Page 50 of Counting the Days

Rhea exhaled slowly as recalled images flashed through her head. She wanted to beg him to come over. She stayed silent.

“I, uh, dated a woman for a while and—in the beginning, sheseemed totally fine with me saying up front I didn’t want kids, then three years later, she had a breakdown. She felt like she’d wasted her time and missed out on motherhood, and we…broke up. And I can’t go through that—or put someone through that ever again. So, I just wanna bereallyclear.”

Danny was stammering because having such a serious discussion so early on felt vulnerable.

“Wow…I’m so—sorry, that happened—that—sounds so…stressful.”

Rhea was stammering because she was realizingshe was going to do exactly what that woman had done. That was how she had been able to cross the bridge; she was secretly keeping a toe on the other side, biding her time until her eventual mental breakdown, and he’d just called her on it. This left her with no choice but to execute Plan B: genuinely make peace with never becoming a mother.

When she got to heaven and her three unborn children asked why she’d never had them, she would just have to say, “I’m so sorry, but you have to understand, I technically met him on agolf course.”

She smoothly pivoted to Plan B as if she did not feel like she was being ripped in half.

“I promise I will not do that to you. I am making peace with…everything you said. And it’s not as if I’m, like,obsessedwith motherhood or anything….”

She tried not to look at her vision board full of magazine cutouts and construction-paper alterations, a piece of décor that would not have been out of place on a serial killer’s wall.

“Man, I wish we didn’t have to have these intense conversations so early on…but I really don’t want to cause you any pain in the future. I’m trying to do everything I can to prevent that. I obviously didn’t nail it today, but I really am trying,” he said.

“I appreciate that, and yeah, I just wanna continue seeing where this goes. Regardless of all the other stuff…”

“Well…that makes me happy. ’Cause I really do like you.”

“You said that already,” she said through a smile.

“Yeah, well, don’t be surprised if you hear me say it again.”

263Days

Danny drove down Topanga CanyonBoulevard with his stand-up paddleboard sticking out the back of his truck. The sun was directly above, warming his hands through the windshield. He was picking Rhea up for their third date. They’d decided a few days earlier, on a several-hours-long phone call, that Esalen was technically their second date.

He turned sharply onto her vertical driveway and got out of the truck. He felt jittery, possibly from the coffee he’d downed at breakfast, but most likely from seeing Rhea again for the first time since he woke up next to her in Big Sur. They were acting like everything was neatly settled: She would let go of her desire to have children, and they would just keep dating to see where it led.

He did not, however, feel at all settled. He kept replaying their conversation in the hot springs; she had declared with such certainty, “I want kids.” He did not believe people were capable of changing their minds that quickly, and every time she’d texted or they’d talked on the phone since then, he’d felt foreboding, as if she was going to abruptly end things again.

All three of his sisters told him to walk away immediately, talking over one another in their usual blunt fashion.

“She’sthirty-eight?”

“Dan,no…”

“She’s not gonna let this kid stuff go. You’re wasting your time and hers—”

“And no offense, but her time isway moreprecious than yours—”

“Yeah, your fertilityfalls off a cliffwhen you turn thirty-nine.”

He knew they were being logical, but nothing about the way he felt around Rhea was logical. His left brain took a vacation whenever she was present. His right brain dominated: emotion, intuition, imagination. His feelings for her were the only thing he understood, the only thing that mattered.

She was already his favorite person to talk to; she listened, she asked questions, and every word out of her mouth fascinated him. She had survived one of the most volatile childhoods he had ever heard of. He respected her perseverance and felt protective of her, already determined she would never feel anything like the pain of her early life ever again.

Every time she looked at him, no matter how casual her glance, he felt important, as if she was grateful he was born. She made him laugh; it was a new laugh, one he seemed to have created just for her. Her particular sense of humor constantly surprised him and resulted in a kind of bark laugh that he did not think existed before they met.

He knocked on her door; she opened it, wearing a long floral dress that hugged her shape…and then, there was that: her body, her curves, her perfect features, her skin, her mouth.

“Hi there,” she said as she put on a giant sun hat.

“You look great.”