White Bread

The woman behind the sample counter at Trader Joe's was spooning individual tastes of cornbread stuffing into tiny white pleated paper cups. I reached up high for a bag of collard greens that will simmer on the stove and joined in singing with the music being piped into the store. It was old school. Motown. What we used to call a "slow groove."

I snapped my fingers to the beat and walked to where H stood in front of loaves of bread. "Let's dance," I said. I knew it was pointless. My man is not one for public displays of affection. But every now and then, I like to push the envelope. I keep thinking maybe one day, he'll say yes.

"I just want a loaf of plain white bread," he said. I turned to face the various organic loaves of everything but white bread.

"Like Wonder Bread?" I asked.

"No. Not Wonder Bread. Just something that's not organic."

"Hmmm," I hummed a little of the song that kept grooving in the background. There weren't too many people in the store. "Are you sure you don't want to dance?"

He took my hand and tried to make me stand still, and then he started to laugh. I looked at him sideways, there in front of the bread. "Here's what I'm thinking," he said. "If I don't dance with you, one day I'm going to say to myself, 'If only I'd danced with her that night.'" Now I was laughing, too. "But if I do dance with you, one day I'll be crying about how much fun I had dancing with you in the grocery store."

We were both laughing now, and I caught the eye of the woman behind the sample counter. She tried to make it look as if she hadn't been watching us.

"Look," I said. "White bread." It sat low on the shelf. Organic. Low fat. White bread. I pointed at the bread and said, "So if you're going to regret it either way, why not just make me happy?"

He threw his head back and laughed out loud. Then he wrapped his arm around my waist and pulled me close and we danced a slow, smooth, beautiful two-step between the bread and the produce aisle. The woman serving cornbread stuffing leaned one hand on the counter, and her other hand on her hip, and smiled at us. Someone stepped around us for their own loaf of organic bread and someone else inched their grocery cart around us.

But really? It was just me and H and that slow groove that made him pull me closer, and after we had checked out and the groceries were safely in the back seat of our car, I said, "You danced with me in the grocery store."

"Yep," he said. "I did." And we were laughing all over again. And I knew he'd stepped outside himself - or maybe deep within himself - and that we'd told our entire story in the middle of the grocery aisle.