291 Days #2
Rhea could not imagine Ekele ever giving up this comfort and pictured him coming home from college on Christmas break to suck on his mom’s tits. Ada was seated at a table with Zoe and Tiny, three pregnant women gratefully resting their feet while their husbands refereed the mayhem.
“What took you so long? You almost missed the hunt,” Zoe said.
“You brought Peeps,” Tiny said a little too loudly.
Several children stopped what they were doing and ran toward Rhea. She placed Peeps in their already sticky hands while their parents barked commands:
“Only one, Dash, you’ve already had enough sugar.”
“Don’t push your sister, Lenny.”
“Chichi, tell Ahree ‘thank you.’ ”
Rhea placed the surviving Peeps on a nearby table, leaving the savages to descend on the defenseless baby chickens. Tiny got up and grabbed a box of Peeps for herself, practically wrestling them away from a particularly eager child, then pulled out a chair for Rhea so she could join them.
“Okay, let’s hear it,” Tiny said.
All three women looked at Rhea expectantly. By now, they all knew Rhea had been on a date with someone she met at Zoe’s baby shower.
“Spare no detail. God, I miss dating so much,” Zoe said.
“Me too, the excitement, the anticipation, the nervous butterflies,” Ada said dreamily.
Rhea had countless memories of both Zoe and Ada cursing their single status and despising the dating process, but she chose to keep them to herself.
Her friends remembered butterflies delicately fluttering in their stomachs as they navigated the dating world, but Rhea knew they were vampire bats, screeching as they flapped around, eating them alive from the inside.
“Well, he took me to Topanga Beach—” Rhea said.
“What?” Zoe asked, looking confused as a person who had not set foot on an L.A. beach in over a decade.
“He made a fire…’cause I told him I had never been camping,” Rhea said, which was met with “Aww” from Tiny and Ada and another “What?” from Zoe.
“We roasted hot dogs,” Rhea said, blushing.
“Hot dogs?” Zoe asked.
“Like, fancy ones, it was really sweet.”
“Mom!” Chichi yelled from the middle of the yard.
“In a second, honey,” Ada yelled. “Go on,” she said to Rhea.
“Mom! I hurt my finger! The egg pinched me,” Chichi cried.
Ada stood up and swung her suckling son to her hip; Ekele shot Rhea another dirty look, as if this new turn of events were her fault.
“Sorry, keep going, don’t wait for me,” Ada said, and went to her daughter.
Rhea continued, “Yeah, um, it was just a really sweet date and he asked about my mom and stuff.”
“Wow, so he’s, like, emotionally evolved?” Tiny’s words wrestled with a mouthful of yellow marshmallow.
“You talked about your dead mom on a first date?” Zoe asked.
“It wasn’t weird, it was organic, it felt really natural. The whole night was so—”
“Mom!” Zoe’s daughter said as she toddled toward them carrying a cake with a maniacally grinning Easter Bunny frosted on the top. “Can we eat this now?”
Zoe sprang out of her chair and ripped the cake out of her daughter’s hands, asking where her father was, where her nanny was, how she got the cake down from the counter, and why she wasn’t out hunting for eggs. Zoe walked her daughter back inside the house.
Rhea looked at her lone remaining listener, and Tiny said, “How did it end? Did you hook up?”
Rhea’s mind fast-forwarded to the near future in which Tiny’s son would also demand his mother’s attention, and Rhea would be left talking to the Peeps.
Rhea shared more special moments from her favorite first date, and ended with Danny confessing he did not want children.
Tiny made a noise that might come out of a basketball fan when their favorite player misses the game-winning free throw.
After he drove Rhea home, Danny parked in her driveway and heroically walked her up all fifty-two steps to her door.
He told her he’d had a great time and hugged her.
He pulled out of the hug and lingered close to her face; he brushed a piece of her hair back behind her ear.
His breath somehow smelled minty. She wondered if he was going to kiss her, but he did not.
He said, “Good night,” and walked back down the steps.
At least that is what Rhea thought took place; she could not be sure because everything felt warped and foggy after he told her he didn’t want to be a father, ripping himself off her vision board and throwing himself in the trash.
Two days later, he texted: When can I see you again?
She took a full day to respond, going back and forth on her choice.
He was seemingly perfect for her in every way, but she could not waste precious time on a man who had a severe fatherhood allergy.
She wanted to be a parent someday, and he did not; it was that simple.
So she settled on her go-to lie for painlessly ending casual things: Hey, I had a great time with you but I’m not really looking for anything serious right now.
I just got out of a long relationship. It was lovely to meet you tho.
She stared at her phone for six hours and was finally rewarded with: I had a great time with you too and I totally get it.
Such a sweet response from a man who was confident enough not to argue or lash out or say something pervy like: I’m not looking for anything serious either, but that doesn’t mean we can’t hook up???
She read his kind response one thousand times before deleting their text chain and his number from her phone, preventing herself from being able to reach out in a moment of weakness.
“So that’s that?” Zoe said, catching the tail end of the story.
“Yep, that’s that.”
“Good, you don’t have time to waste on a guy like that. When you turn thirty-nine, your fertility falls off a cliff, you know,” Zoe said, and Rhea wondered if they went to the same gynecologist.
Rhea started blinking; she didn’t enjoy hearing Zoe refer to Danny as “a guy like that.” He didn’t deserve that slander.
He had been considerate, present, and romantic.
He had been everything she had looked for her entire life.
She knew it was only one date, but surely the fact that it was a better date by a mile than any other in her lifetime earned him the right to be spoken highly of.
His deep eyes flashed through her head, and she felt the need to defend him, but she did not let herself.
She knew defending a person she would never see again was pointless.
Besides, her friends were supporting her in exactly the way she wanted them to.
Or maybe she wanted them to tell her to throw her motherhood dreams away and text him immediately just so she could look into those eyes again.
Tiny told Rhea not to worry about it; Danny was obviously not her soulmate.
“We should’ve known when you didn’t meet him on a golf course,” she joked, then gently added, “But you really should freeze your eggs.”
Rhea loved when people with an abundance of wealth casually told less fortunate people what they should buy.
Tiny excused herself to go to the ladies’ room, although she did not word it quite as delicately, and Zoe excused herself to start the Bunny Hop Game, an activity that involved all the children hopping on printed-out cartoon bunnies while Zoe yelled either “Hop!” or “Stop!”
Rhea sat alone and watched: Zoe laughing as her daughter gleefully flung herself around the yard, Ada clapping as Chichi and Ekele held hands and jumped on the bunnies together, Marcus filming his beautiful children bursting with joy for the holiday, and Tiny rejoining the group as Jason put a casual hand around her waist to cradle her rounded belly.
As soon as the game ended, a perfectly scheduled struggling actor in an Easter Bunny costume entered the backyard. The kids lost their minds, clambering to take pictures on his lap. This same struggling actor, in this same costume, showed up every year, but that fact made it no less exhilarating.
The first year, Rhea thought it would be funny to take a picture on the bunny’s lap, like, “Ha ha, look how single and childless I am. Isn’t it hilarious?”
She put the photo on her fridge and laughed along with her guests when they commented on it, but in the subsequent years, she had become less capable of making fun of herself.
In her twenties, self-deprecation was adorable; in her early thirties, it was hilarious; but in her late thirties, it was just sad.
After reaching one’s hard-earned late thirties, one was supposed to display an air of self-possession, but so much of Rhea’s personality had been geared toward self-deprecation for so many years, it was a challenging habit to break.
It felt like she had to keep trying on new personalities to replace the old one.
She was leaning toward “wacky aunt” but was hoping it would not come to that and she could instead become “frazzled mom.”
Rhea pouted as all the domestic bliss unfolded around her.
She was feeling sorry for herself, and she knew it.
She could get off her chair and glom onto her friends’ families.
She could secure a big slice of cake for Chichi and wipe her cheeks when frosting ended up all over them.
She could tie Zoe’s daughter’s little shoe, and Zoe’s husband could snap a picture of the sweet moment.
She could be okay. But she didn’t want to be okay.
She wanted to be a wife and a mother, but that she could not do, so instead she sat alone, blinking.