She could say: I love five hundred million things about you, but most of all, I love how you let me be lost. That you don’t try to hurry me up to get to the found. Today, Leo, today I think I’m lost and found, both at the same time.

And: Maybe it will be the two of us when we’re eighty, drinking our coffees in the morning in some place I can’t imagine now. But maybe it will be just me, drinking my coffee alone, and honestly, truly, that will be okay too.

The rain ebbed a bit, and Joey opened her mouth to try to lend it all shape, but nothing came out.

Instead she felt her hand give Leo’s hand a squeeze. As if in punctuation, the clouds unleashed more—first in fuzzy sheets, like static on an old TV set, and then the lashing. More. More. More.

Because of the rain, Joey could no longer make out Leo’s eyes, but she felt him squeeze back. Hard. But then his grip softened, giving her space to air herself out, like one of those sheets on a line, coming back to life in the Corfu sun.

And then she squeezed him again, and he did too in return. Again. Again. Again. Until Joey wasn’t sure when her squeezes ended and Leo’s began. Just that somehow, he knew that she knew that he knew everything there was to say.

Reading Group Guide

Letter to Readers

Dear Reader:

The first sparks of my idea for this novel came on a trip to Jamaica in 2015. On the beach one day, I watched two kids from different families and places playing happily together. I thought about the magic of vacation friends and romances. There is something different and special about exiting your everyday life that alters the relationships developed with people you meet on your travels. And so Joey and Leo were born.

If you ask me to vote for the beach or the mountains, I, like Joey, would choose the beach a thousand times over. I feel happiest when next to or in water. I grew up on a lake in Michigan and now live in Tel Aviv, mere steps from the Mediterranean Sea. And so, in choosing the novel’s setting, the island aspect of Corfu appealed to me immensely, from Corfu Town’s pebbled city beaches nestled in tiny coves to the western coast’s endless, spectacular caramel sand beaches leading to an impossibly turquoise sea.

Continuing on the beach motif, I decided to set the remainder of the book in South Florida. Aside from its sunny ambience, I’ve spent a lot of time there, so it is like a second home. My maternal grandmother, with whom I share a closeness like that between Joey and Sarah, lives in Delray Beach.