It wasn’t that she was a tomboy or the perennial little sister or one of those women who talked sex all the time to keep the boys nearby. Somehow, though, as her twenties had slipped into her early thirties, it had gotten harder to have real girlfriends. The married ones retreated into couplehood. The single ones looked over her shoulder every time the door opened, checking the men at the bar, scoping shoes and ring fingers. Wondering if the guy walking in was the one for them, the one who would let them jettison this tedious phase, the single apartment and Christmas with the parents and the fear that they would end up owning cats. Ever hopeful that a cute stranger would spill coffee on them and have just the right line to follow it up. Romantic Comedy Syndrome.

Which was fine, and she wished them luck. They just made for lousy friends, whereas the boys kept things easy. Which was how she ended up here every week, all four of them at the end of the bar. She, Alex, Ian, and Mitch, the Thursday Night Drinking Club. “Which game tonight?”

“Tonight,” Ian said, “is clearly a Ready-Go night.”

“Why?”

“I’m feeling hypothetical.”

“I feel that way all the time,” she said. “OK. In the spirit of the evening: If you had half a million dollars. Ready, go.”

“Only half?” Ian cocked his eyebrow.

“I’d buy a house,” Alex said. “Nothing fancy, just something with a spare bedroom for Cassie. I think she’d stay with me more often if she had a room of her own. In Lincoln Park so she could walk to the shops, the lake.”

“Somebody hasn’t looked at real-estate prices in a while,” Ian said.

“What?”

“A house in Lincoln Park for a half million?”

“No?” Alex looked genuinely wounded, as though the neighborhood pricing was all that was holding him back. “Huh. All right, a condo. Whatever. How about you?”

“I’d quit the firm. Work from home. Day trade. I could turn that into ten million in no time.”