“Not me.” Leo grimaced. “All that, Hey dude, hey bro, swallow this goldfish so we can be like brothers. Do pushups and don’t shower for a week. Now some sorority pledges are gonna whore it up for us! Pass me a cig, man. They’re all just so terrified someone’s going to figure them out.”

“Figure what out?”

“That they’re little babies inside. That they have no idea who the fuck they are, what the fuck they want, so they swallow goldfish to get people to be their friends. To validate them.”

“Okay…” said Joey slowly. “So de-pledge your frat.”

“I did de-pledge my frat. That’s not it, Jonesey. It’s all of college. These kids are just stupid. Privileged and stupid. They couldn’t give a shit about careers or having conversations about things that matter. All they care about is football, beer, and sex.”

“So you’re saying you don’t care about sex?” Joey laughed a tentative laugh.

“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.”