Page 29 of Two to Tango

He chuckles. “You’re good. Are you coming to the milonga?”

“Me?” I ask reluctantly.

“Yeah, you.”

“Oh, I don’t know.”

“Why not?” he asks casually.

“Just wasn’t planning on going that far with it, I guess.”

“Well, whatwereyou planning on doing with those vintage shoes you wore to a tango class you signed up for on a whim?” His voice is light, teasing, suggestively deeper.

I have no response to this. All I can do is look at him while he stares back, waiting for a response, knowing he’s caught me, smirk right on his lips. It’s probably that smirk that will do me in. It’s surely that smirk that has me entertaining anything he’s saying.

“I’ll think about it,” I tell him, which is true. I will think about it. For all of two seconds and then toss it right out of my mind. Dance classes are one thing—an hour a week that acts as a distraction from my hectic life, a reprieve from the busy and the nonstop. A time where I can give in to what I want. I’ve allowed myself this.

But a milonga? An immersion into the community? A deep fall into it? That’s too far. That was not part of the plan.

Certainly not in those shoes.

And if my family found out, who the hell knows what they would say. What my mother would have to say about her daughter following in her own mother’s footsteps. And I know that is the ridiculous part, that I have my family’s voices in a constant loop in my head. That those voices stop me from doing so much in my life.

I’m thirty-four years old and the voices in my head tell me no.

“Those shoes are from the nineties, by the way,” I say, maybe a bit defensively.

“As much as it pains me to say, the nineties are considered vintage now.”

“Wow, I feel old.” And then surprisingly lean into the playfulness as I add, “Prehistoric, even.”

He lets out a loud laugh, eyes crinkling at the corners, and I almost feel victorious in having made him laugh. Our bodies are closer now, leaning into each other. I could tell myself it's to make room for other shoppers in the aisle, but there's no denying how my body curves toward him like he's got his own gravitational pull.

“Anyway, think about it,” he replies, a shrug like something could be so simple. So easy. He and Agostina would get along great. “I’ll see you next Thursday.”

“You will.”

“Maybe get yourself a peanut butter and jelly before then. I don’t want to have to dance with somebody with such an unrefined palate.”

I can’t help but beam at this again, more grinning than I’ve probably done in the past two weeks. That’s a rather depressing thought.

What isn’t a depressing thought is how he said he wants to dance with me again. And how he said I’m good. How he thinks I should join the milonga. How he noticed my damn shoes.

I like dancing with him, too, and the shoes give me enough confidence to do it.

I see him look in his cart and tilt his head like he’s thinking about something. “Better yet …” he says, then grabs a box of the Uncrustables, breaking the package open to get one out.

“What are you doing?” I look around the store wide-eyed, prepared to find an employee lurking in a corner ready to pounce.

“Consider it an emergency situation. Like one of those moms that has to crack open a box of crackers for her hangry toddler.”

“And I’m the hangry toddler?”

“Yep.” He puts his hand out, the Uncrustable sitting right in the middle of his palm.

“It’s still frozen.”

“They’re actually better that way. Insider secret.”

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