“That, I do still care about.” Leo pulled her into a half embrace. “I misspoke, Jonesey. Please don’t think I’ve turned puritan on you.”

“What are you going to do if you drop out? I don’t get it.”

“This!” Leo gestured back to the boat, to the sea. The look on his face scared Joey. It was like the one he had sometimes when she came onto the terrace after a shower, all scrubbed with wet hair. “The captain, Dave is his name. He’s American too, actually. I met him last summer at the port in town. He’s based out of Monaco now—that’s the most sought-after port for charter boats. Dave’s in his fifties, but he also quit school when he was our age. He knew a life at sea was his passion. That boating was his passion. And lectures on calculus and Western Civ weren’t going to get him there.”

Right now, Joey was internally cursing this Dave and all his passions. “So a life at sea is your passion?”

“Well, yeah,” said Leo. “It is. It’s always been, if I think of it. I’m gonna help Dave with his boat now. He’s refitting it because some idiot guest took the wheel and rammed the boat onto a sandbar. So it’s kind of a lucky break.”

“Lucky,” she said, unable to conceal her sarcasm.

“Don’t be like that, Jonesey.” They’d reached the beach now, and Leo pulled her down to the sand. “Look at all this.”

The waves discarded black detritus at the shore. A piece stuck to Joey’s foot. She touched it without removing it.

“This is going to be my life now, J.”

And Joey didn’t know what to say because she thought she was going to be his life now.

As if reading her mind, he said, “Jonesey, this doesn’t change things for us.”

She nodded, but she didn’t know what that meant. “So after this summer, you’re going to—”

“The Caribbean, yeah. Monaco’s the dream, but Dave’s doing winter down in the Caribbean. It won’t be easy. I’m going to start at the bottom. A deckhand. I have a lot to learn, but I want to get my captain’s license and…” He couldn’t squelch a goofy grin. “I’m really excited, J.”

“Did you tell your parents?”

“Yeah.” His smile evaporated. “I told them in Michigan, before we left for Corfu.”

Joey nodded, stung that he’d told them first but not wanting to make a deal out of it. “And what did they say?”

“My father thinks it’s his fault. That he never should have given me the idea that boating is blissful. Because boating is a hobby.” Leo mimicked Rand’s lulling drawl. “A hobby you get to partake in once you become a success. And you only become a success if you go to college and get your MBA and prove yourself on Wall Street and then, of course, take over the family business.