I leaned over to kiss her as she whisked eggs. She kissed me back, and then suddenly she had me by the hair and leaned me back over the stove with her hands in my crotch and, God, it was fucking hot, and I cried out, and then I apologized and she gave me a look that was very stern and said, “Loud sex is allowed in this house.”

I had to work after we ate, and noon found me on a bus going into the far north of the city smelling like cum and grease, looking out the window onto what felt like a different Earth.

We hung out once more before she split town. She was already drunk and we went to the old nickel arcade. We had a hoot. She dominated at pinball. The next morning, she put on country tunes while we lay in bed. A man and a woman were singing together and it was beautiful. Punks who like country! There’s a lot of them, huh? I have fond memories of that.

Cleo got up and told me to wait. She returned with breakfast in bed, and ugh, how fucking sweet is that, right? But—it freaked me out. I don’t know. I was attracted to her, I liked hanging out and I liked the sex, but I didn’t feel anything more. Which I wasn’t able to say. You may remember I did not always understand how one responds to romantic intimacy.

I ate her toast and eggs, and then got up and was all “Well, I gotta work!” though my shift didn’t start ’til one.

And as I was getting dressed, with the space heater roaring, Cleo said in a voice that broke out of a sob, “Could you … Could you just come cuddle me for a bit?”

Cleo had radiated power and confidence until that point, power and confidence I had given to her without knowing. (Here’s a secret: I used to fret my name was boring, but know why I like it now? No one overestimates a Nicole.) I took my clothes back off and got into bed and I felt her body unclench while mine left the room.

She said, “We’re meant to be kept from each other, you know,” her verve returned.

She bounced out of town a few weeks later. She was one of those punks who did that, drifted. How she stitched her life together, I don’t know. But before I left that day, Cleo burned me that country album. I found out later it was Robert Plant and Alison Krauss doing covers, and I thought of Cleo every time I listened to it, though I wouldn’t see her again for a dozen years.

You know the rest of what happened to me, or some of it, anyway. I fell in love with a boy, a young boy from Lake Oswego whose innocence and sweetness befitted his eighteen years. He’d just left his family and the Mormon Church, and we bonded for a long time over that. He more or less moved into my room while we were together. He was a magical boy. Good at fixing things. Twice, he bought me groceries while I was literally napping, exhausted from work. He was a nice boy. We had both been made for different lives, except I couldn’t go back, and he could, and eventually, that’s what he did.