“I have no other way to get over there,” Cash says.

Huck and Irene swing down to the Happy Hibiscus so Huck can pick up Cash and drop off Irene. They find Cash and Baker talking in Baker’s driveway. Cash throws his duffel in the back of Huck’s truck.

“Are you sure about this?” Huck says. “I can take you there, but once I do, that’s it. I won’t be able to get you until after the storm passes.”

“It’s a terrible idea, bro,” Baker says. “We should all stay here at the Hibiscus. Together. Besides, Tilda screwed you over, and the second she crooks her finger, you run back to her? Seems a little weak.”

Huck’s glad Baker is the one who said this.

“She’s all by herself,” Cash says. “Dunk left her. He’s flying to Vegas with one of the guys in his so-called band.”

What a douche-canoe, Huck thinks.

“She made her bed,” Baker says. “You should not get back together with her. And besides, I thought you liked Wendy.”

“She lives in Houston,” Cash says.

“What about Bonny, then?”

Huck can see Cash’s neck growing flushed. “Bonny’s fine. I went on one date with her, she’s nice, but it wasn’t a love connection. Tilda means something to me.”

“She let you stay with her for weeks,” Irene says. “Do you feel like you have to repay the favor?”

“I want to be there for her,” Cash says. “She can’t stay over there alone.” He appeals again to Huck. “Can we go?”

“We can go,” Huck says.

First they stop at St. John Market, which has both registers open and ten people in each line, including—Huck gathers from eavesdropping—two couples who have only just arrived for a week’s vacation at the Westin and who are provisioning with things like Doritos and mango-flavored Cruzan rum. Huck wants to tell these people that their time would be better spent trying to book a flight back to where they came from. For years, there’ve been false alarms—cat 1 or 2 hurricanes that fell apart and made landfall as nothing more than forty-mile-per-hour winds and two inches of rain—but this storm is picking up power like a snowball rolling down a mountain. This isn’t going to be a “Let’s get drunk, play gin rummy, and listen to that Scorpion song on repeat” kind of hurricane.

Cash buys two cases of water, two loaves of bread, peanut butter, jelly, crackers, Cheez Whiz, pickles, a bag of apples, a carton of pineapple juice, and two bottles of Cruzan aged rum. He wants beer as well but Huck steers him toward toilet paper, candles, batteries, bug spray.

From their spot way back in line, Huck texts Irene. Fill the gas cans first, then get to the store. This place is packed already.

Huck drops Cash off at the Lovango dock; Tilda is waiting at the end in a John Deere Gator. The construction site seems to have been secured but there’s a trailer sitting on concrete blocks and all Huck can imagine is this bitch Inga picking it up like a toddler with a toy and tossing it into the sea.