271 Days #8
Rhea felt heat rising in her face. How could he sit there naked and sound so certain about something so vast and unknowable? The sky darkened to match her shifting mood. She looked up at the clouds rolling in.
“Well, you could still spend time with them on the weekends…they would still feel like they had a father.”
“The truth is, we don’t know what they would feel.
We tell ourselves kids are perfectly fine with the status quo, but I watch my nieces and nephews sob whenever their parents leave.
They don’t want to be with a babysitter or in daycare or elementary school with a rotating cast of underpaid teachers.
I certainly didn’t. I wanted to be with the two people who brought me into the world, the people who supposedly wanted me.
And yet, I was constantly dropped off at school or summer camp.
Children aren’t raised by people who love them, they’re raised by people who are paid to spend time with them—”
“Oh, come on, everyone goes to school—”
“Yeah, and everyone’s fucked. We are in the middle of a severe mental health crisis—depression, drug addiction, suicide. Whatever we’re doing isn’t working. Just because every five-year-old is forced into a building full of strangers doesn’t mean it’s good for them, and I can’t—I can’t do it—”
“Well, what about the human experience? You never want to know what it feels like to hold a little sleeping body? Or read to your toddler in bed?” Her voice was filled with too much emotion, but she needed him to be less concrete on a subject that was utterly fluid and ethereal.
“That all sounds amazing, it honestly makes my heart ache”—his voice cracked—“but I can’t bring an innocent person here and harm them and the planet just ’cause I want to ‘hold a little sleeping body.’ ”
“So, you want humanity to just die out then?”
“Well…I honestly look at what human beings are and what they do to each other, and can’t help but see the flaw in deciding to create more of them.
If all humans disappeared tomorrow, every other living thing on the planet would rejoice.
Literally every single species would be better off without us. ”
“What about…?” Rhea paused for far too long. “Um…injured…birds…who get rescued by rehabilitation centers…only to be…reintroduced back into the wild?”
Rhea suspected he was remaining silent out of kindness; her pathetic scraping to find human value on planet earth was too weak to merit a response.
“I’ve just never heard a reason someone wanted to have a kid that wasn’t…entirely selfish,” he said softly.
“Well, what about wanting to learn how to be less selfish by taking care of someone else?”
“Using an innocent child to learn how to be less selfish? Sounds a little selfish to me.” He clamped his lips down as if to block more words from leaving them; a look of regret flashed across his face.
Wow. Was he calling her selfish? Was he calling all parents self-centered, planet-hating monsters?
She imposed a tight smile and emitted a sound she hoped would communicate she was thoughtfully taking in what he’d said while respectfully disagreeing.
However, she feared the sound came out wrong and revealed her rage.
“Sorry, I—I really shouldn’t be talking about this with you. I’m happy for you—that you know what you want…. I don’t mean to preach—”
“No, it’s okay. I asked.”
Spring water flowed in through tubes in the rock wall, and even though it was “heated by the earth’s inner fires,” Rhea felt ice-cold. They sat watching the waves crash for as long as they could stand it.
“It’s getting pretty late, maybe we should—” he began.
“Yeah, you go ’head, I’m gonna hang for a bit.”
He paused as if he wanted to say something, but he thought better of it and got out of the water.
As he reached for his towel, Rhea caught a glimpse of his perfect penis…
a Goldilocks size that was neither disappointingly small nor intimidatingly large and somehow had a commanding presence even in its flaccid state. How dare he have such a stunning penis?
Just as her anger was reaching its peak, arousal stepped in and began to dampen it.
Each beautiful inch of Danny was chipping away at her fury.
He wrapped himself in a towel while anger and arousal arm-wrestled in her head.
She was determined not to let arousal win.
She replayed the way he parroted “a little sleeping body.” Was there a hint of condescension?
Yeah, she decided, there was. Anger slammed arousal down.
“Good night,” Rhea said coolly, and turned her back on him to blink at the ocean.
She felt him hesitating behind her. She did not want him to leave. She wanted him to stand there forever. As long as he was there, it wasn’t over. There was a chance one of them could say something that would keep the door cracked. One of them could soften their stance, open their mind….
“Good night,” he said, and she heard the soggy sound of wet footsteps receding.
—
Rhea imagined Danny toweling off, getting dressed, and walking back to his room. She took her time with the process, in case he did the same. She waited until she could see him with her mind’s eye locked safely inside his room before she got out of the water. She could not risk bumping into him.
She did not want to bump into Danny Beckett ever again.
Being around him felt dangerous. He was a bad influence.
He was the wrong crowd. She didn’t want him burrowing into her brain with his self-righteous, judgmental concerns about the environment or parenting in general.
He was entitled to his own opinions, but she no longer wanted to hear them.
She was supposed to stay for one more day of dancing and eye contact but decided it was not worth the torture of seeing Danny again.
She was going to leave first thing in the morning.
She reached over the edge of the pool and grabbed her tossed towel.
It was damp from Danny’s drippy exit, another reason to be angry with him.
She looked around to make sure there were no well-hung old men lecherously watching her.
People were lounging, chatting, or staring at the ocean.
No one was watching her, lecherously or otherwise.
But just in case someone might look over at the wrong moment, she stood up and, at the exact same time, wrapped her towel around herself.
With a feigned breezy demeanor, she stepped over the edge of the pool and walked back through all the floating body parts.
She looked up at the sky, pretending she was concerned about the threat of rain, but was actually waiting for an older couple to leave the dressing area.
Once she was alone, she put all her clothes back on in a frenzied blur.
She started her trek back up the hill just as the heavy clouds released a drizzle.
“Hey,” said a voice from the darkness.
She turned and saw Danny sitting on a bench alone. He stood up and walked toward her. He was waiting for her. He was going to apologize. He was going to tell her she’d just changed his mind, and he did want to hold a little sleeping body.
“Your suitcase is still in my room.”
“Oh…sorry—”
“No, it’s okay, I walked in and saw it and—I just didn’t want you not to have it tonight.”
So, he had gone back to his room just like she imagined.
Then he walked all the way back and waited outside in the cold so she didn’t have to go a night without a toothbrush and pajamas.
She wanted to kick him in the balls, her anger melding with an intense wave of cute aggression.
Try as she might to hate him, she adored him, and that enraged her even more.
They walked up the hill in silence. She took note of his outfit: dark gray Rag had he been reading her mind?
“To keep the rain off your head,” he added, jiggling his hood.
Rhea had been so lost in thought that she did not notice the rain had picked up.
“Oh, no, thank you.”
As they passed the Lodge, Danny said abruptly, “Do you want some tea?”
“Huh?”
“I mean, like, do you want to go in the Lodge right now and have a cup of tea with me? I’m just not tired yet and…are you?”
She looked into his infuriating eyes. She could say no. She could get her suitcase and abscond. She could decide her own future and ensure that it did include excited little voices on Christmas morning.
“Yeah,” she said.
“Yeah, you are tired?”
“I mean, no, I am not tired, and yes, I’ll have tea with you.”
—