I shrugged. “Fine,” I said, though it wasn’t really fine. We were going into Chicago — again — because he just had to meet with his loud, pseudo-radical friends who liked to think of themselves as “mavericks.”

“We’ll only stay at the bar for an hour,” he promised when I told him I had a massive headache and wanted a quiet night. “Then we’ll grab a couple slices of pizza at the restaurant next door. Just you and me.”

I wanted to believe him, but the reality was he couldn’t get enough of his discussion group. Once they started yakking, one hour had a way of turning into four. I wasn’t in the mood this time.

Not that I wanted to deprive him of his friends and make him cling only to me. He’d explained that this group was his lifeline, particularly during the summer months, since he was away from his nonconformist college buddies and living with his parents a couple of suburbs over. Unlike me, though, he’d get to see his university friends again in the fall. At nearly twenty-two, I’d just graduated. Dominic, already twenty-three, was on the five-or six-year plan.

“But what about the guys at work?” I’d asked him a month before when we were at my sister’s wedding to her punk-rocker/ bank-manager boyfriend Alex Evans (i.e., irrefutable proof that there was a psycho out there for everyone). “I thought you all got along really well, especially since your neighbor and his cousin got you the job. Don’t you ever want to do things with them?”

“Nah. Besides, I quit on Tuesday.”

My eyes flew open at this news. “You quit the deli?” He’d only been working there a few weeks, but his hourly salary had been higher than mine at the library. “I thought you liked it there.”

“The work wasn’t that challenging.” He wrinkled his nose. “I’d rather do something where I can use my mind, not just slice up salami or provolone, you know? I’ll get some other position in a week or two.”