“Sarah, wait.” Her friend reached for Sarah’s arm, but Sarah shoved it away. She knew she was acting childishly but felt incapable of rewiring herself so quickly, to switch personae to Perfect Sarah, the one who didn’t feel the ugly things she now felt.

Sarah stalked off, ignoring Rachel’s pleas. She quickened down Velissariou, aware only of the world inside her head. When she reached the sea, she turned left, a way she didn’t often walk, muttering aloud about how much she hated Rachel and then how angry she was at herself. Rachel was a wonderful friend, and Sarah had treated her terribly. Why didn’t she want her to be happy with Solomon, when really, if Sarah dug deep, she didn’t even love Solomon? But she recognized that he was an eligible, nice, cute boy, and Sarah was enduring this crazy mental loop when she caught a glimpse of a fisherman, a boy she’d never seen before.

He was by the water, hauling teeming nets off his kaiki, wearing a navy cap, a white shirt, and tan trousers pushed up on bronzed calves—and Sarah could not breathe. She ducked behind the trunk of a cypress tree and watched as he joked with a couple older men. A donkey brayed, pulling a cart along the walk, and a few boys whooped at the shore before diving into the swell, but the noises barely blipped on Sarah’s radar.

He wasn’t Jewish, of course. For one, he was working on the Sabbath, and he had blond hair besides. Red hair was a rarity among Greek Jews, but blond a near impossibility. Sarah watched the boy toss the nets into his long kaiki boat painted sky blue. He stepped on in and put a hand gently on its side. Sarah could tell it was a thing in which he took great pride.

All of a sudden, the boy’s attention was drawn to the sea. Sarah’s eyes zoomed out so the boy no longer consumed the whole of her vision. A little girl was shrieking and pointing toward Mouse Island. Sarah crept closer to shore, startled to watch the boy whip off his shirt and dive into the sea, making fast, furious strokes. A crowd gathered amid murmurs and points. Sarah’s heartbeat quickened as she searched the horizon. What was going on?

Finally, she saw the splashes of a struggle and something massive and hairy erupt from the surface. She strained to make it all out, as the blob of the boy wrestled with the creature. At last, joyful shouts resounded. Eventually, the boy emerged with a huge, black, shabby dog in his arms, whom he deposited at the little girl’s feet. She threw herself atop the mass of wet fur, burying her face into his. Her parents must be rich, Sarah knew, to keep a dog as a pet.

Sarah watched the boy shrug off accolades, pat himself dry with a rag, button his shirt, and return to his fellow fishermen. And that was when she fell in love with him.