“J, I appreciate you trying, but it’s not such a shock. My parents aren’t terrible people, but they suck as parents. What really got me though is that I could have had a sibling. You can’t imagine how cold it is all alone with Rand and Maisy.”

“You have me though. Leo, you—”

“Not in Michigan, I don’t. I only have you guys in the summer.”

The ice cream scooper girl handed them their cones. Joey tried to think of some way to flip it. To make it okay for him. “But you can’t—”

“Stompoo,” said Leo in a flat, calm voice. Joey looked into his eyes, and he didn’t move them away from her. They hadn’t talked like this since they were kids, having come to some unspoken agreement to abandon their secret language as they ascended into their teenage years.

Joey felt the fight deflate from her. “Ikodiko,” she replied.

They walked outside, licking their cones on the sidewalk as night dropped its curtain. Leo got gas for the bike, and impulsively, Joey bought a fedora at a tourist shop next door. It was gorgeous, tan with a pale-blue ribbon.

“Move over, Indiana Jones, here comes Joey Jones,” said Leo, legs straddling the bike, working on his cone. It was so nice to see his smile, like a spark plug to his eyes.

“It’s cute, yeah?” She swiveled her head, modeling.

“It is. Only because you’re wearing it, Jonesey.”

Leo leaned in to touch her hat, but in the process, some of his strawberry gelato plopped onto the lid of her fedora. Joey’s mouth opened to yell, but before the words tripped out of her, Leo licked the ice cream right up.

“My brand-new hat! You licked my brand-new hat!”

A fit of giggles overtook her, and then Leo joined in. At first his laughs were tentative, but soon they stacked atop each other like building blocks.

Joey examined the hat. The webbing was pristine—not a trace of ice cream residue.

“Good as new.”

“Leo!”

“Just saying.” He looked at her, and even in the dark she could sense something headier, but she swallowed it down. She couldn’t handle the roller coaster of hope anymore.

“Magical saliva,” she finally relented. “We should bottle it. The slogan will be…for even the toughest gelato!”

“Jonesey.”

Joey still hadn’t gotten it. “See, this is why you should eat your cone faster. I literally don’t understand how you take so long to finish—”

But all of a sudden, Leo was kissing the words quiet, was kissing her, his lips on hers, full-body tingle, this was crazy, this was falling. This was falling down a chute inside herself.

Was it his parents’ conversation, was it the fedora? Or was it simply meant to be? Later she would think it was sadly poetic. That their beginning foretold their end.

Chapter Eight

Joey

Corfu
One Year Later, 2004