271 Days #2
This elicited empathetic chuckles from the group. One woman even said, “Uh-huh, same,” which was rewarded with more chuckles. Rhea hated how charming Danny was, and she wanted to tell the woman to stop flirting with her boyfriend.
After the circle was done introducing themselves, the leaders informed them they would be spending the weekend doing trust exercises, intimacy exercises, dance therapy, and other nausea-inducing things that made Rhea want to weep.
She almost walked out at the phrase “dance therapy.” She would under no circumstances be dancing in front of the Edible Gardener.
She had to keep reminding herself he was also voluntarily attending this embarrassing weekend for weirdos.
Yes, Danny had just discovered her yearning for a soulmate, how broken she was, how she required special training to learn what everybody else already knew, but he was there too.
And yet, when Danny went to a soulmate workshop, it seemed brave and compelling, but when Rhea went to the same workshop, it seemed sad and cringe.
She willed the Welcome Circle to end so she could get back in her car and escape.
“…and we didn’t meet until after we had each done the inner work,” the female leader was explaining. “I was married twice before I met Gary. Always attracting the wrong guy, never able to understand why…”
Despite Rhea’s desperation for this humiliation to end, she found herself leaning forward; this woman was speaking her language.
“This weekend you’ll be connecting on deep levels, throwing away the shrouds of protection we created in our childhoods and learning how to let yourself out and let someone else in.”
At these words, Rhea found herself leaning back, looking at the clock, and trying to remember if the schedule stated when the Welcome Circle would be wrapping up.
“Let’s have everyone stand, we’re going to do a warm-up exercise to prepare for the intimacy of the weekend,” Gary said.
Gary and the female leader, whose name Rhea did not know, told them to walk around the room making eye contact with every person they passed. Rhea walked around, but instead of making eye contact with anyone, she tried to get close enough to the door to slip out unnoticed.
“Now, we want you to stop in front of the person closest to you,” Gary said.
Rhea had ended up right next to Wendy again; she realized she was subconsciously following Wendy around because she had warm energy.
“Look into your partner’s eyes, and I want each of you to say, ‘I belong to you. You belong to me.’ Then part ways with a hug.”
Rhea swallowed heavily. She was grateful she had been stalking Warm Wendy and did not have to do this abhorrent task with a more intimidating individual.
They looked into each other’s eyes and said what they had been ordered to say.
Warm Wendy said it with true depth and feeling.
Rhea said it like her mom had told her to say sorry to a kid she’d just offended.
They hugged and continued to walk around the room. The leaders announced they wanted the group to keep doing this exercise until they had connected with every seeker in the pavilion. Rhea appreciated them referring to herself and her fellow attendees as “seekers” instead of incels.
Rhea moved toward the door, but each time she got close, a seeker stopped her, told her she belonged to them and they belonged to her, then forced her into a hug.
She could not figure out how to flee without causing a disturbance.
She had Danny’s exact location programmed into her brain like a GPS and knew where he was at all times.
She managed to avoid him until the very end.
He was standing close, and she turned to him, helpless against his magnetic pull.
They locked eyes, and he flashed an ironic smile.
“I belong to you. You belong to me….”
Rhea choked on her overwhelming need for those words to be true. This man she barely knew had somehow built a permanent nest in her heart.
“I belong to you. You belong to me,” she said with shaky breath.
He pulled her into a hug, and her knees melted. He smelled like safety. His arms wrapped around her made her feel delicate and strong at the same time. She would never leave this hug, no matter what.
“Okay, stop,” Gary said. “Whoever you’re with, stay with them and have a seat on the ground.”
Danny pulled out of the hug and smiled at her. What are the chances? his eyes said. They sat across from each other, their socked feet briefly touching as they got settled. Several opening lines tried to leave Rhea’s mouth….
Come here often?
This is so insane! Are you also having a panic attack?
Hey…It’s Danny, right?
She rejected each line, and before she could land on the perfect icebreaking joke that would make this nightmare a little less awkward, the leaders told them they were going to do some “eye gazing.” They wanted the seekers to remain silent and look into each other’s eyes…
for five minutes. Rhea swooned. She was not going to be able to say the perfect thing that would make light of this horror show.
Danny leaned in close and whispered, “Only five minutes? Bummer.”
Rhea quietly laughed and whispered, “I was hoping for ‘eternity.’ ”
He rewarded her with a closed-mouth chuckle through his beautiful nose.
Rhea exhaled, grateful that Danny was able to break the ice in the nick of time.
The leaders started a timer, and Rhea and Danny stared at each other.
She had never held eye contact with another person for anywhere near five minutes; she wondered if she had ever held eye contact for even five seconds.
During normal conversations, Rhea Darby’s eyes usually darted around looking for a place to hide.
When she looked into someone’s eyes, she felt like she could see too much.
Social personas and defenses seemed to stop at eye level.
She could always see the fear underneath, the shame, the insecurity.
She avoided looking into people’s eyes because she didn’t want to see them naked.
The leaders explained that the eyes were “the gateway to the soul,” and they wanted everyone to get comfortable looking into the soul of another person.
As she took in the depths of Danny’s soul, Rhea was worried she was going to start blinking, outing herself as an anxiety-ridden mess.
But Danny’s eyes were bolstering her; being present with him in this intimate way made her feel less anxious, not more so.
Rhea saw all the same emotions that she noticed in everyone’s eyes—fear, hope, shyness, curiosity—but there was something else in there, too.
Some small, gorgeous spark she could not place; she wondered if it was the unexplainable thing about him that made her feel like she was home when he looked at her.
She noticed he was trying not to laugh, which made her have to fight the same urge.
After they spent a minute struggling with their respective smiles, he seemed to get serious.
His mouth turned downward, and the crease between his eyebrows deepened.
Something new surfaced, something dark. Her pulse quickened as she absorbed this information about Danny.
Something was buried far down there, but she could see it.
Her heart softened toward him. She wanted to ask what happened and promise she would never let it happen again.
There was so much she wanted to say. She needed to explain herself, not just the reason she’d turned down a second date and why she was at this workshop, but her entire self, as if the concept of Rhea Darby could be explained.
She wanted to write herself down and give him all the pages, and in exchange, curl up with the book of Danny Beckett and read until her eyes bled.
She wanted to drink all of him in while pouring herself into him until they were one liquid in one vessel.
As the minutes ticked on, she felt utterly exposed; there was no part of herself she could hide from his gaze, and instead of this frightening her, she enjoyed the nakedness.
She assumed she was starting to hallucinate; the walls of her mind were softening.
She was losing her exact place in time and space.
Was she looking at Danny? Or just some lost part of herself?
She noticed him subtly shake his head, just a small twitch, as if he too was trying to regain footing on solid ground.
Eventually, Gary quietly told the seekers to close their eyes. “Go back into your bodies, into your own space.”
Rhea closed her eyes with a reluctance to pull away from Danny and a deep relief to be with herself again.
As the group sat with their eyes closed, the woman told them the Welcome Circle was over, they could open their eyes and get up whenever they felt ready, and lunch would be available in the Lodge.
Rhea kept her eyes closed. She heard people standing up and talking in low voices as they walked outside.
She felt much calmer than she had at the beginning of the Welcome Circle, but she could not yet imagine making her next move.
She felt Danny sitting across from her, hesitating.
She heard him stand up and walk away. She waited until the Leonard Pavilion was completely silent before finally opening her eyes.
—
Danny sat on a bench and tried to take his time putting on his slides.
He wished they had laces so he could tie them slowly, but they slipped on in three seconds.
He wanted to wait for Rhea, but he didn’t want her to know he was waiting.
The rest of the group was gone, nervous people pairing off and making small talk as they walked across the campus.