If you’ve ever closed down a restaurant, you know the feeling. The lights dim. Chairs go up. The staff starts wiping down the counter. And somehow you’re still there, laughing with the same people you came in with, long after the plates are cleared. For me, that happens a few times a year at Marcello’s, a pizza place at Dufferin and St. Clair. Four of us, Laurance, George, Jamie, and me, who once worked together in a drafty brick office in a neighbourhood our moms would have warned us about. That office is long gone, but the friendship isn’t. We named our group chat TAK Talk, after a Polish colleague who punctuated everything with “tak” — yes. The name stuck. Every friend group has one of those threads: the inside jokes, the memes, the shorthand that only makes sense to your crew. That’s one of my tables. Another is Alison’s Christmas table, loud, multicultural, joyful chaos. I married into it. I’m the only white guy there. Every year someone teases me about the time I overpaid for fancy spiced nuts trying to impress everyone. Now it’s tradition. When one friend recently lost her grandmother at 101, nobody needed instructions. We […]