Page 25 of Counting the Days

“What took you so long? You almost missed the hunt,” Zoe said.

“You brought Peeps,” Tiny said a little too loudly.

Several children stopped what they were doing and ran toward Rhea. She placed Peeps in their already sticky hands while their parents barked commands:

“Only one, Dash, you’ve already had enough sugar.”

“Don’t push your sister, Lenny.”

“Chichi, tell Ahree ‘thank you.’ ”

Rhea placed the surviving Peeps on a nearby table, leaving the savages to descend on the defenseless baby chickens. Tiny got up and grabbed a box of Peeps for herself, practically wrestling them away from a particularly eager child, then pulled out a chair for Rhea so she could join them.

“Okay, let’s hear it,” Tiny said.

All three women looked at Rhea expectantly. By now, they all knew Rhea had been on a date with someone she met at Zoe’s baby shower.

“Spare no detail. God, I miss dating so much,” Zoe said.

“Me too, the excitement, the anticipation, the nervous butterflies,” Ada said dreamily.

Rhea had countless memories of both Zoe and Ada cursing their single status and despising the dating process, but she chose to keep them to herself. Her friends remembered butterflies delicately fluttering in their stomachs as they navigated thedating world, but Rhea knew they were vampire bats, screeching as they flapped around, eating them alive from the inside.

“Well, he took me to Topanga Beach—” Rhea said.

“What?” Zoe asked, looking confused as a person who had not set foot on an L.A. beach in over a decade.

“He made a fire…’cause I told him I had never been camping,” Rhea said, which was met with “Aww” from Tiny and Ada and another “What?” from Zoe.

“We roasted hot dogs,” Rhea said, blushing.

“Hot dogs?”Zoe asked.

“Like, fancy ones, it was really sweet.”

“Mom!” Chichi yelled from the middle of the yard.

“In a second, honey,” Ada yelled. “Go on,” she said to Rhea.

“Mom! I hurt my finger! The egg pinched me,” Chichi cried.

Ada stood up and swung her suckling son to her hip; Ekele shot Rhea another dirty look, as if this new turn of events were her fault.

“Sorry, keep going, don’t wait for me,” Ada said, and went to her daughter.

Rhea continued, “Yeah, um, it was just a really sweet date and he asked about my mom and stuff.”

“Wow, so he’s, like, emotionally evolved?” Tiny’s words wrestled with a mouthful of yellow marshmallow.

“You talked about yourdead momon a first date?” Zoe asked.

“It wasn’t weird, it was organic, it felt really natural. The whole night was so—”

“Mom!” Zoe’s daughter said as she toddled toward them carrying a cake with a maniacally grinning Easter Bunny frosted on the top. “Can we eat this now?”

Zoe sprang out of her chair and ripped the cake out of her daughter’s hands, asking where her father was, where her nannywas, how she got the cake down from the counter, and why she wasn’t out hunting for eggs. Zoe walked her daughter back inside the house.

Rhea looked at her lone remaining listener, and Tiny said, “How did it end? Did you hook up?”