Page 10 of Counting the Days

“Sorta cute?Jason wants to leave me for him. He’s obsessedwith the guy,” Tiny said as she flopped down on the couch next to Zoe, cradling her five-months-pregnant belly, which looked like a nine-months-pregnant belly on her minuscule frame. Tiny had very much earned her nickname; her driver’s license claimed she was five feet tall, but that was a lie.

“How do you know him?” Rhea asked.

“He’s our garden guy,” Tiny said, and pointed out the open French doors to her stunning vegetable garden. “I mean, he’severyone’sgarden guy. He’s done every house on our street, including, like,massivecelebrities.”

“He did…that garden,” Rhea said as the dreaded memory of calling it a “bullshit garden” surfaced.

“Yeah, he’s the Edible Gardener on TikTok. He has this huge team; they come in and set up the garden and come back every week and take care of it. It’s a fuckload more expensive than the farmer’s market, but now we eat, like, actual fresh vegetables every day.”

“And why did you invite thisgardenerto my baby shower?” Zoe asked.

“Well, to be totally honest, Jason and I have been low-key investigating him for a possible Rhea setup. We wanted to get to know him better, find out if he’s single or gay or whatever, but…Ifullyspaced. Mom brain,” Tiny said, pointing to her belly.

“Oh yes, get used to that, my love,” Zoe said. “Yesterday, I waited in line for an hour at Whole Foods and when I got to the front…I had nothing in my cart.”

Zoe and Tiny shared a laugh, which annoyed Rhea, but instead of yelling,Could everyone just shut up about being a mom for one second,she said, “So, you were gonna maybe set us up…?”

“Well, yeah, but Iforgotlike a total dumb shit…and yet, you met anyway. That feels like fate,” Tiny said with raised eyebrows.

“I don’t know about fate,” Zoe said. “They were probably the only single people here; the odds of them talking were high.”

Rhea squeezed Zoe’s foot a little too hard, and Zoe said, “Ow!” but due to her particular lack of empathy, she was unable to connect the hard squeeze to her hurtful comment.

Zoe Hornbrook was a third-generation talent agent, which meant she was born without sensitivity and had never once considered the possibility of sparing someone’s feelings. If Rhea Darby’s DNA was trash piled up on Butthole Beach, Zoe Hornbrook’s DNA was a sociopathic go-getter who’d worked their way up from the mailroom and was intent on signing Hollywood’s next big thing. When Rhea first witnessed Zoe trying to be soft and motherly to her daughter, she reminded her of Little Red Riding Hood’s wolf wearing the grandmother’s dress.

Even now, Zoe’s four-year-old daughter was curled up, napping on the opposite corner of the couch, nowhere near her mother, as if Zoe had an invisible force field that repelled physical affection. Since the day they’d met at Auburn Sinclair, Rhea was too sensitive to tell Zoe she found her personality brash and abrasive, and Zoe was too insensitive to intuit that Rhea felt that way…so their friendship endured.

“Did you guys exchange info? Do you want his number?” Tiny asked.

Before Rhea could respond, Zoe said, “Ree, if you like the guy, just go for it. Who cares that he’s a gardener? At this point, you might have to lower your standards a little bit, my love.”

Rhea and Tiny exchanged a look that Zoe’s dull instrument could not perceive.

“I don’t know. Maybe I should let him make the first move.”

Although Rhea was living in the modern twenties, she had been born in the prehistoric eighties, when the general rule of thumb dictated it was best for the man to pursue the woman, soshe wanted to give him a chance to live by those outdated and meaningless rules.

As she pondered her predicament, her ego started whispering delicious ideas:He’s going to track you down and call you,andHe likes you a lot,and the particularly unhingedWithin three hundred and twenty-six days, he’s going to marry and impregnate you.

As much as those same ego voices had burned her in the past, she didn’t want to completely ignore them. On the off chance hewasgoing to track her down, she didn’t want to beat him to it and come across as some baby-starved stereotype whose closet hid a detailed vision board with a full-fledged family of five glued to it.

“Yeah, I’m gonna give him a chance to make a move; he can always ask you for my number….”

“And I’m sure he will,” Tiny said.

“That’s the right instinct, you don’t want him to know you’re desperate,” Zoe said.

Rhea and Tiny exchanged another look as Zoe obliviously closed her eyes.

323Days

It took Rhea almost twentyminutes to find the perfect raised garden bed. She wanted to make sure each vegetable was bursting with life, like in Tiny’s backyard. She finally found it in the pages of anArchitectural Digest. She snipped it out of the impressive yard of a sharply dressed music producer and glued it to her vision board. It was official: Someday, she too would have a gorgeous vegetable garden.

Rhea read the article to see if, perchance, the music producer mentioned hiring the Edible Gardener to install her flawless garden; if she had, she did not confess. The moment Rhea had gotten home from the baby shower, she’d watched every video on the Edible Gardener’s TikTok. She’d created an account years ago, strictly for lurking. She had never posted anything on the youthful app due to her advanced maternal age.

After watching 214 videos of Danny Beckett narrating various gardening techniques, Rhea decided she was in love with him. And she was not alone; he had three million followers, and anytime he stepped in front of the camera, hundreds of comments about his objective cuteness trailed under the video.

Rhea read them all.