Page 19 of Counting the Days

“Is he a…bougie bohemian, like you?” he asked.

“I’m a bougie bohemian?” Rhea poked her head out of the dressing room.

“Well, you know, like, you opened a designer clothing store but…you wear feather earrings.”

“I haveonepair of feather earrings and Ibarelywear them.”

“You own three dream catchers….”

“Point taken.”

Danny was picking Rhea up in exactly six hours for their first date. She loved saying the phrase “first date” since it signified there were more to come. Since it was the beginning of spring, Louisca eventually convinced Rhea to wear a floral Isabel Marant minidress, and since, according toVogue,metallic footwear was among spring’s “most wanted shoes,” she wore silver Martiniano heels on her feet. She spun around in front of the trifold dressing mirror a few times, trying to be kind to her reflection.

If she had come of age during a more mentally healthy era that embraced human bodies as they naturally are, she might have loved her physique. Alas, she was a young girl developing a sense of self during the heroin-chic nineties and the fatphobic aughts. So her gorgeous, healthy body did not stand a chance under her cruel gaze.

Rhea was a bit below average height. She had full breasts, which she knew society was cool with. She also had a full waist, which she feared society wasnotcool with, and full hips, which she had witnessed society waver back and forth on for the past few decades. Since Rhea’s breasts, waist, and hips were almost in complete alignment, instead of an hourglass figure, she thought she had more of a water glass figure.

“You’re a rectangle!” a sadistic body shape calculator excitedly announced after she input her measurements into its evil algorithm. She promptly deleted the app, but the word “rectangle!” replayed whenever she examined herself in the mirror.

She was once clickbaited into reading an article about some university conducting an actual study to answer the immensely vital question “What is the ideal female shape?” Thankfully, shestopped reading before they presented their findings. She was sure to draw no benefits from learning the results of their quest and felt fairly confident “rectangle!” was neither the hypothesis nor the conclusion.

Rhea also had what she considered gangly appendages. In some outfits, she felt like a block of cheese with toothpicks sticking out of it. But the Isabel Marant minidress had a way of highlighting her supposedly attractive assets and minimizing the assets she was expected to feel bad about, which combated her fashion-industry brainwashing. Even at cost, the outfit was ludicrously expensive, but that’s what credit cards were for, and the disturbingly fleeting, false confidence new designer clothes gave her was worth it.

It also helped that Louisca was showering her with encouraging compliments. She recognized some of them as his go-to phrases for convincing customers to buy whatever it was they were wearing, but she pushed that fact out of her mind.

“He is going to get on his knees and thank the baby Jesus when he sees you in this,” Louisca said, which was exactly what he’d said to a customer last week who was trying on a very different dress for her anniversary.

Despite that being a recycled compliment and despite all the lies Rhea had swallowed throughout her life about beauty, somewhere in the unfathomable abyss of her mind, a small part of her smiled because she knew Louisca was right.

—

Rhea was contorting her shouldersto zip up the back of her minidress when she heard a knock at the door. The sound was startling for two reasons: First, it meant Danny Beckett was on time, which was unheard of in Los Angeles. Second, it meant he had walked up all fifty-two steps instead of waiting in his car andtextingI’m outside, which is what every other man had done in the three years since she’d bought the inconveniently placed cottage.

She crammed her feet into the silver heels and opened the door. She watched a plethora of emotions wash over Danny’s face. She tried to read each one but was unable to decipher what he was going through.

“Oh…my God, uh, you look…amazing,” he stammered.

Rhea was intuitive enough to sense the wordbutbefore it left his lips.

“But I’m so sorry, I should’ve told you, we’re gonna be outside tonight.”

“Oh, that’s okay,” Rhea said, feeling relieved, “I’ll be fine.”

She moved toward the door, but he continued, “I don’t think you will be fine. It’s probably gonna be pretty cold…and windy.”

Windy?Where was he taking her? Chicago? Regardless, Rhea was determined to wear her tiny outfit even if it resulted in frostbite.

“I’m used to the cold…and the wind,” she said, moving toward the door.

“I feel like, since we don’t know each other that well, this is an opportunity for me to either earn or lose your trust…and I promise you’ll be angry with me if you don’t wear something warmer.”

Rhea was paralyzed. She felt more attractive than she had in months. She absolutely had to wear this dress on this date, but since it was an objective fact that there was almost no barrier between her skin and the outside elements, she didn’t know how to argue.

“And the shoes are also gonna be a problem,” he added gently, “ ’cause the ground…is soft.”

Soft?Rhea could not even imagine where she was about to spend her evening.

“Like, you should probably wear those”—he pointed to her sheepskin Prada boots kicked into the corner—“and that.” He pointed to her plaid wool blanket coat hanging on a nearby hook.