Katie devotes the next week to trying to secure Hutch’s agreement for a "Day in the Life" piece. She approaches him at various times with arguments about inspiration, pride for Rue, personal growth, and patriotism, but Hutch’s answer stays no. She considers revealing that her job depends on it, debating the ethics of asking for help versus withholding key context, but repeatedly hesitates to interrupt his safety-critical duties.

Meanwhile, Cole’s texts intensify the pressure, reminding Katie of active layoffs and urging her to act quickly. Katie immerses herself in Coast Guard life to do the main recruiting video well, learning jargon like SAR, PIW, NVGs, and "bingo" fuel status, and she continually asks Hutch questions to understand operations.

While filming and reviewing footage, Katie notices Hutch’s small, consistent kindnesses: holding doors, cleaning shared spaces, picking up food for the crew, sharing his umbrella, and collecting pennies he finds before tossing them for someone else’s luck. On a commute, Hutch explains his penny habit: after his mother died, he started collecting only 1965 pennies, the year she was born, as a way to feel connected to her.

Katie concludes that Cole’s view of Hutch was wrong: Hutch is thoughtful, expressive, and easy to talk to. She sets a rule not to use off-hours conversation for work topics, and their commutes turn into exchanges about music, movies, nature trivia, and personal histories. Katie opens up about her mother leaving, Beanie’s self-help fixation, Lucas’s rise to fame, and her creative Burma-Shave-style proposal that Lucas dismissed before later proposing "properly."

Hutch reacts with support and curiosity, even noting details Lucas missed—like Katie’s eye color and her sectoral heterochromia, which Hutch had looked up after first noticing it in Rue’s shop. He asks about Lucas’s new hit "Katie" and gently suggests Lucas must have loved her, while Katie says he didn’t love her "good enough."

As SWET training gets postponed, Katie delays the hard ask and focuses on swim lessons with Hutch and the ongoing shoot. Their routines solidify: daily work together, shared commutes, and evenings at the Starlite with Rue and The Gals, where Hutch often returns with George Bailey to swim and join dinners by the pool. Katie finds swimming increasingly manageable and even fun under Hutch’s guidance.

In this easy, sunlit rhythm—bolstered by island breezes, sangria, and community—Katie senses a new way of living and a growing connection with Hutch. Despite that closeness, Hutch still has not agreed to the "Day in the Life," and Katie has not yet told him that her job is at stake.