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Friday night at the bar is insane, as always. It doesn’t begin to clear out until 1 a.m., at which point most of the patrons are so tanked that they become twice as difficult to manage. Particularly the six guys I’ve been waiting on since my shift began. They are currently on their 9th pitcher of beer, and Kristy and I have placed a small wager on which one will be first to fall off his barstool.

It’s always a fine line, with male customers. Remaining friendly enough to get a tip while making your lack of interest clear. But the more they have to drink, the less they seem to care about my interest level. Their behavior is less of a problem for me, it would seem, than it is for James. He’s been watching all night, his face growing tighter with every round they order. No matter how busy the bar gets, when I’m at their table I feel his eyes on me.

One of them drapes an arm around my waist. “We took a vote and we all agreed that you’ve got the nicest ass any of us have ever seen,” he says. “That alone deserves a huge tip.”

I disengage his hand. “So what I hear you saying is that I can get away with crappy service for the rest of the night.”

They laugh and one of them suggests I’ve already provided fairly crappy service, which I don’t doubt.

I turn toward the bar with their drink order — they’ve moved on from pitchers to Jack and Coke, never the wisest progression — and James is making his angry face, staring them — and me — down.

“What did they just say to you?” he demands.

I roll my eyes. “Nothing.”

“The next time they say ‘nothing’ to you they’re going to find themselves launched from the bar.”

“Don’t do that,” I sigh. “Those guys have a $200 tab, and I’ve earned that tip.”

“Then make sure they keep their hands to themselves.”

I go back to the table and deliver the drinks. When I set the final one down, the guy who put his arm around me before pulls me toward him, trying to drag me into his lap. “You know who you look just like?” he is saying as I attempt to push away. And then James’s hand is on my wrist, moving me behind him with a look on his face that would make a sober man run.

“Don’t cockblock me, man,” says the guy at the table. Two seconds later he’s being lifted by his collar.

“Get the fuck out of my bar,” James says. “And you’d better hope I never run into you outside of it.”

Great. I’ve now not only lost my tip but have also incited what could be a major fight. I see them glancing at each other in silent conversation. James is a big guy, but not big enough to handle all of them at once if it comes down to it. He knows this, but his anger trumps common sense: he knows the odds and he still wants the fight.

There is a mumbled apology from one of the guys who never did anything in the first place, and they start throwing cash on the table. James stands there, arms crossed, until the last of them has walked out, and then he heads back to the bar, completely untroubled by the fact that he just did what I explicitly asked him not to do.

I know he meant well, but still he ignored me and proved once again that he thinks of me as a little kid. My temper has barely begun to settle by the time we head home.

“I’m sorry about earlier,” he finally says. “They didn’t stiff you, did they?”

“No,” I sigh. “They actually gave me about a 40% tip, although now it feels like I extorted it from them.”

“You earned it, dealing with those assholes.”

“I appreciate what you were trying to do, James,” I say diplomatically, although in truth I can’t say I really appreciate it all that much. “But seriously, I’m not as sheltered as you think. I really can take care of myself.”

He raises an eyebrow.

“I can,” I insist.

“Whatever,” he says. “As the guy who spent several weeks of his adolescence keeping boys away from you, I’ve earned the right to be overcautious.”

“What boys?”

“Do you remember that last summer at camp? I was a counselor and you and Ginny were in middle school?”

I nod.

“I heard two of the counselors talking about you, saying that if they gave you a year or two it would be just like getting to sleep with your mom. It was disgusting. I mean these guys were in college.” He grows impatient waiting for the light to change and takes a hard right. “I felt like I had to spend the next three weeks watching not just the boys your age, but the other counselors too.”

“Is that why Ginny and I didn’t get to go back to camp?” I ask. We’d only been a year off from becoming Counselors in Training. It was a rite of passage, so our parents’ unyielding refusal had devastated us both.

“Yep,” he says.