I wanted to strangle her.

Mothers were supposed to love and protect their children, but it seemed all mine did was complain. If I was outside all day, then she was suspicious of what I was up to, and would say I needed to spend more time indoors where she could keep an eye on me. If I was inside all day, then I played too many video games and needed to play with other kids. The major vexation for me was her nearly absolute lack of cognizance, as my indoor proclivities centered on the noble acts of reading novels, writing poetry, and protecting Noah from boredom. As for playing with other kids, the only ones my parents thought safe to be around lived miles away.

So what was I to do? Was it too much to ask my parents to meet me halfway, for their decisions to make a modicum of sense? The mistake of voicing those thoughts only got me yelled at or grounded, so I spent my adolescence in constant frustration, bottling up my temper while Noah played with my old toys, blissfully unaware of the passive aggressive obstacle course he’d be navigating in another four or five years.

I can only blame that irritated dynamic between my mother and I for my difficult introduction to romance. Try as we might not to, we project our gripes with our parents onto our friends. We seek the freedoms that they held from us in our platonic relationships, and we punish our romantic partners with defenses we built to feign some sort of sovereignty while subject to mom and dad’s rules. So when Phoebe agreed to a date, and then another, it was just a matter of time before my subconscious began planning my escape.

Phoebe was gorgeous, but not in the ways most people admire. Of course she certainly had some universally attractive features, but what specifically turned me on about her was the effortless, magical way she reconciled unlikely contrasts. She had a bombshell bod with a girl-next-door face, great fashion sense for trashy clothes, simple tastes she expressed verbosely. She also had a loud, goat-like laugh that from any other human would have been obnoxious, but from her it merely pulled her down from the clouds enough for me to see that she was real.

I could sooner remember the number of my first driver’s license than the name of the band whose concert we met at. They played at La Mierde’s, which was my least favorite venue in all of Six Ports, but somehow the one I frequented the most. I do recall liking their jalapeno poppers, but the warped pool tables, darts that never flew straight, and the backwoods truck stop quality of their bathrooms made it impossible for me to ever feel comfortable there. And yet they attracted the best local headliners (possibly due to the size of the stage and the fact that they almost never carded), so, from the ages of nineteen to twenty-six, it was my go-to haunt, and I never missed a chance to clarify to their staff and other patrons that the place, regardless of its name, was in fact not la mierde.

I think Phoebe might have been the one person to genuinely laugh at that joke. I tended to use humor as a sort of social counter measure back then, deflecting any serious attention and assuring a sustainable role in people's expectations for my persona to rest in. Phoebe somehow swatted all that away, glimpsing instead the sharp, insightful mind residing beneath that cloud of cynical ballast.

There may have been other girls who also saw and liked the real me, but I was one of those clueless guys who needed runway lights on the matress to know they had a chance. I also had convinced myself (in order tl excuse myself from putting my feelings on the line) that I was too complex and nuanced for for most women to be deeply attracted to. And yet Phoebe, despite the circumstances of our meeting (we both had stumbled tipsily into the wrong bathroom, then bumped into each other, quite literally, while hurrying into the correct restrooms, and had a good laugh at the bar about it later), conveyed with no confusion that she had found exactly who she wanted and I had no chance of escape.

Humor, being my first line of defense, has always been especially important to me. Phoebe not only laughed at my worst jokes, but she said plenty of things that made me laugh as well. Our conversation flowed like the urinals at La Mierde’s, our stories tripping over each other and landing on the floor, and when I asked for her phone number, she handed me a cocktail napkin, her number already scrawled on it with the waiter’s pen, that she’d been holding between her fingers like a hungry crab with a clam in its pincers. I called her the next day and we met that night at La Mierde’s again, but when I told her I secretly hated the place she looped her arm around mine and bid me to lead the way.

She looked truly lovely in the sodium vapor light on 63rd Ave. It’s dingy yellow haze broke on her cheeks, rosy in the night air’s chill. I must have tripped a hundred times on the way to the Farmington Street Pub as I was craning my neck to look into those twin hazel oceans when I should have been watching my step. And every time was worth it. Every crack in the sidewalk, every sudden dip from curb to street, every loose piece of pavement; I’d gladly trip over each of them again.

The entryway to Farmington was almost a room in its own right. One came through the door into an alcove lit by candles with benches on either side and a mantle covered in magazines, free local newspapers, and flyers for the hundreds of bands playing throughout the city on any given weekend. We took off our coats there, bumping elbows and giggling about it, then went into the pub where I instantly saw someone I knew.

It was Bret, a friendly guy eight or nine years my senior who breezed through my early twenties. Farmington favored park benches over tables and chairs, and Bret had gotten there early enough to snag one near the pool tables but still in view of the bar.

“This doesn’t prove you’re not gay,” he said. He grinned a lot, and he grinned when he cracked that joke about me having a girl on my arm for once.

“Does this prove it?” she said.

She took my face in her hands, leaned forward with puckered lips and flew me straight to the moon. When we came back down, Bret, still grinning, shook his head and said no.

Pizza slices were two dollars each on Sundays from nine to eleven at night, so we all waited another forty minutes before ordering, even though our stomachs groaned like galleys in a storm wind. Bret questioned us about our friendship, wanting to know who this strange new vixen was and why she was romping around with the likes of me.

“We met last night at La Mierde’s,” she said. Each word she spoke heralded a subtle, happy shift in her expression: a widening of her eyes, a spreading of her smile, a tilt of her head that sent her black curls bouncing.

Bret wrinkled his nose and made an exaggerated grimace. “That place is grungy.”

Phoebe laughed and squeezed my arm. “Yeah, Liam said he hates it. I’m new in town so I just went exploring and wandered in because I heard the band.”

“How was the show?”

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“Pretty good,” she replied, curls bouncing with her happy nods. “It wasn’t really my type of music, but they played well.”

“What do you listen to?” I asked.

“You’ve known her a whole day and you’re just now asking that?” Bret said.

I chuckled, not sure how to respond. “Well, I saw her at a (insert generic nonsensical local band name here) show, so I figured she liked heavy mood rock (or whatever they were playing).”

She agreed to my logic, then rattled off a list of female artists of the semi-pagan brand of poetic tunes that hovered between soft alternative and indigenous folk music. I recognized two, one of whom I also liked, and proposed we go to see any one of those artists once they were performing within a thirty mile radius of Six Ports.

Phoebe’s hair almost bounced off her head from her rapid nods, but she finished her cranial flurry with a sad, almost pouty look. “I don’t know when any of them will be in the states again, though.”

“I’ll keep my ear to the ground.”

“Okay!” she said with a bounce.

Bret’s group arrived shortly after, in time for the cheap pizza, and he discreetly rose while we all ordered, making his way to the entrance where he perused the pile of magazines on the mantle that lined the cozy little alcove by the door. Meanwhile, I introduced Phoebe to the sundry acquaintances, and Bret returned in time to order, then slipped something across the bench to me while Phoebe was looking at Dana, Bret’s ex, who was vigorously welcoming her to Six Ports and singing praises about my poetry.

Phoebe whirled. “You write poetry?”

I slapped my hand down to cover the paper Bret slid to me, even though I had no clue what it was.

“Yeah,” was all I could squeeze out. My heart was still pounding from the unexpected kiss she’d given me.

“I wanna hear one.”

I ran through the inner rolodex that normally had everything I’d written organized by date of publishing, and each page was inexplicably blank.

“You don’t have to,” she said.

On cue, one popped in my head. It was the perfect choice, as our subconscious minds are oft, when allowed, to provide; it being short, mystical and quietly complex. I took a sip of water before reciting.

“What means it when we see the moon? A lurking thing outside our room, he sends waves to more seas than one. And when his work each night is done, we wake up in that special place, and see our dreams on his scarred face.”

As I said each line, her eager smile transmuted into a look of wonder and, with a more sincere voice than I had ever heard addressed to me, she told me I was brilliant. My throat swelled almost shut and I wanted to cry.

All throughout the night, while we all merrily one-upped each other with increasingly ludicrous tales, I kept hearing those words of hers in my ears. You're brilliant. I kept one eye fixed on her at all times, feeling my heart flood with infatuation over her boisterous laugh and absurd pool table shenanigans.

Not wanting to spill her water, and not wanting to put it down, she asked for me to help her break on what had to have been the fifth game our group played. So I stood behind her, close as I dared (which was pretty dang close), and held the back end of her cue. We were not remotely in sync. She tugged at the cue without warning me and when my hand did not budge she jerked backwards, spilling half her water on both our shirts.

She set her glass on the side of the pool table, then ineffectively tried to dry my chest off with her hands; a shenanigan that ended with her hugging me and laughing hysterically. When we regained our composure, we each finished our waters and tried the tandem shot again, this time thrusting the cue so hard it flew like a spear across the table.

“Hey now,” said Kelsie, our waitress, watching from behind the bar, “don’t make me come over there.”

“We’re sorry,” Phoebe said. She then took hold of my shirt collar and, for no apparent reason, her expression turned to one of amazement and she burst into another fit of laughter which I mimicked.

We didn’t last much longer. I led her back to the bench and poured us each a tall glass of water from the pitcher to clear our heads.

“I should probably eat something,” she said.

The specials menu had been relocated from the center of the table to the far end. I lunged dramatically and caught it with my fingers, faking sounds of pain as I dragged it back.

“Oh,” Phoebe said, "you’re my hero.”

And she took me on another flight to the moon.

“I’m sorry,” she said the instant we landed. “I hope I’m not weirding you out.”

“Not at all,” I assured her. “I mean, this is great, meeting you and all."

“Really?”

“Hell yeah.”

She nodded, and if I hadn’t been sitting so close to her I might not have noticed that her eyelids were brimming over with tears. I flagged Kelsie down and ordered us a large plate of cheesy tots, then put my hand on Phoebe’s shoulder. “You okay?”

She nodded again. Her eyes had dried somewhat. She looked off across some invisible field while gathering her words, then turned, straddling the bench so she could look directly at me. I did the same.

“Like I said, I’m new to town. What I didn’t say is that I’m running from a lot of things, and no one I know back home knows where I went, except my sister, and I tried really hard to ger her to come with me but she... she was afraid to leave. I just... I came here only a week ago, wondering if I’d ever find a home and friends to love me and already I have a great job, a place to live, and then last night I met you and... I know this is sudden, but I just have this feeling that you’re a really great person. But I’m sorry for kissing you. That wasn’t okay.”

I wanted to tell her it was, because I was lonely and horny and she was so attractive and it just felt so good to be touched. But my subconscious came to my rescue again, recalling a conversation my aunt Jocelyn had with her friend Cynthia over the phone when I was only fifteen. She’d spend half her visits on the phone with Cynthia, talking her off ledges and away from razor blades. She swaddled her again and again with the same advice, warning her to avoid casinos and men that were too quick to get physically intimate.

“I feel something too,” I said, “and I want to explore those feelings to find out what it is.”

“Really?”

“Yeah. And seriously, don’t worry about the premature nookie. Loneliness can make us all a little crazy. So let’s slow down, for sure, but let’s hang out and get to know each other.”

Her face came alive again with its little shifts, each custom made to give unique life to every individual word she spoke. “Okay. Awesome. That’s great.”

Kelsie came with the tots and Phoebe went right to work devouring them. My own stomach tightened into a knot when I chanced a look at the specials menu, which I’d not bothered to consult after retrieving. The cheesy tots, normally around fifteen dollars, were not on it, meaning I would be paying full price. That slap of reality, of the cold wet fish variety, reminded me of how many other impulse purchases I’d already made that night, and I was worried that I'd gone way over my meager budget.

And then Phoebe proved herself to be an actual angel, pulling her wallet out of her purse after wiping her fingers on her jeans when a quick search for a fresh napkin failed to produce.

I put my hand on hers, stopping her before she could pull out her wad of cash. “Don’t even think about it. You just moved here. You need to save your money.”

“No, I’m fine. Seriously. You’ve been buying me stuff all night.” She gently pushed my hand back, clasping her fingers around mine, and put a twenty on the table.

I gave her a mock warning look before helping her finish off the tots, then happened to glance at the paper Bret had slid to me earlier.

“What’s that?” she asked.

“It’s from the magazines by the door.” I leaned closer and saw a name and a list of dates. It was one of the artists Phoebe named. Thanks, bro, I thought, catching Bret’s gaze and giving him a covert nod.

“Oh my god,” said Phoebe. “Dude! Liam, you’re amazing.”

She threw her arms around my neck and I couldn’t tell if the sound she made was a sniff or a sob.