Palpable

I was once at a Bar Mitzvah. I was seven months pregnant with Baby #4, and my stomach was OUT TO HERE. I mean OUT TO HERE, people. But the DJ played good music, and there is no way I can attend a wedding or event of ANY sort where music is playing and NOT hit the dance floor. So I got out there with my significant other and danced until, thanks to the baby, I thought I might go into labor, after which I sat out a few songs. (But did go back!)

So then two ladies came up to me. "When is your baby due?" one asked. I told them. "Is this your first?" asked the other. "No, fourth." That usually stuns people. Then, one of them said, "You know, no wonder you keep having babies. Your partner on the dance floor is an amazing dancer. Very hot. There's definitely something between you two. Something palpable."

Now, part of this is he happens to be Mexican, and if there is the tiniest bit of something to stereotypes . . . Latin people can dance. We lived next door to a Latin family and they used to move all the furniture out of the house for parties and we would all dance in the living room like crazy people. And if the adage is true that white men can't dance . . . I can tell you, at least the Latin men I know can. I am waiting to see if my two sons inherited that gene. I think the youngest one definitely has it. The other one? Not so much.

But maybe that's just bull. The whole idea of Latin men and dance. But the "palpable" comment? There's something to it. I once knew a psychotherapist who swore he could tell if couples would stay married by how they danced with each other.

Well, it got me thinking. This palpable thing. I have a work in progress that was not supposed to have a love interest. It's a darker piece of fiction, and there was no romance, no anything. My heroine was supposed to solve the mystery embedded in the book by herself.

But in chapter two a detective shows up. And next thing I know, she's off to the mountains where his grandfather is a preacher, searching for a clue. And there is no romance yet. But it's THERE, something palpable. When they talk, he probes. When she asks him something, she studies him. There's something there.

Oddly enough, it's sort of an accident. Like when two people meet for the first time. I didn't intend it at all. But's it's there. The cadence and rhythm of his speech, and her way of answering . . . they simply fit together in some way that I haven't quite figured out yet.

Palpable.

Do you "see" that in your characters? In real life?