The train is packed tight with other tourists, families traveling in bunches and Italian students who look bored with the whole scene. We wander from car to car like mules, carrying all of our belongings on our backs. The people who can’t find a seat have set up camp in the aisles, and we have to step over mounds of luggage, sleeping backpackers and even mothers with children.

We’re almost to the front of the train when I spot an oasis—a car with empty spaces.

“Scusi,” I say, sliding open the car door and smiling at an older Italian couple dressed all in black despite the heat. What is it about most Italians and their fear of cool, accommodating clothing? They refuse to wear shorts, shrugging them off as an ugly American thing.

“No! No!” The man gestures with his hands and unleashes a torrent of rapid Italian. Using my minimal skills, I’m able to understand that they paid for the entire car ahead of time and refuse to let us share.

“Please,” I say, assuming a beggar’s pose, my hands clasped in front of me. “Per favore.”

“Please! Please!” echo Kat and Lindsey from behind me.

The man continues to hold out his hands as if to block us, speaking even faster now, so that I can’t make out a word. I’m about to give up when the man’s wife nudges him aside with a sharp elbow and gestures us into the car.

Kat sprawls on the seat across from me, her eyes shut, legs apart, her head propped up against the window. I can’t imagine how she can sleep like that, but she’s shown time and again that she can doze through just about anything. In college, when she wasn’t with a guy, she was always the one who passed out on the couch while the party raged around her.

Lindsey sits next to Kat, apparently absorbed in her novel.

“Good book?” I say. I’ve already exhausted my conversational possibilities with the Italian couple, asking where they’re from and explaining that we’re from Chicago. The woman looks at me every so often, and we both smile as if not sure what else to do.

“Um-hmm.” Lindsey nods, not lifting her eyes.

“It’s so hot in here, isn’t it?” I ask, fanning my face with my hand.

“Yeah.” She continues reading.

“Sì, sì!” the woman says, catching my drift, fanning her face as well. We smile again, and another uncomfortable silence follows.

I want desperately to tell Sin about Francesco, to relive every moment. To me, an amazing experience doesn’t seem like it really happened until I can tell one of my friends. Yet at the same time, I don’t want to be the only one making the effort here.

I turn and stare out the window. The countryside whizzes by, a blur of rolling burnt-yellow hills, vineyards with crisscrossed rows of vines, quaint stucco cottages.

In my mind, I go over and over the details of my time with Francesco—the feel of his waist in my hands as I sat behind him on the scooter, the way he patted my neck with the napkins. I could live for years on these memories alone.

We’ve only been gone four days, but it seems more like four weeks. Mostly, I feel far away from John. And with that reminder, the guilt comes rushing in. How can I be so cruel? John does nothing but love me, and I run off to Italy and roll around with the first guy on a scooter. What in the hell is wrong with me? Or maybe a better question is, what is wrong with us? It’s too unfair a thought, though, one he’s not here to defend against. I decide that I’ll swear Kat and Sin to secrecy and do my best to forget Francesco. It was just a small blip, nothing else.

Think only of John, only of John, I tell myself. I squint at my watch and figure that with the time change, it’s early in the morning in Chicago. He’s probably just waking up. He’ll mix together Grape Nuts and Raisin Bran, then add banana. He’ll put on his olive suit but dress it up with one of his three hundred ties. He’ll take the 7:04 El train into the Loop, and he’ll go to work. Again.

The problem is this—there isn’t anything particularly exciting to think about in terms of John. I try focusing out the window. We slow as we pass a small town, one with only a few dusty roads and three square buildings. A little girl of about seven stands in the doorway of one of the buildings, watching the train. She’s wearing a brown dress and has long, dark hair in a messy ponytail. It seems like she catches my eyes as the train moves past, and I imagine that we hold each other’s gaze until she fades to a tiny brown speck.

The Italian couple prepares to leave at the next train stop, which is about an hour outside of Brindisi. They don’t speak, but while they gather their bags and suitcases, they seem to communicate by gestures and looks. It makes me think of John and me in twenty years, and I find the thought both sweet and terrifying.

At their stop, the man glares in our direction, but the woman smiles and nods her head.

“Grazie,” I say, thanking her again. “Grazie.”

One of the three guys who’ve been stuck standing in the aisle for the last few hours holds the door open for the couple then sticks his face in the car. He has shocking orange hair and freckles covering every visible surface of his wiry body.

“Hey, girls,” he says in a thick Irish brogue. “Mind if we share the car with you?” He gives us a crooked smile.

“Of course not,” Lindsey says, deciding to speak for the first time in at least an hour. She waves at the spaces vacated by the couple.

“Excellent, excellent. Come on, lads.” He gestures to his friends in the hall before he carries in a battered, army-green canvas bag and tosses it onto the overhead rack.

“Johnny,” he says, extending a hand to Lindsey and me. “And this is Noel and Billy.”

“I’m Kat,” Kat says, awakening at the sound of young males.

Kat is generous enough to introduce Sin and me, and we all shake hands.

Noel is a short, stout guy with shiny blue eyes and colicky brown hair that stands out at all angles. Billy is tall and sinewy with black curly hair.

“Hey, girls,” they both say.

“Much thanks for the accommodations,” Billy adds. “It was a feckin’ mess out there.”

His hair reminds me of Francesco’s, but Billy is less mysterious, all grins and quick nods of his head.

“Where are you girls heading?” Noel asks, taking a seat and leaning forward, his short muscular forearms resting on his knees.

“Corfu,” Kat says. “We’ve heard about someplace there called the Pink Palace.”

All three of the Irish guys snort, making sounds of disgust.

“Ah, the Pink Palace,” Johnny says with a dismissive wave. “It’s bloody awful. We’ve been to Greece three times before, and believe us, you don’t need to go to Corfu. The place to go is Ios.”

“We might stop at Ios, too,” I say, “but Corfu is closer, and the Pink Palace sounds nice.” I don’t mention that we got our information from a guidebook used by Lindsey’s cousin a decade ago.

“Nice? Nice?” Johnny, Noel and Billy are laughing now.

“All they do is break plates off your head and feed you ouzo for breakfast. You don’t need that,” Billy says. “Come to Ios with us, girls, and we’ll show you what Greece is all about.”

“I’m sure,” Lindsey says, mimicking his brogue. “Guinness for breakfast and shagging, right?”

They all laugh again at her imitation, while I sit there astounded at her suddenly warm and witty personality shift.

“Anything for you, love.” Billy holds Lindsey’s eyes a bit long, it seems.

Lindsey’s eyes sparkle like they do on the rare occasion she’s interested in someone.

Their intimate little moment passes as the guys describe Ios in more detail.

“It’s a little island that has billions of pubs and clubs packed onto it, and there’s a great beach,” Noel says.

“And we know a place to stay,” Johnny says. “It’s on a cliff overlooking the beach. And the best part is it’s cheap.”

I don’t hear the rest of their enthusiastic description. For some reason, I’ve let Francesco out of the basement room in my head and started thinking about him again. I reach in the pocket of my shorts and pull out the card he gave me with his address on it. I wonder how many other women have the same card pasted in their scrapbooks next to his picture.

“What do you think, Case?” Lindsey says. “Should we go to Ios with these guys?”

Oh, now she’s speaking to me again.

I think about it a moment. The truth is that the thought of deviating from our plan makes me anxious. These guys seem nice enough, but with them around I wonder if we’ll get the time Sin says we need to make things better between us. Still, Sin’s face is lit up like a neon beer sign. She’s so rarely hot for anyone. I suppose if she’s happy, it’ll make everything easier.

I look at Kat. “What do you think?”

“I’m game for anything,” she says. No surprise, really.

“All right,” I say. “Let’s do it.”