"Don't close your eyes when you squeeze the trigger," Anne instructed from where she stood behind Max, her hat pulled down slightly to half and half obscure her face, shielding her from the sun. "And make sure your pointing arm is locked and straight."
Max imitated her instructions to the letter, heaving a defeated sigh as the lead ball sailed past its intended target for the hundredth time and buried itself in the scorching sand. She'd been at this two days straight and appeared to be getting shoddier.
"This is a waste of time," Anne jeered with over dramatized exasperation, removing her second pistol from her belt, informally raising it to cleanly shatter the bull's eye. Max flinched, hating herself for the instinctive response and hardly able to refrain from it. Generous pieces of glass scattered atop the sand in front of her, leaving the jagged bottle neck as evidence of Anne's precision. "I need another drink," Anne snipped. She was losing patience with her role as mentor and Max was becoming weary of having to conciliate the woman's erratic moods. Maybe Jack would have been a better teacher? Maybe with the right incentive he'd be persuaded to help her with the sword.
Max gritted her teeth, keeping her head low while she reloaded her pistol, knowing she couldn't afford to push Anne away or make an enemy of her. She needed her.
"How long are you going to keep doing this?" Anne asked, the gruffness still evident in her tone as she picked up the bottle of rum she'd set aside on a flat rock. She studied Nassau, wondering where Jack was and what he was up to. Anne had informed him last night of their plan of action and the deal Max struck with Vane. He hadn't been too happy.
"Until I can break that bottle myself." Max retorted, all too aware that wasn't the answer the feisty pirate was fishing for. "Captain Vane might not be my preferred person in the world." A lot of which stemmed from their once shared affection for Eleanor. "But he can get me closest to what I want."
"And what is it you want?" Anne asked without turning back to look at her. She knew there was more to it than what Max initially told her. And at the time she hadn't cared to dig deeper. Max was a multifaceted enigma, one that swallowed Anne whole at times and made her gasp for literal air. But for the first time in her crazy life, there was someone other than Jack that could give her what she hadn't been aware she craved.
"Does it matter?" Max responded as she rose to her feet, setting her pistol on a fallen palm leaf, reaching forth to undo the broken bottle's neck.
"You're not made for the sea," Anne remarked, reminding Max once again why she wanted to leave Nassau and how desperate she was to prove these buccaneers wrong.
"I was born on the sea," Max replied, uncertain if that were true but feeling it necessary to connect herself to the element, to demonstrate that she had something to work with. "It's in my blood."
"You're too soft." Anne said as she turned to look at Max, her nose furling with what could only be described as minor disgust as she took in her boyish attire. As a sailor Max meant nothing to Anne, but as a whore, well, that was another story. "They'll rip you apart. Again."
Max yanked the rope free of the branch it was secured on and ambled toward the unsmiling woman, snatching the bottle from her loose grip before it could reach Anne's lips a second time. "I'm not forcing you to be here with me. Or to help me. If you've something else you'd rather be doing, by all means," Max said with a subsidiary gesture to the buildings in the distance, the boisterous noise of its civilians like a wild call. "Don't let me stop you."
Anne stared at Max with incredulity, wavering between resentment and brief repentance. Watching for the fifth time that day as the caramel beauty looped the rope around the neck of the unfinished bottle. Max kept her eyes glued to Anne's, swallowing any fear that threatened to bubble to the surface beneath the female combatant's raw scrutiny.
When no physical or verbal retaliation came, Max took that as her cue and turned her back on Anne, moving to reset things so she could keep practicing.
They kept at it for another hour.