299 Days #2
He scolded himself when he saw her name on the schedule, scolded himself for not making the first move.
Also being a child of the prehistoric eighties, he too had been brainwashed into wrongly believing men were genetically predisposed to initiating romance…
and modern men had to do that without being aggressive or forceful.
He felt he now had to make up for a deficit in his manliness…
and he had to do that without being controlling or toxically masculine.
The truth was, he had not reached out because she intimidated him, the way she dressed, her sense of humor, her abundance of thick, curly hair that spilled over her shoulders and down her back, reminding him of some kind of pagan witch.
Before meeting Rhea, he didn’t know he had a particular fetish for witches, but when she was showing him around and making jokes about her dying yard, he imagined her dancing naked under a full moon and decided witches were the sexiest creatures on earth.
He looked over at her, trying to read whether she also thought he should be convicted.
There was always the possibility that she liked being taken care of.
Depending on who was observing him, Danny was either Prince Charming or Al Capone.
He knew Rhea had not enjoyed covering up her dress or taking off her metal shoes and putting on the boots, but she had been good-natured about it, and he hoped the evening he had planned would make it up to her.
—
Rhea also hoped the evening Danny had planned was worth her bulky outfit. She had never before gone on a first date dressed as a sheep. Oddly enough, adding layers of clothing made her feel stripped down and vulnerable. Her carefully curated outfits filled her with a sense of control.
A surprise, last-minute outfit change was almost more than her anxiety could handle.
She played it off as best she could, but she believed men were like crows, deeply attracted to flesh and shiny things, and although the man next to her had requested she cover her flesh and remove her shiny things, she still feared he might lose interest and fly away.
Danny turned right onto the Pacific Coast Highway, which meant he was taking her to Malibu.
Rhea scrolled through a mental list of every restaurant in Malibu, trying to figure out which one had a particularly “soft” floor, but her list was cut short when he abruptly turned left into the Topanga Beach parking lot.
There were no restaurants on Topanga Beach; it was just a small strip of rugged coastline with a lifeguard station. The sun was almost below the horizon as they got out of the truck, and Danny removed a large gray bag from the truck bed, only adding to the mystery.
“What are we doing here?” Rhea could not stop herself from asking.
“You’ll see,” he said as they walked toward the aging cement stairs that led to the shoreline.
Most beachgoers were standing near their cars, wiping sand off their feet or preparing their sleepy children for the long drive home.
Rhea and Danny had to make way for a surfer carrying his dripping board up the narrow steps.
Some braver surfers, who possessed no fear of what lurked beneath the quickly darkening waves, were still floating in the water, unable to resist the swell.
As Rhea and Danny walked across the sand, she reluctantly felt grateful for her flat boots.
“Well, you weren’t lying. The ground is soft,” she said, and he smiled.
She felt a little silly. Even with the very large clues of the Pacific Coast Highway and “soft” ground, sand had never entered her head. Eventually, Danny stopped walking and looked at her.
“So…I had an idea. And I hope you like it.”
He unzipped his bag and removed a Pendleton blanket. He spread the blanket out and motioned for her to sit. Also from the bag, he pulled out a bundle of firewood.
“Are you…gonna build a fire?”
“That was the plan.”
“Is that legal?”
“We’re gonna find out.”
As he lit the logs, he explained, “You said you’d never been camping. So…I kinda wanted you to experience some of it.” He had a shyness in his eyes, a vulnerability from making such a romantic gesture.
He removed a cooler from the bag and pulled out a package of wagyu hot dogs.
Rhea stared at them. She had never roasted a hot dog over an open flame and did not realize until that moment that she was desperate to do so.
She played off the sudden moisture in her eyes as a reaction to the wind as he skewered a hot dog onto a metal stick and handed it to her.
“Wow,” she said.
“Weird?”
“Wonderful.”
They sat on the blanket, and Danny poured red wine into two Yeti mugs.
“How’d you know I eat meat?” she asked.
“ ’Cause I watched you eat a pound of it at Tiny’s.”
She laughed, then convulsed with horror at the thought of him watching her wolf down a pile of beef, but covered with flirty confidence. “So…you were watching me at Tiny’s?”
“I mean, not in, like, a creepy way, but I might’ve spotted you in the crowd once or twice.”
They held eye contact until Rhea broke it.
“I only eat meat once a week, so when I do, I devour it,” she explained, with the acquired female need to make an excuse for eating food.
He looked at her with a funny expression, then said, “I only eat meat once a week, too.”
They obviously enjoyed having this obscure habit in common.
“It’s better for your health,” she said.
“And the planet,” they said at the same time.
“Well, aren’t we adorable?” she said.
They asked each other safe, small questions; Rhea told him she went to FIDM, and he told her he went to Wharton. He revealed that he was so burned out from the academic workload, he took a few years off, moved back in with his parents, and got a part-time job at a landscaping company.
“I was trimming people’s bushes and mowing their lawns. I just really wanted to work with my hands and not feel any pressure, ya know?”
Rhea did know; she told him about her stressful years at FIDM and how much she appreciated the relaxed environment of the boutique in comparison. He asked about hobbies; she told him about paddleboarding and hiking, but left out vision boarding and coveting her friends’ lives.
When she returned the question, he told her about yoga and meditation, how much they helped him get over his burnout and centered him enough to eventually use what he had learned at Wharton to start a business.
As he described yoga retreats he’d attended in Bali, India, and all over the United States, she tried not to picture this adorable man surrounded by hard-bodied women clad in skintight high-performance fabric.
“So…why have you never been camping? You said it was a long story…”
She shook off the images of her handsome date standing behind a yoga goddess bent over in downward dog and said, “Oh gosh, so many reasons. I grew up with a very young single mom—she worked a lot and, ya know, camping was just not a priority.”
“Where does she live now?”
“She…passed away.”
“Oh, I’m so sorry.”
“Me too. She died when I was fifteen, so I was shipped here to live with my aunt.”
“Ah, I see. The aunt who paid for your school.”
“Yeah…”
“I am so sorry you went through that.”
A buried yearning to weep surfaced in Rhea—something about the compassion in his eyes, deep pools of brown, flickering in the light of the fire he’d built for her.
However, she had not cried about her mother in months and was not going to start now.
She imagined a friend asking Danny how the date went; “She sobbed about her dead mom” was not going to be his response.
To ward off the weeping, she kept her eyes locked on her sizzling stick of processed meat.
“What was your mom like? Are you okay talking about her?” he asked softly.
This impelled Rhea to look up at Danny. She had to make sure there was an actual human body sitting next to her and not just some figment of her overactive imagination.
She had told the story of being orphaned as a teenager on many dates, though typically not first dates—she tried to wait until at least date number four—but she had never experienced this level of empathy.
None of her suitors, even her long-term boyfriends, had ever asked what her mother was like.
One of the hardest parts of losing her mother was knowing she would never really get a chance to talk about her again.
And she wanted to talk about her, just like everyone else got to talk about their mom.
She wanted to complain about her or brag about her, or even just say her name.
Usually, when Rhea dropped the “I’m an orphan” bomb, her date would say, “I’m sorry for your loss,” then quickly change the subject…if she was lucky.
Some reactions were very odd, like the guy who did not say a word, just made an exaggerated sad face, puffing out his bottom lip like a pouting baby; held the face for an uncomfortable length of time; then changed the subject.
Another date said, “Man, that’s tough. But I get it, my grandfather died when I was in middle school, and it was so hard.”
He proceeded to talk about his beloved one-hundred-year-old peepaw for ten minutes, never once circling back to Rhea’s mother.
Rhea was amused by his comparing the grief of losing someone who died naturally after arguably too long a life with the grief of losing someone who was her sole provider of love, food, and shelter.
She had a rather fond memory of a Topanga surfer with a sun-addled brain saying, “Aw man, that suuuuuucks. Well, I hope your childhood was high vibes otherwise.”
She tried not to judge her dates for failing to nail the perfect reaction to her tragedy.
She knew death was a squirmy subject. Most people her age did not have an abundance of experience with loss; therefore, they did not know what a person in mourning might want to hear.
She studied Danny as he looked at her with his unfathomable eyes, waiting for her to tell him about her dead mom. Who is this guy?