Page 34 of Counting the Days

She nodded and reluctantly followed him out of his room, away from his bed.

—

Lunch with Danny Beckett quicklyturned into lunch with ten other seekers. After Rhea and Danny left the cafeteria line with their recycled-paper plates of tofu, green beans, and mashed potatoes, the “Uh-huh, same” woman waved them over to join a large table. Rhea was not jazzed when the woman scooted over for Danny to sit next to her. Rhea was going to have to keep a sharp eye on this woman.

Rhea was forced to sit across from Danny and next to a wild-eyed, gray-haired woman who kept her engaged in a conversation about her dead husband for the remainder of the meal. It turned out, the man Wild Eyes was married to for fifty-eight years wasnother soulmate. Her husband had recently died, slipping off a cliff’s edge on his morning walk, plummeting forty feet to the street below before being hit by a semitruck, leaving Wild Eyes determined to find her actual soulmate in the limited time she had left. Judging by how old Wild Eyes looked, Rhea assumed that the limited time was about six months.

Rhea was half listening to Wild Eyes’s predicament and half listening to every single sentence Danny and Uh-Huh Same exchanged. Uh-Huh Same was thirty-six. She had been married and divorced. She had no children. She was an art teacher at a public middle school and lived in Highland Park, which wasten minutes west ofPasadena. Upon hearing of Danny and Uh-Huh Same’s impossibly kismet geographic compatibility, Rhea had to stop herself from flipping the table over, scooping Danny into a fireman’s lift, and running to her car.

Rhea scolded herself for being jealous; she was the one who had ended it with Danny. Their futures did not line up. He did not want to give her the vision-board life; she had to let him go. But it was hard not to feel ownership of him. She could not ignore the astronomical coincidence of running into him here…at a soulmate retreat. She could already hear what her psychic would say at their next session: “That was fate, Rhea. That was the universe talking to you. What do you think it was trying to say?”

Rhea figured the universe was either telling her Danny was her soulmate or tempting her with the wrong path to see how much she really wanted to be a mother. She did not like seeing the vast and powerful universe as a Loki trickster whointentionally sent people spinning in circles, but sometimes that was exactly what life felt like.

Danny laughed at something Uh-Huh Same said; Rhea wanted to put her hands over her ears to block out the sound. Her therapist always told her to pay attention to her emotions.

“Jealousy usually arises to tell you what you want….”

Rhea tried to swallow the jealousy and be happy for them. Maybe Danny would say, “I don’t want kids,” and she would say, “Uh-huh, same,” and the two of them would live a blissful child-free existence full of white couches, uncovered outlets, and sharp-cornered coffee tables.

After lunch, Rhea heard Uh-Huh Same ask Danny if he had explored the garden since he’d arrived.

“It’s gorgeous right now. Spring, ya know, so everything’s in bloom. You’re a gardener, you’d love it,” she said.

“Um, no, I haven’t gotten a chance to yet.”

“Well, no time like the present.” Uh-Huh Same motioned for Danny to follow her.

Danny’s eyes landed on Rhea, who tried to radiate the energy ofPlease, go with her! Nothing would make me happier!She watched him walk away, noting how darling his gentle gait was, the slightly vulnerable way he bent his knees and leaned subtly to the right. She wanted to leap from the table, jump on his back, and slam his face into the ground.

“You love him,” Wild Eyes said, yanking Rhea’s attention off Danny’s posture.

“What?”

“Oh, geez—sorry, I’m a little bit clairvoyant, I shouldn’t have said that. Sometimes it just flies out…. I’m right, though, aren’t I?” Wild Eyes said as her eyes earned her name, flailing around in their sockets, taking in Rhea’s private thoughts.

“Um, I don’t know, no…. I mean—” She sighed, thenlooked Wild Eyes directly in her namesake. “No, I don’t,” she said firmly.

—

Later, back in the circleof sock-wearing seekers, Rhea watched Danny enter with Uh-Huh Same. Wild Eyes was sitting on the other side of the circle; she pulled Rhea into wild eye contact and smiled. That smile communicated Wild Eyes knew Rhea did love Danny, but Rhea needed not worry; her secret was safe.

Danny sat down next to Uh-Huh Same, exactly three socked seekers away from Rhea. Rhea could hear Uh-Huh’s throaty voice talking at Danny nonstop. She wished she could look into Danny’s eyes; maybe she could decipher if he liked this woman, maybe he would signal Rhea to rescue him. But the only way she could do that was to lean forward and crane her neck, and her pride would not allow her to attempt it.

Rhea was sitting next to Warm Wendy again, so close that their thighs were touching. She and Warm Wendy had thus far exchanged few words, but Rhea felt safe in her presence. She decided the only way she could get through this weekend was to become Warm Wendy’s shadow. In each exercise, she would demand to partner with Warm Wendy. When she was forced to participate in dance therapy, whatever that meant, she would dance with Warm Wendy and no one else.

There was no way she was going home now. First of all, Danny had her suitcase locked in his room. A complication she had not considered until after lunch, when she briefly entertained the idea of escape.

Second, she had to stay and play defense against Uh-Huh Same. She had never seen a woman make their interest in a manmore known, and even if Rhea herself was not going to end up with Danny, she did not think Uh-Huh Same was good enough for him.

Third, Rhea wanted to grow internally or whatever, and this workshop seemed to be helping her access some long-locked parts of herself, whether she liked it or not. Even with all the years of therapy, life coaching, psychics, and self-help books, there was something different about the workshop.

It was one thing to sit in a room snuggled on a chair and confess your inner world to someone who was paid handsomely to listen, not to mention sworn to secrecy. But being this vulnerable in front of strangers, the eye contact—all of it was forcing her to lose control…a terrible feeling, but perhaps a necessary one.

Rhea happily listened to Gary and the woman talk about the power of open communication in relationships for over an hour, but all her new tender feelings toward the workshop evaporated when the woman excitedly announced it was time to dance. The announcement elicited scattered whoops of joy from the group that absolutely baffled Rhea. How could anyone be whooping at the thought of dancing sober in the middle of the day inside a brightly lit tent?

“I know some of you might not be comfortable with dancing, but we hope by the end of this weekend, you will be.”

They told everyone to take off their socks so they wouldn’t slip. As Rhea was taking hers off, she realized her hands were shaking; she was in fight-or-flight. Rhea did not consider herself a good dancer. She took a hip-hop dance class in her twenties, and halfway through, the teacher asked if, since she wasclearlya beginner, she wouldn’t mind moving to the back of the room. He had the decency to whisper the request, but it scarred Rhea for life.