Page 31 of Counting the Days

“I belong to you. You belong to me….”

Rhea choked on her overwhelming need for those words to be true. This man she barely knew had somehow built a permanent nest in her heart.

“I belong to you. You belong to me,” she said with shaky breath.

He pulled her into a hug, and her knees melted. He smelled like safety. His arms wrapped around her made her feel delicate and strong at the same time. She would never leave this hug, no matter what.

“Okay, stop,” Gary said. “Whoever you’re with, stay with them and have a seat on the ground.”

Danny pulled out of the hug and smiled at her.What are the chances?his eyes said. They sat across from each other, their socked feet briefly touching as they got settled. Several opening lines tried to leave Rhea’s mouth….

Come here often?

This issoinsane! Are you also having a panic attack?

Hey…It’s Danny, right?

She rejected each line, and before she could land on the perfect icebreaking joke that would make this nightmare a little less awkward, the leaders told them they were going to do some “eye gazing.” They wanted the seekers to remain silent and look into each other’s eyes…for five minutes. Rhea swooned. She was not going to be able to say the perfect thing that would make light of this horror show.

Danny leaned in close and whispered, “Only five minutes? Bummer.”

Rhea quietly laughed and whispered, “I was hoping for ‘eternity.’ ”

He rewarded her with a closed-mouth chuckle through his beautiful nose. Rhea exhaled, grateful that Danny was able tobreak the ice in the nick of time. The leaders started a timer, and Rhea and Danny stared at each other. She had never held eye contact with another person for anywhere near five minutes; she wondered if she had ever held eye contact for even five seconds.

During normal conversations, Rhea Darby’s eyes usually darted around looking for a place to hide. When she looked into someone’s eyes, she felt like she could see too much. Social personas and defenses seemed to stop at eye level. She could always see the fear underneath, the shame, the insecurity. She avoided looking into people’s eyes because she didn’t want to see them naked.

The leaders explained that the eyes were “the gateway to the soul,” and they wanted everyone to get comfortable looking into the soul of another person. As she took in the depths of Danny’s soul, Rhea was worried she was going to start blinking, outing herself as an anxiety-ridden mess. But Danny’s eyes were bolstering her; being present with him in this intimate way made her feel less anxious, not more so.

Rhea saw all the same emotions that she noticed in everyone’s eyes—fear, hope, shyness, curiosity—but there was something else in there, too. Some small, gorgeous spark she could not place; she wondered if it was the unexplainable thing about him that made her feel like she was home when he looked at her.

She noticed he was trying not to laugh, which made her have to fight the same urge. After they spent a minute struggling with their respective smiles, he seemed to get serious. His mouth turned downward, and the crease between his eyebrows deepened. Something new surfaced, something dark. Her pulse quickened as she absorbed this information about Danny. Something was buried far down there, but she could see it.

Her heart softened toward him. She wanted to ask what happened and promise she would never let it happen again.There was so much she wanted to say. She needed to explain herself, not just the reason she’d turned down a second date and why she was at this workshop, but herentireself, as if the concept of Rhea Darby could be explained. She wanted to write herself down and give him all the pages, and in exchange, curl up with the book of Danny Beckett and read until her eyes bled. She wanted to drink all of him in while pouring herself into him until they were one liquid in one vessel.

As the minutes ticked on, she felt utterly exposed; there was no part of herself she could hide from his gaze, and instead of this frightening her, she enjoyed the nakedness. She assumed she was starting to hallucinate; the walls of her mind were softening. She was losing her exact place in time and space. Was she looking at Danny? Or just some lost part of herself? She noticed him subtly shake his head, just a small twitch, as if he too was trying to regain footing on solid ground.

Eventually, Gary quietly told the seekers to close their eyes. “Go back into your bodies, into your own space.”

Rhea closed her eyes with a reluctance to pull away from Danny and a deep relief to be with herself again. As the group sat with their eyes closed, the woman told them the Welcome Circle was over, they could open their eyes and get up whenever they felt ready, and lunch would be available in the Lodge.

Rhea kept her eyes closed. She heard people standing up and talking in low voices as they walked outside. She felt much calmer than she had at the beginning of the Welcome Circle, but she could not yet imagine making her next move. She felt Danny sitting across from her, hesitating. She heard him stand up and walk away. She waited until the Leonard Pavilion was completely silent before finally opening her eyes.

—

Danny sat on a benchand tried to take his time putting on his slides. He wished they had laces so he could tie them slowly, but they slipped on in three seconds. He wanted to wait for Rhea, but he didn’t want her to know he was waiting. The rest of the group was gone, nervous people pairing off and making small talk as they walked across the campus.

The leaders straggled out the door and Danny smiled at them. They returned the grin as they clasped hands and headed off. A skeptical part of him wondered if their perfect-couple energy was all a show. They could not very well run a “find your soulmate” workshop unless they emitted the air of two people who had found theirs.

He watched them walk away. Lisa, the female workshop leader, leaned into her husband—Danny could not remember the guy’s name—and briefly rested her head on his shoulder. Just a small tap, such a tiny act, but it convinced Danny they really were madly in love.

Those little things couples did, the minuscule, almost imperceptible things, were like bright flashing lights to Danny. His parents didn’t do any of them: never held hands, never a peck on the cheek, nor a gentle touch. He did not think his parents were capable of affection, physical or otherwise.

The first time he saw a physically affectionate couple, not on TV, was in third grade at a friend’s house. His friend’s mom was sitting at the table, and his friend’s dad walked over and put his hands on her shoulders and squeezed, just once, and walked away, a throwaway gesture, almost nothing, but Danny was never the same after that.

Up until that point, he thought the people on TV were weird and his cold parents were normal, but it turned out real people were touching too. It was the first time Danny looked forward to becoming an adult. Maybe someday he, too, wouldget to touch someone or be touched. Maybe he would have a wife with shoulders, and he would get a chance to gently squeeze them.

Danny subtly peeked his head through the glass door and saw Rhea sitting with her eyes open. She was avoiding him. He scolded himself for the narcissistic thought; maybe she was just meditating, and her entire world did not revolve around him. He decided to head to lunch and leave her in peace, but he did walk slower than usual, hoping she would eventually catch up.