Page 42 of Counting the Days

“Maybe whenever one of them gets stressed, instead of arguing, they dance?”

They talked about how neither of them grew up in a house that embraced dancing and how hard it was to feel comfortable on a dance floor. Rhea told him she had a massive emotional release after dance therapy, and he confessed he saw her run out the door and had to fight the urge to follow her.

“I just didn’t want you to have to be alone with…whatever it was you were feeling. But I was also like,Relax, man, this woman barely knows you.”

Rhea smiled and said, “I feel like I know you a little bit.”

“Good,” he said, and they briefly held eye contact, flames flickering on their faces.

“But how did you see me leave? You were supposed to be looking at the ground.”

“Oh, I was, but I may have broken the rules and looked up at you once or twice.”

She shuddered at the thought of him watching her flail to the beat but covered with coquettish composure.

“You’re a rebel,” she said with one eyebrow raised.

“You’re a good dancer.”

“What?”

“What? You don’t think you are?”

“No one has ever said that to me before….”

“Well, then no one has ever watched you dance before.”

She wanted to lift up the couch with Danny on it and throw it through a window. She wanted to stand up, drag the coffee table out of the way, and perform a full striptease, complete with pole spinning and a lap dance. Her desire for him was so all-encompassing, she had to dig her fingernails into her thigh to ground herself.

He smiled at her with his asinine eyes, and for a moment, she wished she were back on the dance floor so she could scream into the void. Instead, she sipped her tea and listened to the rain tapping on the roof. They kicked their shoes off and got cozier on the couch. They discussed how eye-opening the workshop was, listening to Gary and Lisa talk about their healthy relationship. Growing up, neither Rhea nor Danny had great relationship role models. Danny’s parents seemed to genuinely despise each other.

“They fight constantly. And seem to feel very gratified when the other one makes a mistake or fails in some way.”

“Fascinating to choose a life partner and then root against them for eternity.”

“Exactly…One time, we were all at the airport about to fly internationally, but my dad realized he left his passport at home. And I saw my mom’s eyeslight up;she actually smiled, she looked thrilled…right before she eviscerated him.”

Danny had spent a long time learning that marriage was not supposed to be a competition, battle royale, fight to the death-do-us-part.

“What about your mom? Did she ever get married?”

Rhea was getting used to the feeling of being asked questions, but it was still slightly jarring each time he did it.

She told him her mom never got married but was always bringing home men who were obviously wrong for her, obvious even to toddler Rhea. There was the guy who called her “Rita” the entire time he lived with them because he couldn’t have cared less about her existence. The guy who sold cocaine and was arrested by the DEA at their apartment. The guy who slapped her mother in front of Rhea, then bought them a car because he felt so bad about the whole domestic abuse thing, and a month later, stole that car and disappeared.

Danny listened to all this with pain in his eyes. Rhea tried to make light of it to take the pain out of his eyes.

“So, yeah, the bar isprettylow for me when it comes to men,” she said with a chuckle.

“I’m so sorry you had to live through all that,” he said with no chuckle. “Man, your childhoodreallymakes my whining about my dad’s passport seem ridiculous.”

“It’s all relative.”

“Even so…it must require a lot of patience to listen to other people complain about their childhoods.”

“Not really—don’t worry, your childhood still sounds terrible. And your parents’ marriage sounds terrible too. Is that why you’re single at your age? Does marriage scare you? What is your age, by the way?”

“Forty-two…You?”