263 Days
Danny drove down Topanga Canyon Boulevard 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’s thirty-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 is way more precious than yours—”
“Yeah, your fertility falls off a cliff when 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.”
They stared at each other for a moment. It felt like they were deciding whether to actually go paddleboarding or just move into her bedroom.
After she’d explained her anxiety about having sex, Danny had decided to let her make the first move toward second base, so he broke the spell with, “Where’s your board? I’ll put it in my truck.”
He detected a hint of disappointment on her face while she directed him to a small shed on her property.
He hoped she knew how much he wanted her, how quickly he would have pressed her up against that shed…
and lifted her dress. How could he communicate that he was hopelessly attracted to her without making her feel pressured into having sex?
He searched for the perfect phrase that would capture how sexy he thought she was while also displaying his patience, and he came up with: “We have the same paddleboard.”
“Really?”
“Yep, same exact, mine’s in the truck.”
He internally sighed at his lameness, picked up her paddleboard, and headed down the stairs to hide his full humiliation and half erection.
They parked in Venice. They got out of the truck and each stripped down to their bathing suits.
Rhea wore a white bikini. Danny wore black board shorts.
They walked around to the back of the truck and each took another moment to look at the other.
Again, it felt like they were deciding whether to actually go paddleboarding or just lock themselves inside the truck for the rest of the afternoon.
“You look…really good.” A slight improvement from “We have the same paddleboard,” but not exactly a slam dunk.
She flushed. He stepped toward her, and their mouths connected. Danny was flooded with her softness, the sweetness of her tongue, the delicate sounds in her throat. He cradled her face and kissed her until it felt like maybe a police officer might encourage them to move it along.
She pulled away and smiled. “I missed you.”
“Yeah…same.” His voice was thick, and he cleared his throat.
They removed their boards from the truck bed and carried them a few blocks.
On their walk, they passed beachgoing families with small children.
A man with a newborn in a Bjorn, shielding the baby from the sun with his hands.
Two women crouched in front of a sobbing toddler, speaking in soothing voices: “But, sweetheart, you already had a Popsicle.”
A man pulled a thick-wheeled wagon full of beach supplies while yelling at his daughter to “slow down” and tugging on his son’s hand, encouraging him to “hurry up.” These sights usually made Danny cringe—the unpaid labor, the stress, the overall parental enslavement—but as he watched Rhea clock the same sights, he began to see them through her eyes.
Was she seeing enslavement or familial bliss?
Was part of her already starting to regret continuing this relationship?
Was she longing to delve into Popsicle negotiations with an illogical toddler?
They launched from a dock on the Venice Beach canals and paddled on smooth water lined with palm trees and multimillion-dollar homes.
They ducked under low walking bridges. They glided past families on brightly colored rowboats, and each time they did, that same anxiety returned.
He could not shake the foreboding; he could not stop hearing his sister’s ominous words: “She’s not gonna let this kid stuff go. ”
Danny watched a small girl in a rowboat wave at Rhea.
Rhea smiled and waved back. He felt jealous, as if Rhea were having an affair and her lover was the concept of motherhood.
What was he getting himself into? And was it too late to turn back?
Rhea adjusted her sun hat and looked over at him.
Her hair fell over her eyes as she grinned; it was far too late to turn back. He was hopeless.