Hook, Line, and Sinker

Fox returns from his fishing trip. He searches for Hannah with the excuse that he is looking out for her. Kissing Hannah makes him feel like he is back on solid ground. He tells her, and himself, that he was trying to make Sergei jealous. He carries her piggyback style to his apartment and tells her Brendan offered to make him captain of the Della Ray, but he doesn’t want the responsibility. Fox thinks that with his reputation—that “I’m just a good time, and everyone knows it” (98)—the crew would never respect him. Hannah tells him to visualize himself as captain, and Fox realizes he treasures their friendship. She sees him as more than the good-time guy. He realizes “Hannah was like a leaf blower aimed right at his undisturbed pile of possibilities” (101), but that he’s not ready to be exposed.

Hannah goes on a shopping trip with Piper and reflects on her evening with Fox. She is attracted to him, but also feels that their conversation the night before gave her “a peek behind the curtain, and it was like setting foot in a new country with a different currency and climate” (103). She’s surprised by his depths but cautious about getting involved with him beyond friendship. She invites Fox to meet them at Cross and Daughters. Hannah feels a sense of belonging among the people at the bar and encourages Piper to establish a bond between her and Brendan’s mother, Louise, who thaws toward Piper.

Fox enjoys watching Hannah play a drinking game called quarters with Piper, even though they are terrible at it, and they talk as they walk back to Fox’s apartment. Fox is humiliated when some locals jokingly call out that Hannah should run away from him. Hannah confronts the men and scolds them for making fun of Fox. He tries to tell her it’s okay because he makes the same jokes about himself, but in truth, Fox is unsettled by the perceptions people will have about Hannah being with him.

Hannah wakes up with a hangover and is stunned when Fox emerges from his bedroom wearing only briefs. She asks why he smells of ginger and he informs her that it’s a massage oil. Hannah gets the hint that he uses it to masturbate and is fascinated by the image. He says she can borrow it. Hannah senses that he is using his sensuousness as a weapon to fluster her, yet she is also aroused.

While he works on the Della Ray, docked in the harbor, Fox can see the movie crew filming a scene. He hopes that if Hannah sees him as no more than a sex object, which is how everyone else sees him, then she’ll stop trying to pry into his head. He gets a text from a previous lover and his crewmate, Sanders, teases him about his success with women, which began in high school. Fox doesn’t tell his friend that he hasn’t had a hookup since he met Hannah. When he sees Hannah leave the set and start walking toward his apartment, he follows.

Hannah is trying to focus on her work, but the sight of Fox working shirtless on the Della Ray stimulates the arousal that began that morning with the sight of him nearly naked. Hannah is frustrated when she approaches Brinley with an idea about the music score and Brinley brushes her off. Following Fox’s example, she decides to relieve her stirred-up emotions with a little alone time, and heads to the apartment on her lunch break. She is in her bedroom in her bra and panties, the bottle of ginger massage oil in hand, when Fox enters. He offers to pleasure her, and Hannah recognizes that again he is using his sexuality as a weapon. She touches herself while he is watching, taunting him in return. But when Fox encourages her to use him to climax, Hannah is turned off and stops. She doesn’t like that he thinks his only role with a woman could be sexual.

Fox feels that he owes Hannah an apology, so he buys the ingredients for soup and cooks her dinner. He’s concerned that he exposed something about himself that turned her off, and he hesitates to reveal more, although he longs to be seen by her. When he presses Hannah to talk, she tells him of her reservations about Brinley’s decisions for the soundtrack for the movie. She also confesses that she hasn’t felt the connection to Henry Cross that Piper and Opal feel. She’s just been listening and following along. She shows Fox the folder of Henry’s sea shanties, and Fox sings one he knows.

As Fox sings the sea shanty, Hannah recognizes that the song is about a sailor feeling torn between his love for his family and his love for the sea. She now feels connected to her father, who wrote the song, and Fox, who is sharing this moment with her. Seeing how deeply Hannah is affected, Fox picks her up and carries her to his bedroom, trying to make her feel safe. They share a moment of warmth and intimacy as Hannah tells him a childhood story about trying to learn to play the harmonica.

In return, Fox shows her the leather bracelet he wears to remind himself of his father. He tells Hannah how even when he was young, people told him he was going to be a heartbreaker, just like his father, whose affairs broke up his marriage to Fox’s mother. In college, not wanting to be like his father, Fox pursued a serious relationship with a girl, only to find that the whole time she’d been dating his roommate and business partner, and that she considered Fox just a fling. After that betrayal, Fox became convinced that no one would ever think of him as anything more than a player; he decided to embrace that reputation and let it define him. After this confession, which leaves him feeling very vulnerable, Fox falls asleep.