Link is thinking about having a party—just some of the other interns from Brookings and his fraternity brother, Woj, from USC, who’s working on Capitol Hill this summer and who knows a crazy amount of smart and beautiful women. It won’t be a full-blown banger—the last thing he wants is to trash Coop’s space—but he’s thinking about some good people and good whiskey (Coop has a wine and whiskey cellar tucked behind the home gym in the basement) out back in the courtyard. He’ll pick up some tacos and banh mi and play some music and generally flex like the place is his own.

Before Coop leaves on Friday morning, he hands Link three hundred bucks—because that’s the kind of awesome uncle he is. Link spends his entire walk to work reminding himself that he has to be a responsible adult and not act like a kid in a movie whose parents are away for the weekend. He’ll cut the party off at fifty people, sixty max.

But when Link gets to the office and starts firing off texts—Party at my house tonight, 8pm—he gets a rude awakening. It’s a holiday weekend, the last before people go back to college, graduate school, etc., and everyone is leaving town. Woj is going to Fenwick Island, the other interns are heading to Dewey, Ocean City, Cape May.

His buddy, Oliver, is going home to his parents’ house on the Eastern Shore of Maryland and asks if Link wants to go with him. “My dad has a sailboat,” Oliver says. “And my parents are having a cocktail party on Sunday with a tent and a Dixieland band. It’ll be fun.”

Sailing, cocktails, a Dixieland band. It does sound kind of fun, but it’s not what Link had in mind. If he wanted to be on the water, at the beach, he would have gone with his uncle. He wants city life.

“I think I’ll stay put, thanks, man,” Link says.

His idea for the weekend instantly changes. He’ll just hang out at the house, playing loud music on Coop’s state-of-the-art sound system, he’ll watch movies in the home theater, he’ll sip the whiskey and cognac alone. He was raised an only child; he can entertain himself.

But once Link gets home from work and takes a shower—the city is a smoking griddle, why did he not go to the beach?—he can’t settle down. He feels like a friendless loser, sitting home alone. He should go out. He will go out. He remembers his mother’s story about going to Nantucket when she was his age without knowing a soul.

Honestly? she said. It was liberating. I was in control of my future.