We broke up, Ayers thinks. But Mick’s expression is so earnest that she doesn’t have the heart to say it.

“It’s nice,” she admits.

One last hurrah, she tells herself again, though Mick is slowly but surely wearing down her resistance. Her night with Baker—which had seemed so vivid and unforgettable right after it happened—is now fading from her mind.

Has she merely fallen prey to the sexual attraction she feels for Baker because it’s bright, shiny, and new? Her relationship with Mick is deep and long and intense. Mick is the person Ayers tells things, even the small, inconsequential things, because he’s the one who has shared her history. He has context.

If she starts something new with Baker, she would have to go back to square one. The thought is, frankly, exhausting.

Ayers wades through the crystal water of Frank Bay and climbs into the boat. Mick is borrowing Funday, a thirty-two-foot Grady-White, from his boss for the day, something he normally does only on special occasions. Mick loads Gordon in and turns up the music and they go zipping across the surface of the water at breathtaking speed. Ayers loves nothing in the world more than being out on a boat—Treasure Island included—though the experience is much better when she isn’t working. She fills a Yeti cup with rum punch—Mick makes the best—and belts out, “Save it for a rainy day!”

It’s well known that Monday is the weekend for people in the service industry. La Tapa closes on Monday nights after the holiday rush, as do a bunch of other restaurants, so when Mick and Ayers arrive in Christmas Cove, it’s a Who’s Who of St. John hospitality all rafted together on either side of the Pizza Pi boat. The guys from 420 to Center are there and so is Bex from Rhumb Lines and Mattie the bartender from the Dog House Pub with his girlfriend, Lindsay, who works at the Beach Bar with Mick, and Colleen from Pizzabar in Paradise and Jena from Extra Virgin Bistro. Alex the bartender from Ocean 362 is on a catamaran—with Skip. From the looks of things, Skip is pretty far along in the partying department. When he sees Mick and Ayers pull in, he raises his arms over his head and hollers at the top of his lungs, “They’re here!” As though Mick and Ayers are the king and queen of this particular St. John prom.

Ayers grins at everyone and waves. This is her family.

Mick and Ayers tie up to a sleek, black Midnight Express that has a woman on board who looks familiar. She’s wearing a tropical-print bikini and enormous sunglasses. She waves and says, “Hey, Ayers!” and then she helps Mick with the ropes and the bumpers while Ayers racks her brain for how she knows this woman.

She leans over to hug Ayers. “I suppose you’ve heard that Brent and I are getting a divorce?”

Who’s Brent? Ayers thinks. The woman pulls a cigarette and a lighter out of a pair of teensy white shorts lying at her feet and Ayers realizes the woman is Swan Seeley, the mother of Colton Seeley, Maia’s little friend. Swan has traded in her reusable shopping bags and sustainable vegetable gardening for day-drinking and lung cancer.

Ayers laughs. This is fabulous! She always liked Swan best when she was breaking the rules anyway. But a divorce is sad, right? “I’m sorry to hear that,” Ayers says.

Swan waves the sentiment and her exhale of smoke away. “Don’t be,” she says. “He’s got a gambling problem. I had to cut bait before he sank us.”

“Good for you, then.”

Swan smiles. “There are eligible men everywhere,” she says. “Just look at this place!” Her eyes scan the now-impressive raft of boats. “What about Skip? He’s single, right?”

“He’s single,” Ayers says. “But I’m not sure he’s your type.” Or anyone’s type, she thinks. Although who’s to say that Skip, who’s coming off his weird thing with Tilda, and Swan Seeley, freshly separated, wouldn’t be a good match for each other?

“There’s the hottest new dad at the school,” Swan says. “He’s brand-new to the island, relocating from Houston. I saw him last week when I was picking up Colton. Maia seemed to know him, though of course I couldn’t ask who he was with Colton in the car.”

Hottest new dad. That would be Baker. Ayers feels herself bristling. Naturally Swan Seeley and all the other Gifft Hill mothers will pant over Baker. Ayers wants to inform Swan that Baker is taken, by her, but she can’t very well do this when she’s here with Mick.

At that moment, who should step onto Swan’s boat but Skip, holding a chilled bottle of Dom Pérignon and a bouquet of plastic flutes.

“Champagne, ladies?” He pours some for Swan and some for Ayers. “This storied bubbly has notes of Canadian pennies, your dad’s Members Only jacket, and…” He glances over Ayers’s shoulder. “‘We Are Never, Ever, Ever Getting Back Together.’”

Why does he keep doing this? Ayers wonders, but Swan laughs. “Ha! You can say that again!”

Ayers turns to see a cute little speedboat pull up. Tilda is at the wheel and Cash is next to her.

Ayers is seized with panic. Cash is here? What’s Cash doing here? It’s obvious, hello, that he came with Tilda, that’s her parents’ little runabout, though they also have a sixty-two-foot single-hull sailboat. Tilda and Cash? Yes, Baker told her this the other night. It’s good, it’s great, Tilda and Cash together isn’t the problem—except, maybe, for Skip. The problem is that Cash will see Ayers here with Mick and report back to Baker.

Ugh! Arrgh! What can she do? Can she pretend she’s here with Swan? Maybe Cash and Tilda won’t stay; there are a lot of boats here already, maybe they want privacy, maybe they’ll head over to Mermaid’s Chair where they can be alone. Or to Dinghy’s on Water Island.

Go to Dinghy’s! Ayers thinks.

But Tilda has earned her place at this party; she works just as hard as everyone else. Ayers notices she gets a sadistic grin on her face when she sees Skip. She must want to gloat.

Cash and Tilda raft up with Mick. Ayers watches Mick and Cash shake hands. Ayers offers a lame little wave.

Captain Stephen starts playing the guitar and singing “Southern Cross.”

Think about how many times I have fallen…

Mick’s hand lands on the back of Ayers’s neck. He knows how much she loves this song.

The pizza arrives—one carbonara with lobster, one bloomin’ onion drizzled with lemon aioli, and Ayers’s ultimate splurge, the chocolate-banana Pizza Stix. She drinks her champagne—Skip has, generously, left the bottle for her and Swan to split—and she eats some pizza, plays tug-of-war with the crust with Gordon, and dives off the boat for a swim.

Tilda and Cash have noodles. They’re floating in the water, interested in no one but each other.

Mick is gone somewhere. Ayers cranes her neck to see if, by chance, Brigid has arrived on any of the boats. Captain Stephen stops playing and there’s the spine-chilling shriek of microphone feedback, then she hears Mick’s voice.

“You guys, can I have your attention please? Hey! Everyone, please quiet down.”

Ayers sees Mick heading toward her with the microphone. Is he going to sing to her or ask her to sing, maybe something from the Jack Johnson Spotify playlist?

It all happens so fast. A hush blankets Christmas Cove, and all eyes are on Mick, now standing in the bow of Funday in front of Ayers, who is dripping wet in her bikini.