On Sunday, my husband Jonathan and I will have been married forty-six years, which doesn’t count our half-year courtship before the wedding happened. We met in March and spent the next month in tentative mode, circling one another from afar. Our Long-Time-Together Tango had begun.

The rhythm was sort of twitchy-jittery-nervous then. I detected signals from his side of the floor and expected an approach at any moment, but he was shy. Twitchy-jittery-nervous continued long after the band should have packed up and gone home. Until my patience wore characteristically thin, and I made the first unmistakable move.

We’ve stepped through a World of Dance style catalog since then, including the Bickering Bossa Nova. Which brings me to the six arguments. I have a theory that every long-term relationship features six signature arguments. Three serious, and better suited to the boxing ring than the dance floor. Three silly, but still good for many a whirl.

The specifics vary from couple to couple. Sometimes we strut. Other times we glide deliberately out of reach. Always we engage in a choreography uniquely our own. Let’s confine the serious stomping to private dances. The three frivolous fights Jon and I favor step out as follows.

The Full Moon Minuet. Whatever particular geography we may currently inhabit, our heckle over the heavens remains the same. He says, “The moon is full tonight.” I look up and shake my head. “Not quite,” I say, pointing out a flatness at the lower edge, usually to the left. We’ve carried on in that vein, month after month, year after year, even when the sky was mostly overcast.

The Tuning the TV Tarantella. The notes of this number shift a bit with each technological advance. Our present debate quick steps back and forth between to surf or not to surf, whether the venue is network or Netflix, on demand or of the moment. He takes the former position, I take the latter.

The Time and Distance Drag. Which is a drag because, trivial or not, these disagreements can take on heat. In the city, subway options are the issue. Uptown, downtown, crosstown. We each have pet preferences for getting wherever whenever. As for out of town, thank heaven for GPS or murderous mayhem might ensue.

We could easily settle our signature silly arguments. By checking the calendar phases of the moon. Googling our stream or non-stream options ahead of screening. Clocking actual travel times from one station stop to the next. Riding together to avoid suspicion of misreads where miles per hour are concerned.

Simple as that, decades of atonal music would fall silent. We could leave the dance floor and sit down. On the other foot, as our long time together grows longer, I suspect we should hang onto every form of available movement, including exercise of the small bones we pick with each other, one gradually slowing toe tap at a time.  Alice Orr – https://www.aliceorrbooks.com.

–R|R–

It is Amanda and Mike’s second time on the dance floor, and every step takes them deeper into danger. Don’t miss Alice’s latest novel, A Time of Fear & Loving – Riverton Road Romantic Suspense Book 5. Available HERE. Look for all of Alice’s books HERE.

What readers say about A Time of Fear & Loving. “I never want an Alice Orr book to end.” “Alice Orr is the queen of ramped-up stakes and page-turning suspense.” “Warning. Don’t read before bed. You won’t want to sleep.” “The tension in this novel is through the roof.”
“A budding romance that sizzles in the background until it ignites with passion.”
“The best one yet, Alice!”

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