“Boy afraid to put his hands on your mammary glands . . . ,” Rick yodeled in a Morrissey falsetto, “because his cat might die . . .”

Dan started sniggering halfway through the impression, which was up there with Rick’s herky-jerky Michael Stipe dancing. Down Commerce two jacked-up biker assholes pulled each other into the street. A scrum of denim, leather, and skeevy hog chicks with tassel jackets and poofy hair ensued. Everyone craned their necks to leer, missing the trio of Ursuline girls coming the other way.

“Reek!”

Dan heard her first. Or Rick was pretending to have gone deaf.

“Reek! Hallo!”

Lili, like a not-so-clueless bébé agneau, came bounding across the café patio. Her hair in a milkmaid braid, she was wearing a Jesus and Mary Chain T-shirt tied at her belly button and a swishy black tulle ballet skirt. She draped her arms over Rick and fell into his lap. Dan winced, afraid to look over at Jane.

“Reek, you didn’t tell me that you were going here in the Deep End, no?”

Even Sticky couldn’t laugh at the irony of that one. Lili brushed Rick’s hair with the back of her hand and smiled at everyone at the table as if seeing them for the first time. Tommy caught Dan’s eye and mouthed “holy shit” as they all turned to Jane.

“Uh, hello . . . ?”

Though they both went to Ursuline, Jane and Lili orbited in separate social systems. Each studied the other, eyebrows up, expecting the other to realize and recognize. Unable to crawl under the table, Dan witnessed the shock on the faces of Maura, then Eileen, then Brittany, and so on down the line. Lili, who was no dummy, noticed it too and leaned away from Rick. Jane’s eyes narrowed, and she clutched at the edge of the table.

“Rick, what the hell?”

Rick squirmed, trying to peel Lili off his lap. “Listen . . . it ain’t nothing like that . . .”

Jane buried her head in her hands, too smart to be talked down from this. “So full of shit.”

Tommy put out an arm in support, but also possibly to restrain her. Her anger fought her humiliation. She couldn’t bear to look up.

“After everything I’ve been through this year. After everything I told you.”

“Jane, please. You don’t understand.”

Earlier, Rick had hinted to Dan in lowered tones that Jane had some unresolved shit with her father, who had left her and her mother. Something you tell your boyfriend because you know you have issues and you hope he won’t compound them.

“Reek, what happens?” Lili, her defensive instincts kicking in, went back to playing naïve and lost in translation as Jane’s little sorority all gave her the evil eye.

Jane grabbed her purse and then raised her head, trying to ward off tears. “Oh my God, Rick. You are so stupid. I am so stupid.”