10. Julieta
Chapter ten
Julieta
“You’re in my way.”
“Oh! I’m sorry.” I’m looking at the spices in the grocery aisle when a woman pushes her cart up to me. I take a step back and allow her to pass directly in front of me, sighing deeply as she does.
I head down the ready-made foods aisle, grabbing packaged salads and quick meals for the week and whatever snacks I can find on sale. My hectic schedule doesn’t allow for a lot of cooking time, so dinners usually involve premade foods or something in the slow cooker that Delfi got me for Christmas one year.
I grab bags of chips and pretzel sticks, plus Delfi’s favorite hummus. I stock up on the cheese T really likes, beers and LaCroix for my brother, always keeping things available for whenever they show up unannounced.
As I turn the corner, I bump into another cart headfirst, an embarrassing yelp coming from my mouth.
“We’ve got to stop meeting like this, Julie.” Logan. Bedhead hair, mischievous grin, warm eyes, tall and lean and … hell, I’m checking this man out in a grocery store.
It’s a Saturday morning, and suddenly I feel under dressed in my bike shorts and faded t-shirt that I threw on before leaving the house.
“What are you doing here?” I stupidly ask.
“Probably the same thing you’re doing.” He points to my cart.
“Right.” I sneak a peek at his. Pop-tarts. Cinnamon Toast Crunch. Uncrustables. A teenager’s dream.
His eyes narrow. “I can feel you silently judging my cart right now.”
“Oh no, I—”
“Which, by the way, is full of very delicious foods that truly should not have an age limit no matter what society says. But that’s probably a conversation for another day.”
“Probably.” I find that I’m smiling, so I give a little more in return. “I wasn’t silently judging your cart. I’ve always been … fascinated with other people’s grocery carts. Since I was a kid. Probably because what we had in my house was so different.”
While my friends ate meatloaf dinners at the reasonable time of six o’clock, my dinners consisted of my mom’s guiso or a crispy milanesa at the very reasonable Argentinian time of nine o’clock.
“You mean, your household didn’t contain the gourmet delicacy of an Uncrustable?”
“I’ve never even had a peanut butter and jelly sandwich.”
He gapes at me. “You’re kidding.”
“No,” I shake my head, smiling.
“What sad, sad world are you from?”
“Argentina, actually.”
His smile drops, then turns into a look of pleasant surprise. “Shit, seriously?”
“Yeah,” I nod.
“Vos sos Argentina?”
This makes me smile bigger. He’s spoken some words in Spanish during class, and it took me a little by surprise when I first heard them.
“Y no me dijiste nada?” he teases.
He speaks it well, and funny enough, with a clear Argentinian accent. “Your Spanish is impressive.”
“Gracias,” he says, mirroring my smile. “I don’t know. Part of me felt like a hypocrite immersing myself into the dance and culture and not knowing the language. So, I learned it.” He shrugs like it’s not a big deal, but it really is.
“Why do you say it like that? That’s amazing.”
“You’re the real deal, though. Why didn’t you mention you were from Argentina?”
I shrug. This topic always pushes me into uncomfortable territory.
“That’s really cool,” he says, almost admirably. “It’s a beautiful country.”
“That it is.”
“Ah, and you were probably looking for an Argentinian instructor, weren’t you?”
“Instructor? Oh, no. No. I don’t really know what I was looking for. I kind of signed up on a whim.”
“You don’t dance like you signed up on a whim.”
“I think that’s a compliment?”
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, what were you 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.”
I take the package from his palm slowly and unwrap it gently, almost like wanting to prolong this bizarrely touching moment we’re having inside of the grocery store.
“I opened a bag of chips halfway through shopping once,” I tell him.
“I knew you had a wild streak in you.”
I chuckle at that, taking a bite of this peanut butter and jelly concoction in my hands. I chew thoughtfully, the salty bite from the peanut butter playing against the sweet jelly wrapped in a doughy, still slightly frozen, piece of bread. He stares at me, anticipating, waiting for what will surely be a mind-blowing experience.
“It’s not bad.”
“Not bad?” He sounds appalled. “This is the greatest culinary invention in history, probably only second to twice baked potatoes.”
I snort. It’s not bad. But what’s even better is the thought of it. The sincere way he offered me one, the experience he’s pushed me to have, gently, carefully. Sweetly.
“Thanks, Logan.” My face hurts from how much it’s been smiling, stretched into a joyful grin.
“Anytime, Julie,” he says tenderly, as his face mimics mine. I’m starting to really like the sound of my name on his tongue.
I hold the remaining sandwich in my hand, not clamoring to eat more, but not wanting to throw it away either.
“Want to split the rest?” I offer.
“I’ll never say no to an Uncrustable.” We laugh as I tear it in half and pass a piece over to him. He finishes the rest in a handful of bites, smiling while he chews. His eyes light up when he smiles like that. Small crinkles at the corners, and his face softens even more. He is handsome. And fun-loving, and good-spirited. All the things that are evident in his face now, though not necessarily always. Out-of-studio Logan is much looser around the edges than in-studio Logan. Though I can’t say I hate either one.
“So. Tara’s leaving. That must be hard,” I say.
“It’s alright. It’s life.” His voice sounds tight.
“I guess so. Will you find a new partner? How does that work?”
He hesitates before answering, and I worry I’ve overstepped. “Um. Not sure. Sometimes it takes a while to find somebody you can vibe with. It’s not so easy.” He shrugs.
“Oh. That makes sense.” Except I don’t know how much sense it makes. My grandmother danced with my grandfather the majority of her career. But maybe he’s right. There’s certainly a connection that needs to be had.
“Alright, well I’ll see you Thursday, then,” he says.
“See you Thursday,” I nod and wave my goodbye, walking toward the bread aisle and feeling his eyes on me the whole way there.