Элин Хильдебранд - What Happens in Paradise

When she climbs up to the deck, she says, “Everyone accounted for?”

“Yes,” Cash says.

Ayers signals James, who starts the engine, and Cash goes to pull the anchor, which makes his muscles pop in a way that is undeniably attractive. Ayers can’t believe Max isn’t right beside him, taking pictures for her Instagram account: #coldhardcash.

When the anchor is up and they’re moving, Ayers says, “Where’s the barnacle?”

“Wait,” Cash says. “What?”

Panic in the form of absolute stillness seizes Ayers. “Stop the boat!” she yells.

Max is not dead and Max is not lost . Ayers repeats this like a mantra, though for the first thirty seconds after Ayers realizes Max isn’t on the boat (how can she not be on the boat? And why did Cash say everyone was present? Did he not do a head count?), these are Ayers’s prevailing thoughts, that Max is dead or Max is missing and will turn up dead.

James cuts the engines and Ayers races up to the top deck with the binoculars, trying not to exude any sign of the sheer terror she is feeling. But the rest of the guests realize something is wrong. Ayers overhears Cash say, “We’re missing someone, the woman in the green bikini.” Then everyone starts looking. They spread out around the port side and starboard side and the bow. Ayers’s main concern is that Max is under the boat, that they unwittingly ran over her when they lifted anchor and started toward Jost Van Dyke.

Max is not dead and Max is not lost, Ayers tells herself.

Cash appears next to her. “I’m so sorry, I thought—”

“There’s no time for sorry!” Ayers says. She mentally breaks the water into a grid and starts scanning it square foot by square foot. In seven years, she has never lost a swimmer. She has had to do only five rescues—five, in seven years. Today will be her sixth rescue, she tells herself. Today, she will rescue Max.

Someone calls out, “Over there!”

Ayers follows the pointing arm of Mr. Dressler. Yes, she sees a piece of fluorescent tape about two hundred yards away. Before Ayers knows what’s happening, someone dives off the lower deck of the boat and starts swimming toward the snorkeler. It’s the oldest Dressler kid, DJ, Ayers realizes. She strips off her shorts, and, although it’s forbidden, she dives off the top deck, hits the water with so much force that her nose and ears flood with water, and swims after him. A second later, she feels the concussion of someone else plunging in nearby and she envisions everyone on the boat trying to be a hero.

She raises her head in order to get her bearings. Cash goes thrashing past her. He’s moving so fast he nearly catches DJ. Ayers sees DJ and then Cash reach the snorkeler and Ayers hears shouts. She swims closer, and only then does she realize that the snorkeler isn’t a she. The snorkeler isn’t Max. It’s some guy from another boat who has also gone rogue.

“Go back to your boat!” Ayers yells to the other snorkeler. She casts about helplessly. Where is Max?

She hears the air horn and swivels her head to see Captain James on the top deck windmilling his arm to beckon her back.

What? Ayers thinks. We can’t just leave her here. Or…has Max turned up? DJ and Cash are already swimming back to the boat and Ayers puts her head down and powers forward with everything she’s got left, thinking, Please let her be okay, please let her be alive. If she’s injured, they can get her to Schneider Hospital on St. Thomas in half an hour.

When Ayers is only a few 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.