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back down. “Never mind,” she said.
    “I think you guys might still be a little drunk,” Ellen said.
    Later, they all agreed that she was a disaster waiting to happen.

----
    Lauren met Tripp at a bar in Bucktown that had maps all over the walls and pool tables in the corner. He wasn’t much, but she kept seeing him. For her birthday, he gave her gift certificates to the bar downstairs and a dirty romance novel that you buy at a grocery store. “I know you like to read,” he told her. The card read
Dear Lorin, Happy Birthday. Sincerely Tripp
.
    “Do you think he knows he spelled your name wrong?” Ellen asked.
    “He didn’t even put an exclamation point after ‘Happy Birthday,’ ” Shannon said. She frowned at the card. “So serious. Happy Birthday—period.”
    “I’m just calling because I’m bored,” Lauren explained to her friends when she dialed his number.
    “You must be,” they answered.

----
    Chicago was small that summer. No matter where they went, they ran into people they knew: Tripp, Louis, and even Margaret Applebee were always around. If they didn’t see them at Shoes or Kincade’s, then they saw them at Big John’s or Marquee Lounge. And if they didn’t see them at any of those places, they always found them at Life’s Too Short.
    Every once in a while, Ellen would announce that she wanted to meet someone. She’d talk to the first boy who offered to buy her a drink. They would smile, encouraging her from across the bar. Then Louis would show up and Ellen would stop talking to the boy and come back to them. “Ignore him,” they’d tell her, and she would nod. About thirty minutes later, she’d decide to just say hello to Louis. “I have to be civil,” she would say. She would cry a little and tell him that it was hard to just be friends with him. Some nights he would enjoy the attention, pulling her aside and talking closely to her. Other nights he would get angry and tell her that he couldn’t deal with her, then storm out of the bar. Almost always, she’d cry back at the apartment, while they drank beer and ate late-night macaroni and cheese.
    “You can find someone else,” Shannon would tell her as she chewed the bright orange noodles.
    “This whole thing is getting really predictable,” Lauren would say.
    They could have changed their patterns, Lauren thought later. They could have tried to go someplace new so that they wouldn’t see the same people over and over again. It just never really occurred to them at the time.

----
    Their new favorite thing to do on Sundays was to sit on the back porch, drink Bloody Marys, eat summer sausage, and talk about the weekend. Shannon was mildly obsessed with Margaret Applebee, and wanted to talk about her all the time.
    “Just because she’s not fat anymore, she’s a huge slut? I mean, come on,” Shannon said.
    “Maybe she wants a boyfriend,” Ellen suggested. “I don’t think she’s ever really had a boyfriend before.” She didn’t like it when they talked about Margaret Applebee.
    “Well, she certainly doesn’t have a boyfriend now,” Lauren said. “She probably just has herpes.”
    “Oh, Lauren.” Ellen looked at her like a disappointed mother and shook her head a little. “What’s going on with Tripp?” she asked, to change the subject.
    Lauren shrugged. “Not much. We see each other when we see each other.”
    Tripp and Lauren sometimes went days without speaking. She kept thinking they would either decide to start really dating or stop seeing each other altogether. But things just kept going like they had been. Most of the time, she saw no reason to change this. Once, she saw him go home with another girl from Life’s Too Short and it felt like someone slapped her. It was over, she decided. But then a week or so later, she saw him and made no mention of it. She would ignore it, she decided. After all, it’s not like they were exclusive or anything. He was just a good way to pass the time until