yards from the boat, James calls out, “She’s aboard.”
“She is?”
“She was in the head,” James says. “Why didn’t you guys check?”
In the head. Max was using the bathroom. Why didn’t Ayers check?
Sure enough, Max is sitting on the stairs to the upper deck (which isn’t allowed) drinking what’s left of a painkiller when Ayers hauls herself up the ladder.
Ayers can’t bring herself to say anything to the girl. What would she say? We thought we’d lost you. We thought you drowned. At which point, Max would say, I went to the bathroom. Sorry, I didn’t know I needed to report in. I wanted to change my swimsuit. Because, yup, Max is wearing a new bikini, white, which Ayers will (again) bet the key to her truck becomes completely see-through when wet.
Ayers climbs past Max without a word and goes into the wheelhouse to apologize to James.
“I’m sorry,” she says. “I should have checked the head. I…” Ayers tries to explain what made her jump to the conclusion that Max was still in the water. All Cash had said was Wait. What? Ayers was the one who had panicked. “She’d been drinking. More than everyone else combined. I guess my mind supplied the worst-case scenario, that she went out snorkeling while drunk and she drowned.”
James gives her the eyebrows. He’s a man of few words, though he’s been blessed with wisdom beyond his years—he’s thirty-five; he went to high school with Rosie—and a dry sense of humor. “If I didn’t know you better, I’d say you were jealous.”
“Jealous of Max?” Ayers says. “Please give me some credit.”
“She’s been hanging on your boy,” James says. “And we both know it’s not like you to fly off like that.”
“First of all, he’s not my boy,” Ayers says. “Is that what you think?”
James starts the engine.
“I’d like permission to cut her off,” Ayers says. “She’s had enough to drink.”
“She didn’t do anything wrong,” James says. He leaves it unspoken that this whole event was Ayers’s fault. Ayers can only imagine what kind of dramatic retelling the fourteen adults will provide on TripAdvisor.
“I’m sorry,” Ayers says again. “I’m having a bad day.”
James nods. “You’re allowed,” he says. He laughs. “Tell you what, though—your boy sure can swim.”
Ayers puts on the headset. “Sorry about that, folks,” she says. She notices that the Dressler kids are all lined up at the railing seeing who can spit the farthest and there’s now a queue at the bar three-deep.
Right, she thinks. Crisis averted, people are getting bored, time to drink. “We’re on our way over to Jost Van Dyke, named for the man who discovered it in the early seventeenth century. It became a center of custom shipbuilding, but now, however, Jost is most famous for its world-class beach bars, including Foxy’s, One Love, and…the Soggy Dollar!”
Everyone claps. She’s forgiven.
There’s no happier place on earth than White Bay on a sunny day. The stunning crescent of powder-fine sand is lined with palm trees and funky, bare-bones beach bars. Treasure Island slips in among a flotilla of boats. There are people splashing in the shallows, tossing a football; there’s reggae music and the smell of jerk chicken and the low buzz of blenders making Bushwackers and piña coladas.
“Please get yourself some lunch,” Ayers says. “And try not to wander off. We’d like you back on the boat at two thirty sharp.”
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