Page 38 of Counting the Days

They smiled at the ground; Rhea resisted the impulse to grab him and confess her feelings. They walked down a steep hill and entered a dimly lit building. Rhea clocked shelves of folded towels, showers, hooks for hanging clothing…anda dozen naked humans. Her bottom lip dropped. The hot springs were full of nudists. Suddenly, Danny’s earlier array of emotions made sense. She’d asked if he wanted to go to thenudist hot springs with her. She’d asked him to benaked with her. Danny stopped walking and took in Rhea’s expression.

“Didn’t know it was clothing optional?” he asked gently.

“No. I did not.”

“We can leave if you—”

“No, no, this istotallyfine. It’s no big deal,” Rhea said through a windpipe the size of a straw.

The last thing she wanted was Danny thinking of her as some kind of prude. She’d gone to Mardi Gras when she was nineteen and showed a crowd of men her breasts. She felt objectified and terrible afterward and vowed never to do it again, but she didn’t want Danny to knowthatpart of her. She wanted him to know the former part, the part that let loose and lifted her shirt, thirsty for a raucous reaction from horny strangers. She was not some neurotic overthinker; she was a free spirit.She was a loose pile of yarn.

“You sure?” Danny asked.

“Totally. I just feel silly for putting on my bathing suit, but no big deal, I’ll just…take it off.” She had to really work to get those last few words over the giant lump in her throat.

Danny walked ahead of her and stripped down to his stunning nakedness. Rhea wanted to walk closer to the clothing hooks and do the same, but her feet no longer listened to herbrain. She stood mannequin still and tried to look at anything other than Danny’s muscular back and shoulders, his lean legs, his adorable butt. He grabbed a towel from a shelf and wrapped it around his waist before she could ogle his front half.

“I’ll see you out there,” he said, and walked through a large opening into the night.

Rhea did not know what “out there” meant; what was on the other side of the opening? In her mind, the springs were on a platform under hot stage lights, and everyone she had ever met was in the audience.

An ancient man with hanging skin and the longest, thickest penis Rhea had ever seen strolled past her. A young couple with equally beautiful, plump bodies got out of the shower and spoke in low voices as they toweled off and got dressed.Everyone was naked.She thankfully did not recognize anyone from her workshop but assumed it was only a matter of time before Gary would strut in playing guitar with his penis out.

Rhea’s feet finally accepted the fact that running home was not an option and headed over to the clothing hooks. She took off her clothes and stood in her bikini. Mere minutes ago, wearing a bikini in front of Danny was an intimidating thought. Now the bikini felt like a space suit, safe, protective, the only thing standing between her and certain death, and she had totake it off.

A woman, who looked like she could’ve been Wild Eyes’s mother, entered and stripped down to nothing. Her breasts were resting comfortably on her vagina. Her buttocks’ flesh had been eaten away by time. Rhea could see her entire prolapsed anus, and yet the woman walked confidently out into the night,stark naked.

Rhea could not go out there and be the only person wearing a bikini. She had to just grow up and get over it. But she decidedto wrap herself in a towel first,thentake off her bikini; she was technically still naked. She hung her precious bikini on a hook and took one last sad look at it before plunging forth into her inevitable humiliation.

—

The nudist grotto Rhea enteredwas lit primarily by starlight, and still she wished she could reach up to heaven and turn down the brightness. She discovered Slates Hot Springs was precariously situated on a cliff’s edge. Dim floor lighting assisted her navigation past small pools built from rock. In each of the pools, naked humans soaked. Some softly chatted; others stared out at an ocean that was much closer here than up the hill at the retreat center. Waves smashed onto nearby rocks, spraying salty mist on the lounging bodies.

As she continued, Rhea tried to spot Danny without looking directly at anyone’s private parts, but her eyes were magnetically pulled toward unusual sights, which meant no nipple or genital escaped her reluctant darting glance. She clocked several claw-foot tubs; each contained a nude individual lying back with their eyes closed. Their breasts and pubic hair floating carelessly, an intimacy Rhea felt she should not be witnessing, and yet, there she was.

The primordial woman who could’ve been Wild Eyes’s mother was standing naked, no towel, completely uninhibited. She was holding a hose, filling the last empty tub with sulfuric spring water. Rhea wished there were more empty tubs. She could not imagine joining any of the naked people in their group soaks, like a human soup, marinating in a testicle broth that made her queasy. She pulled her towel tighter around her body.

She walked down some steps, even closer to the ocean, and spotted Danny. He was alone in a group pool, looking out at thewaves. He leaned his chin on his forearms, which were propped on the pool’s edge. His profile glowing in the starlight took Rhea’s breath away. She stood still and watched him. She wanted to straddle him. She wanted to turn and run. Before she could do either, he looked at her. Water dripped down his chest as he sat up. She wanted to tell him he was perfect.

Neither of them spoke; he could not invite her in without feeling creepy, and she could not join him without feeling mortified. Their awkward smiles acknowledged their predicament. Danny playfully put his hand over his eyes, covering them. Rhea got in the pool with her towel on, and at the last possible second, she tossed it on the ground and hid under the water.

“Such a gentleman,” she said.

He laughed and took his hand off his eyes; they instinctively flicked to the top of her breasts floating on the water. He quickly looked away as Rhea sank deeper in an attempt to submerge them.

“Sorry I didn’t tell you about the whole clothing-optional thing, I thought you knew and then—”

“Not your fault and truly,totallyfine.”

They were three feet away from each other without even the thinnest layer of fabric between them. The man she had been fantasizing about for weeks was within her grasp. All she had to do was reach out, pull him toward her…wrap her legs around him and—

“You’re way cooler about it than I was when I first came here. I hadn’t been naked around strangers since high school.”

“Definitely takes some getting used to, but yeah,totallyfine.”

She was relieved he was buying her free-spirited, laid-back routine.

“But now I’ve been here four times and I barely even think about it.”