those growls and cries for hours. I felt like each minute that I had to listen sucked my soul out of me a little bit more and more.

—

Those pieces of my soul still floated out in the ether even with my relationship with Sonya flourishing. I couldn’t help but feel hollow each night when we said goodnight, kissed and I laid there with a throbbing erection (sorry, but it’s the truth) and a wonder if my girlfriend who was sleeping next to me was telling the truth about everything.