“Cash?”

It’s Tilda. Now, on night four, she decides to call. At—he checks the bedside clock—2:17 a.m. Man, he would love to just hang up, but he’s been waiting a long time for this, and besides, he is living in her house. “Hey,” Cash says. “What’s up?”

“What’s up?” She sounds…angry for some reason. She sounds angry. That’s rich, Cash thinks. She was supposed to call him days earlier, was supposed to call and text and FaceTime, and she said she’d send pictures of every cool detail so he would feel like he was right there with her. Has any of that happened? No, it has not.

“How’s your trip?” Cash asks. “You having fun?”

“My trip was great. My trip was the best four days of my life until just now, when I logged on to Instagram and saw a picture of you cozied up with Gretchen Gingerman!”

“Who?” Cash says, though he obviously knows who Gretchen Gingerman is. What he doesn’t know is how or why Tilda knows who Gretchen Gingerman is. Are they friends?

“Gretchen Gingerman, Cash, don’t play dumb. She was on Treasure Island today and she posted a selfie with you for her sixteen million followers.”

“What?” Cash says. Sixteen million followers? “Who is she?”

“An influencer,” Tilda says. “One of the biggest in the country. Literally every single person I know follows her, and hence, everyone saw you drooling over her in her Lisa Marie Fernandez bikini.”

“I wasn’t drooling,” Cash says. He can’t believe Gretchen Gingerman is an influencer with sixteen million followers. That’s…insane. He can’t quite wrap his mind around that. “She was just a guest on the boat, Til. Her boyfriend was a world-class jackass and I was nice to her. Not extra-nice, just regular nice.”

“Her boyfriend, Bradley?” Tilda says. “The one whose father invented Bitcoin?”

“Yeah, that was him.” Cash doesn’t care about Gretchen, and he cares about Bitcoin Bradley even less, though he’s unsurprised to hear Bradley is a spoiled rich kid without any identifiable talent or skills of his own. “So I’ve been wondering why you haven’t called,” Cash says. “I guess you were just waiting for me to turn up on some famous chick’s Instagram.” He tries to keep his voice light, but actually, he’s furious.

“This is a work trip,” Tilda says. “My parents laid out a lot of money for this and I’m trying to be mindful of that and do a good job here. You know how distracting the phone can be. It’s black magic that sucks you right out of the present moment.”

“All right.” Cash closes his eyes and tries to be mindful about enjoying the sound of Tilda’s voice. “How’s it going? Tell me everything.”

“Our first stop was Midi et Minuit on Anguilla. It was very chic, very French. Edith Piaf was playing over the speakers in the lobby; we were greeted with glasses of Taittinger—that’s their house champagne, hello—and these tiny, airy gougères. The place was so elegant and gracious, it was like we were visiting a fantastically wealthy French aunt with impeccable taste. The rooms were minimalist in the best way. The linens…don’t get me started on how divine the linens were. I sourced everything with their GM. And the lighting in the bathroom was so flattering—I will never look as beautiful as I did in the Midi et Minuit bathroom. The pool was huge and had different areas. It was the perfect temperature, twenty-six degrees—that’s Celsius, I have to convert that. It was cool enough to be refreshing but not chilly. But…the service…well, I thought it was fine, excellent even, but Dunk found it obsequious.”

Dunk found it. Cash gets out of bed and goes out onto Tilda’s deck. At the mention of Dunk’s name, Cash wants to throw his phone into the pool. “Nothing worse than obsequious service.”

“Yes, there is, Cash. Slow, careless service is worse. Island time is worse.”

“I was kidding, Til. I don’t even know what obsequious means.”

“It means there’s a person fawning over you, trying to anticipate your needs every time you turn around. Like I said, it doesn’t bother me; these people are simply doing what they’re paid to do. Dunk got bent out of shape when he was helping me with the headrest of my chaise and the pool guy nearly took him out.”

Cash now has to picture Dunk helping Tilda with her chaise, which necessarily puts Dunk and Tilda side by side in chaises, Tilda in one of her skimpy bikinis.

“How was the second place?” Cash asks.

“I’m getting there, hold on. So, our two days on Anguilla are sublime, we feel pampered, the place is elegant as hell, and I’m thinking nothing can possibly top it. Then…”

Then? Cash thinks.

“We get to Emerald Hill on St. Lucia. Now, Anguilla is a flat white sandbar, no topography to speak of. But St. Lucia is volcanic, like St. John only…much prettier.”

Cash feels offended by this statement, which is funny, seeing as how he has lived here only a couple of months. “I don’t believe it.”

“Believe it. St. Lucia has these tapered volcanic spires called the Pitons, and Emerald Hill is positioned to display their fifty shades of green to maximum advantage. Now, you want to talk about an eco-resort? You won’t believe how committed to minimizing ecological impact this place is, but in the most aesthetically jaw-dropping way. Listen to this…”

Cash drifts in and out of Tilda’s monologue. Twenty species of tropical hardwood harvested in environmentally sustainable ways…bloodwood, locust, purpleheart, cabbage wood…walls of crushed coral plaster quarried in Barbados…and the food…mahi banh mi, conch tacos, guava pulled pork…

“It was so delicious, even Dunk ate.”

Cash snaps to attention. “He did?” Cash is dismayed to hear that Dunk loosened up enough to let food pass his lips and that he exhibited the behavior of a normal human being.

“He’s been eating three squares. I mean, I had to work on him for a few days but nobody could resist the breakfast buffet that Emerald Hill lays out. The fruit alone! They have a secret chilled drawer filled with champagne mangoes, but you have to know about it to request them.”

“I take it our resort will have a secret chilled-mango drawer?” Cash says. Our resort sounds a little too presumptuous, so he quickly says, “The Lovango resort.”

“You bet,” Tilda says. “But the best part of Emerald Hill is the spa. Dunk and I went for massages and before you enter the treatment room, they ask you to sit in this round shallow pool that’s inlaid with iridescent rainbow tiles. It’s like sitting inside a kaleidoscope.”

“Wait a minute,” Cash says. “Go back. You and Dunk had massages…together?”

Tilda pauses. “We each had a massage, yes.”

“Together? Were you naked under a sheet side by side while you got massages?”

“Technically, it was a couples massage, but that’s not what I requested. I requested two massages at the same time so that our schedules were aligned and I wasn’t sitting around waiting for him to go to dinner. But the woman in the spa misunderstood and booked it as a couples massage and once I figured that out, I’m sorry, it was too awkward to fix, so I rolled with it.” Tilda pauses. “I kept my bikini on.”