When We Were Young

by Jaclyn Goldis

  Most of all, Leo, who was wonderful and hers.

  A few moments of bliss, and then Leo’s eyes went strange. And all of Joey’s happy went poof.

  * * *

  They fled the taverna, with Leo pulling Joey along in some baffling race of his life. When they finally stopped, the taverna out of sight, Joey’s heart was racing, her nerves all screwy. She tried to meet his gaze, but Leo’s eyes skittered around, anywhere but at her.

  Leo, come on. Please tell me the truth.

  I have a headache. That’s all.

  They walked in silence back home, with Joey berating herself for not turning around, for not having seen what Leo saw. But maybe she was inflating things? Leo was tight on money, after all. Maybe he just hadn’t quite anticipated the prices. Maybe it wasn’t such a big deal.

  When they returned to the hallway with both their apartment doors side by side, there was a terrible moment when Joey didn’t know if Leo was going to invite her in. But then he turned his key in the lock and, without meeting her eyes, said, “Coming, Jonesey?”

  She followed him down the dim hall to his bedroom. There, he didn’t switch on the lights, just stripped to his boxers and slipped beneath his navy coverlet. Joey wriggled out of her pants and debated going to the bathroom to rinse her feet. Having walked barefoot across town again to avoid her killer espadrilles, it would now be revolting to skip a good rinse, but Joey knew that Leo would be sleeping, pretend or otherwise, by the time she’d returned. So she opted for dirty.

  “Leo,” she started, joining him in bed but not sliding across the invisible barrier between them that had been so quickly erected, “can we—”

  “I’m tired, Jonesey. Let’s just go to sleep.”

  “But is everything…are we okay?” She squeezed her eyes shut, steeling herself for his answer.

  “Yep. We’re fine, Jones.”

  Leo rolled on his side to face the window. And Joey just stared at his back, praying he’d wake up in the morning back to normal.

  Chapter Fifteen

  Joey

  Corfu

  2004

  The morning after Taverna Salto, Joey woke to Leo staring at her from within a hazy beam of sunlight. Her mouth felt cotton-ball-parched. As if reading her mind, Leo said, “I put a glass of water on the nightstand.”

  She grappled for it, relief soaring inside her at the normalcy of his sentence and gesture. As she chugged the water, she listened to a gecko croak and watched it scurry into a ceiling crack. She set the glass down and slid against Leo’s warm skin.

  He pushed her slightly back. “Jonesey, we need to talk.”

  No good thing ever followed that sentence. Joey felt her throat constrict with fear. “Leo, please don’t—”

  “I can’t do this anymore.” His eyes cast down to his pillow. “We—”

  “No, Leo! Please, no.” Her chest seared with pain, like someone had taken a chain saw to it. “We’re so good. Please don’t do this.” Maybe it was pathetic to beg him to be with her, but she didn’t care. “You know how good we are.”

  “We are good, Jonesey.” Leo still wasn’t looking at her, and his words were dry, almost unfeeling. “But I talked to Dave yesterday. The boat’s finally done, and I’m gonna join his crew. I need to start my life. Dive headfirst into this new career. That has to be my priority now, over summers on Corfu.”

  “No, Leo! No.” Joey grabbed his face and made him look her in the eyes. There was wet between their chests, and she realized it had streamed there from her face. “This is because of last night. Don’t pretend it’s because of Dave. Tell me what happened last night. Did you see another girl or something? That French girl you dated? Tell me the truth, Leo! Is it someone else?

  “What gi—Jonesey! You’re so wrong.” Leo kept his eyes fixed on hers, but they were different somehow, already gone. “That’s not it, Jonesey. Please don’t come up with stories that aren’t even close to true. Part of me wishes we had met later in life. We’re just too young. We’re about to be split across the world. Think how hard this past year was apart, but at least we were both in school in America. I’m going to be in the middle of oceans now. You know it’s impossible.”

  Something about the way he said impossible absolutely zapped her of hope.

  She didn’t know how long she cried. She felt him dab at her face with a tissue. “My grandmother will be happy about you breaking up with me, you know. Before I left this summer, she grilled me. Promise me you’re not going to look at this Leo boy.”

  Even with Joey’s eyes closed, she felt Leo smile. “What did you tell her?”

  “I said, I’ll try, G.” A wave of desolation overcame her. “She would like you, is the thing.”

  There was a rap at the door. Joey struggled up in the bed to see her mother poke her head in. “Mom?”

  Bea had never interrupted them like this, especially not in Leo’s apartment. Unlike her friends’ parents who freaked over the topic of sex, Bea felt it was of feminist imperative that Joey own her sexual choices. Yes, there were some key benefits to her mother’s extreme feminism, despite Bea occasionally being embarrassing as hell.

  Joey took in her mother’s unusual, tearstained face, a mirror to her own.

  “Grandfather died.” Her mother bit down on her lip. “He had a heart attack and died last night.” Bea dove into the bed and clutched Joey with the same intensity that Joey had just clutched Leo.

  “No,” Joey whispered as the words slowly sank in.

  “Oh God, Bea, that’s terrible! I’m so sorry,” Leo said, amid his tossing aside of sheets to scoot closer. “Jonesey, I’m so sorry. I’m so…”

  Joey felt stroking on her back in addition to her mother’s grip that she knew was from Leo.

  Her lovely grandfather whom she adored. Her lovely grandfather in his black polished shoes.

  “It was fast, baby. He didn’t suffer. But we need to go home now. They’re waiting for us to have the funeral. You know, the Jewish custom is that burial has to happen as soon as possible after the…death. We need to pack up and go home.”

  And her mother went off on a fresh spate of tears as Joey sat perfectly still in her mother’s crushing embrace, her tears all dried up.

  * * *

  Later Joey lay on her bed, clutching her teddy bear Nacho Chip, who usually didn’t get much love. Her bedroom door opened, streaming light like shards of glass into her eyes.

  “Jonesey?”

  Joey wanted to tell him to go away. But more than that she wanted him still, for as long as he would stay.

  Leo didn’t seem to know how to approach her. He sat on her bed against the wall but then made a wincing sound. Joey twisted slightly to see what had happened and watched Leo remove a tack that protruded from the wall. With it came the picture it had attached—a Polaroid of Leo from the summer before.

  They’d climbed up the famous castle on the northwest coast, the Angelokastro, and then dipped into the sea. She’d skipped down the caramel sand to their knapsacks and said, Let me take a picture of you, Winn. Joey thought about it now, that maybe she’d wanted to capture him completely, in a way she wasn’t allowed to do to a person, or supposed to. Leo had stopped in the break of a wave, facing her straight-on. There was something so vulnerable about that, Joey felt, hair slicked back, eyes blinking salt, everything you try to be or think you are scraped away. Leo didn’t smile, but it was always his eyes that held all of him. His eyes were content.

  Now Leo’s eyes were unreadable. “Can I hold you, Jones? I know I shouldn’t be allowed to, but—”

  “Yes.” She blinked back tears, feeling the bed shift as Leo got behind her to be the big spoon. He plucked the fluorescent-green tee she’d migrated into after discovering it crumpled in her covers.

  “This is a horrible shirt, Jones, but somehow you still look cute in it.” When she didn’t respond, his arms tightened around her. “I’m so sorry. I’m sorrier than you will ever know, J.”

  “My grandfather surviv
ed Auschwitz. He was one of my favorite people in the world.”

  Leo stroked her hair. “I’m so sorry, Jonesey. God, I…well…I have terrible timing.”

  Leo held her as she shook, and Joey imagined that Leo’s arms were stitched together with her inside and he could never move them, not ever.

  * * *

  That evening, Leo helped carry all their suitcases to the curb. Even though the sun had gone, Joey put her sunglasses on. The taxi pulled up.

  Leo’s eyes were focused on her, like willing her to be normal and okay because he needed her to be. “I love you, Jonesey. I know you don’t believe me, but I really do love you.”

  Joey just nodded, not trusting herself to speak.

  “Bye, little L.” Leo knelt down to hug her little sister. “I love you too.” Then he whispered quietly to Lily, “Don’t forget me, okay?”

  There were more goodbyes. Rand and Maisy and words and more words. Then Leo, again, hands on Joey’s waist. Even though she didn’t want to, Joey tilted forward like a plant to the sun.

  “You’re amazing, Jonesey. You’re the most amazing girl I know. Be happy, okay? Be really happy. You’ll find some other guy who adores you. I know you will. And you’ll forget me.” His voice broke, like he was genuinely heartbroken at the thought. But then why was he doing this?

  Joey wedged her cheek into Leo’s neck. “I wish I could forget you. I really wish I could.”

  Chapter Sixteen

  Joey

  Florida

  2019

  The sun was its late-morning fierce, and Joey questioned why she’d picked the beach for their reunion. The beach had been their spot, she supposed, the axis on which their childhood had spun. But staring out at the waves now next to Leo made Joey think of a hundred different moments. They should have just gone to a Starbucks.

  “Remember Taverna Salto, Jonesey?” Leo pulled at the collar of his shirt. It was only a crew-neck tee, but Joey knew how he hated when anything pressed on his neck. She thought how bizarre it was to know intimate details about a person who was now essentially a stranger.

  “How could I forget it?” The trauma of the twenty-four hours after that dinner would never be easy to revisit—losing Leo and her beloved grandfather in one fell swoop. “You saw someone, didn’t you?” Joey’s heart hammered her chest.

  “Not someone, Jones.” Leo squeezed his tennis ball so tightly his face contorted like a bodybuilder. “Someones.”

  “Okay. Who? Did you cheat on me with…” She steeled herself. “That French girl you dated?”

  A boy and girl, all scrawny legs and arms, ran past them toward the sea. They reminded Joey of her and Leo, when she still thought that summers meant magic.

  “No, Jonesey.” Leo laughed a laugh that sounded desperately sad. “I can’t believe that’s what you would have thought all this time. What I saw was two people—two lovers—having dinner together.”

  Joey was growing impatient for the punch line. “Who?”

  A long pause. The little girl shrieked with glee as the boy pulled her under.

  “Our parents. Well, one of yours and one of mine.”

  “Huh?” Joey’s brain scrambled. “My dad was in Florida then. What do you mean one of—”

  “Bea and Rand. They were having an affair. I’m sorry to tell you this. That night at Taverna Salto, I saw Bea and Rand.”

  * * *

  “I can’t believe it. It can’t be true,” Joey heard herself saying, over and over, as she kept clumping and then destroying the same mound of sand. Her mind buzzed with flip-book scenes from all their Corfu summers as she picked apart moments and laughs and smiles for clues. Only nothing suspicious surfaced. Finally, she dared to look up at Leo, praying for him to admit this was all a sick joke. But his face was solemn.

  “I just can’t believe it.” A chill traversed her bones. “No. It’s just…it’s not…I mean, when did you even find out?”

  “The summer before our last. Right before the end. That’s why—”

  “That’s why you were kind of distant at the beginning of school. I knew something was off, but I chalked it up to college starting.” Joey remembered sitting in those giant lecture halls, her stomach in knots at his sudden lag in communication. Pieces were slotting into place, and her disbelief was giving way to rage. All of Joey’s pain, all those years of sadness—her mother was responsible for it.

  The word mother caused an association. Father. Joey let out a strangled sound that was for her father. Her sweet, trusting, endearingly nerdy father who’d been back in Florida making money so Bea could play artist in Corfu and sleep with his friend behind his back.

  “That’s why. I’m so sorry, Jonesey.”

  “Yeah. You said that.”

  Joey pictured Rand now, not a strand of his dark coif out of place. She pictured him clapping her father’s shoulder as they drank margaritas. My friend!

  She pictured him kissing her mother.

  She remembered them all out on the terrace, eating and laughing. It still didn’t make sense. There were too many holes. “How did you even find out?”

  “I saw them, Jonesey, the summer before our last. They were out on my dad’s sailboat. I followed them to this place they’d rented on the other side of town.”

  “What? Where?”

  “South. Closer to the airport.”

  Joey digested it. They’d rented a place, and their affair had lasted two summers at least. “When did the affair start?”

  Leo drew an audible breath. Joey found herself holding hers. “Since the beginning. It’s why they orchestrated both our families to vacation on Corfu. They deliberately got neighboring apartments.”

  “No.” Joey gasped. That couldn’t be true. She sifted through her memories. “You’re saying when we met in the stairwell—”

  “It was intentional. This was how they could arrange to be together. Get us all to Corfu. Then the two of them would sneak off.”

  “Oh God. I don’t…” She was going to be sick. “How do you know all this? Did you confront Rand?”

  Leo nodded, his eyes tilted vacantly toward the sun. “It felt so isolating, being the only one to know. Wondering what I was supposed to do with the information.” His voice cracked. “I confronted my dad after I found out. Told him that I wouldn’t spill the secrets, but that he and Bea had to be done. No more contact. No more affair.” Leo paused. “Maybe I should never have gone back to Corfu the next summer. But I came back, hoping I could put it behind me. Hoping they could do the right thing. I came back to see you, Jonesey. I tried to block the affair out of my mind. But they wouldn’t let it go. Seeing them at Taverna Salto proved that. I was so shocked that they’d gone back on their promise.”

  Leo shook his head and gave a dry laugh. “I don’t know why I trusted my dad the first time when he said he would end it, but I did. I really thought they would just do the right thing. But of course they couldn’t stay away from each other. Later, my dad told me they figured it would be safe to go out for dinner that night because you had told Bea we’d planned to picnic at the Old Fortress. Bea got a last-minute babysitter for Lily, and they decided on Taverna Salto because they knew the owner or something. They took a cab over and beat us there. They were just as shocked to see us. Anyway, I was just so relieved you didn’t see them. But that’s why I broke up with you the next morning, Jonesey. I realized, if we kept dating, there would be no getting around you finding out, and I just…I needed to protect you from that.”

  Joey’s head was spinning. “I’m still so confused. When did our parents even meet?”

  “My father backpacked the Greek islands one summer with his friends. The summer of nineteen eighty-three. He was twenty-two. I asked your mother if she’d spent time in Corfu before. She came with your grandfather one summer, did you know that?”

  “Yes,” whispered Joey.

  “Do you know what summer it was, J?”

  “Nineteen eighty-three,” she said, but it didn’t feel like it
was coming from her. It felt like the person with the ability to speak was a separate entity than the person who was processing this affair and reframing her entire childhood on Corfu. Nineteen eighty-three. That was two years before her parents got married. Her mom would have been twenty-one.

  “Oh God. This is so insane. So you came here to tell me this, Leo? I don’t get it. Why now, after all this time?” Leo opened his mouth to speak, but Joey jabbed him in his shoulder with force that surprised her. “And don’t you dare tell me that you’re in love with me again.”

  Leo sighed. He reached forward to retrieve his tennis ball from where it had rolled across the sand. Joey watched his biceps flex, her eyes inadvertently tracing his muscles, bigger than before. Heat that wasn’t from the sun torched her neck, spreading up to her cheeks.

  “There’s another reason I came now, Jonesey. I suppose I could have waited until after your wedding for this part. Maybe it was selfish of me to come before.”

  She gave him a pointed look.

  “Okay. It was. I’m sorry.” He did sound sorry. “But I didn’t just come for you.”

  “What else did you possibly come for?”

  Leo’s face twisted. He looked so sad.

  “What else could you possibly have come for, Leo?”

  “This fucking sucks, Jonesey. I won’t tell you what else I came for though. I’ll show you.”

  He was speaking Swedish. She needed the subtitles.

  He showed her his phone with a screenshot of a picture. The picture looked like it was from an old Kodak roll, with AUGUST 14, 2003, in the corner. It was of a wooden plaque bleached white with blue hand-painted letters. Joey read it.

  “Okay. So?”

  Leo said, “This was the plaque outside their place. They rented it every summer from this British lady who lived on top. Then they stole away there when they could. During the days, sometimes at night, if my mom was passed out, if your dad was out of town, if my dad was on one of his sailing trips.” Leo put sailing trips in air quotes.