Ayers counts the Dressler kids as they jump off the boat in succession. There’s a bit of a wade required, which the boys don’t seem to mind. To DJ, Ayers says, “Thank you for your help. You’re a fast swimmer.”

DJ shrugs and Donna Dressler puts a hand on Ayers’s shoulder and says, “That was some unexpected drama, huh?”

Ayers spies Max walking down the beach—with Cash, of course—toward the Soggy Dollar. “I don’t know if I should feel angry or relieved.”

“Sounds like being a parent,” Donna says. “You’re not sure whether to ground them or hug them.”

Grounding sounds good, Ayers thinks.

Lunch isn’t a bad idea, and Ayers is a big fan of the Soggy Dollar lobster roll, so she walks down the beach and into the bar. Her favorite bartender, Leon, is pouring something pink and fruity out of the blender and into two cups, which he delivers to Max and Cash, who are sitting together at the end of the bar.

Cash says, “I’m on the clock,” and passes his drink to Max.

“Awwww,” she says. “Thanks.” She leans her head on Cash’s shoulder and closes her eyes.

Did Ayers give Cash “the talk” about not fraternizing with the guests? She knows she didn’t. It never occurred to her that it would be a problem. Cash had been so earnest, so eager to please—please her, Ayers—that she hadn’t realized that many if not all of the available women (and maybe even those who weren’t necessarily available) would find Cash sexy and attractive and throw themselves at him as inelegantly as moths beating themselves against a screen.

Cash nudges Max’s head off his shoulder and orders a Coke and a blackened mahi sandwich with coleslaw. He says, “So what do you do for work?”

“I sell drugs,” Max says. She waits a beat, then honks out a laugh. “Not what you’re thinking! I’m a pharmaceutical rep.”

“Did you grow up in the Midwest?” Cash asks.

“Peoria,” she says, diving nose-first into her pink drink.

“I’m from Iowa City!” Cash says.

Ayers isn’t eavesdropping; she’s just waiting to get Leon’s attention. It’s like she’s invisible today. She debates interrupting the happy couple to remind Max to eat something, but she’s not the girl’s mother and she’s afraid of sounding like a schoolmarm or a scold.

Max says something under her breath and Cash laughs. Is Ayers jealous? Maybe she is. She had thought Cash was in love with her. She thought Cash had taken the job on Treasure Island because he wanted to work with her. And yet he hasn’t looked over at her even once. He’s completely entranced with Max!

Ayers can’t believe she’s having these thoughts. She doesn’t like Cash in that way—does she? She didn’t think so, but right now, there’s no denying she’s jealous.

No, Ayers thinks. She enjoys being the object of Cash’s affection. It’s flattering, a boost to her ego. What’s really going on is that she’s upset about Mick and Brigid and confused about her feelings for Baker. Baker, who is maybe staying on St. John but also maybe not staying. Ayers would bet the keys to her truck and her apartment that Baker will go back to Houston for the school fund-raiser and never return. He’ll find relocating too complicated. He’ll spend two weeks on St. John and become bored; without a job to do, it’s just sun, sand, and water. There are no museums or movie theaters, there are no professional sports teams or shopping malls. There isn’t even any golf.

He won’t stay. The schools won’t be good enough for Floyd. Baker won’t be able to find a fulfilling job; St. John isn’t Wall Street. There will be some solid reason why he has to go back to the States. St. John is paradise when you visit, but when you live here, it becomes very real very quickly.

Ayers can’t risk getting involved with Baker.

“Ayers,” Cash says suddenly, yanking her out of her mental quicksand. “Would you like to join us?”

Ayers assesses her options. Cash’s sandwich has now arrived and he offers some to Max, who slowly, slowly, shakes her head. She’s slipping down her stool, melting like a candle.

Leon finally gives Ayers a wave. “I see you, darling. Just gonna be a minute.”

“That’s okay, Leon,” Ayers says. “I’m not staying.” She steps back out onto the sand. She’ll head down to One Love, she decides, and get some jerk pork.

At a quarter after two, Ayers is feeling a little better. She has eaten and taken a ten-minute chair nap, and now she combs the beach for her guests, urging everyone to head back to the boat. If they get out of here at two thirty, there will be less of a line at customs.

Ayers has never so badly wanted a charter to end.

Coming toward her down the beach are Cash and Max. Max is stumbling and bent over; she’s so drunk she can barely walk. Cash has to take her by the hand once they’re wading back to the boat. If she fell over, she would drown in only two feet of water. Ayers wants to say something to Cash, something like Why did you let her get so drunk? She wants to point to Max and say to James, We should have cut her off after snorkeling! But instead, Ayers helps Cash get Max up the three-step ladder and onto the boat. Max heads toward starboard and Ayers thinks maybe she’s going to the bar for another drink, but she bypasses the cabin, pushes little Dougie Dressler out of the way, and starts puking over the side of the boat.

Ayers bows her head. It would be very unprofessional to let the others see her smirking.

Cash

He’s not sure how he got saddled with the drunk, and now crying, young woman named Maxwell—well, yes, he does know, he enabled her drinking and indulged her little crush on him because she’s attractive and flirtatious, and both of these things seemed to bother Ayers, which was, he thought, a very good sign—but now he’s responsible for making sure she gets home safely.

“Find her friend, her people, whoever,” Ayers says. “I’ll clean the boat by myself.”

“But—”

“And, please, Cash, don’t let this happen again. These are our guests, not our friends.”

“You’re right,” he says. “It won’t happen again.”

He half leads, half carries Max off the dock and into the streets of St. John. As they pulled into port, he’d asked Max the name of her friend from high school, but all she’d said was I dunno, and then she groaned and started vomiting again.

It hadn’t been a good look for her, for him, or for Treasure Island, though everyone else on the boat seemed to take it in stride. The parents of the six boys used it as a cautionary tale. “That,” Cash overheard the father whisper to the Stanford-bound DJ, “is what happens when you decide three shots of tequila sound good after midnight.”

There was a couple on the boat, keen snorkelers who’d brought a checklist of fish they were hoping to see, and the man said, “I could have told you how this was going to end up, but she was having so much fun, I hated to put a damper on it.”

“We’ve all been there,” his wife said. “For me, it was the Sig Ep house at West Virginia University in 1996.”

Cash tended to agree; many people at some point in their lives had overdone it like Max. Cash had sampled his father’s scotch and smoked one of his cigars when he was a week away from graduating high school, and that had ended badly. And he had taken care of Claire Bellows after she drank Jägermeister from a flask in the bathroom during their junior prom.