Page 160 of The Love Haters

I realized, even at the time, how bonkers my inner monologue sounded.

Was it dehydration?

It wouldn’t be Hutch. Every swimmer from Texas to Maine had probably deployed to help out with this. I was too tired for math at this point, but I think we can all agree that my odds of being rescued by the man who just happened to have given me thebest worst kiss of my lifeyesterday—was it only yesterday?—were thedefinitionof low.

Impossible, even.

The point was—who cared! It was somebody. Anybody. A person with a helicopter and the skills to get me and my favorite dog and his pet toad up into it.

I didn’t need the love of my life, I reminded myself.

Let’s not be greedy.

Any rescue swimmer would do.

That’s when the helicopter moved closer, and positioned itself lower, and the wind from the blades started kicking up the water in a spray all around the surface. I had to squint against the spray, but I saw some legs—and some fins—hanging from the open side before a swimmer deployed in a free fall into the waiting ocean below.

He wasn’t far away, but it doesn’t take much to lose sight of someone at water level in the ocean. A swell would lift George Bailey and me up a few inches, and we’d see the swimmer freestyling toward us at a sprint, then the swell would drop, and we’d lose sight of him again.

Note that the swimmer was wearing the standard-issue helmet, and I was only catching glimpses of him between swells. But I swear to god, the minute I saw him drop from the sky, I felt a jolt of ecstasy that firmly thumbed its nose at reality.

That’s Hutch, I thought.

It couldn’t be. It was impossible.

But based on how much thumping George Bailey’s tail was doing against the hull of the boat, he must’ve thought so, too.

We both had to be hallucinating, I told myself. I, for one, was dehydrated and traumatized and had just come to grips with my own mortality. Anybody could hallucinate her own personal favorite US Coast Guard employee under conditions like that.

As the swimmer got closer and closer, I kept expecting his real face to come into focus, and I was determined not to be disappointed when it did. But the thing was, he just kept on looking like Hutch.

Finally, he reached us—and my anticipation had been so intense for so many minutes that before he could even say his normal spiel about being a Coast Guard swimmer here to rescue me, I jumped the gun and shouted: “I’m sorry, but I’m having a hallucination”—here I smacked the side of my head a couple of times, as if to shake it out—“that you are a different rescue swimmer who I have a tortured crush on. So if I keep calling you Hutch, don’t worry. That’s all me. That’s the dehydration talking. You’re just a mirage in my mental desert. I can’t seem to clear my head.”

“You’re not hallucinating,” the rescue swimmer said.

“I’m telling you I am.”

“You’re not.”

“Do we have time to argue about this right now?”

“Katie,” the swimmer said. “You’re not hallucinating. This is Hutch.”

Then, as if to confirm, George Bailey whimpered and double-timed the drumbeat of his wagging tail against the hull. And that was the real confirmation: George Bailey’s excitement. This was not a hallucination. This had to be the impossible man himself.

And so, it happened.

Of all the shipwrecks in all the waters off all the keys, Hutch swam up to mine.

HUTCH WAS ALLbusiness.

I hadn’t exactly been expecting witty banter. But here’s all thehelloI got: “Which one of you is chumming the water?”

I looked around and saw the water was pinkish. “It’s George Bailey,” I said. “He cut his paw on a broken lamp.”

George Bailey was staring intently at Hutch, but not barking. Instead, he just kept thumping his tail.

“Can’t let him do that,” Hutch said, pulling George Bailey away from the boat and positioning him for me to hold on to farther away.

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