I forced out an enquiring grunting noise. Food? Huh?
“You said you had nothing to eat,” he reminded me, stroking my shoulder again, more slowly this time. Yeah, that was nice. “So if you had food, would you be cool with me hanging around?”
I blinked dumbly at him.
“Focus, Hen.” He tugged gently at my beard. “Food?”
Food. Right. I cleared my throat, which was suddenly rough with longing. “Um, food. Sure. We could watch a movie and eat?” I suggested, the thought only half-coherent.
His face brightened, worry that I hadn’t even noticed clearing out of his expression. “I would love that! We can get takeout. You said you can get delivery here, right?” he asked, whipping out his phone from his pants pocket.
The conversational whiplash was almost too much, not to mention the switch from his fingers stroking over my shoulder to tapping at his phone. I much preferred the former, but it would probably be rude to whine until he touched me again, right? “Uh, yeah,” I eked out in a rough voice. “Not a ton of options, but there’s a handful who deliver out here. Pizza, Chinese, Indian…I think there’s a dessert place, too?”
He kept tapping at his phone screen. “Ah, ok, here we go. Yeah, all of those are available, plus it looks like there's a burger place - those never stay warm enough during delivery, though - and Thai.” His eyes flicked up to the top of the screen. “It’s not quite four. Do you want to order an early dinner now, or watch the movie and eat a bit later on?”
Wait, had we agreed we were watching a movie and ordering dinner? The last I’d realized, it had just been an idea. Not that I objected to the idea, so why was I frozen instead of answering him? I shook my head and coughed. “Uh, I’m kinda still full-up from the chips.”
He cocked his head to the side, considering. “Yeah, actually, I am too now that you mention it. Ok, movie it is. Uh.” He looked over at the coffee table, then back at me. “TV remote?”
Ok so apparently we were just gonna do this, full steam ahead. I could live with that. I reached to the side and pulled the remote out of the caddy that hung off the side of the couch, handing it to Jamison, who immediately flipped the TV on. Soon, he was flipping through my list of streaming services. “What are you in the mood for?” he asked, turning to me.
Feeling put on the spot - half the time I didn’t know what I wanted to watch even when my brainwasfully present, whichit most assuredly was not at this moment - I gaped at him for a long moment. “Uh.”
Undeterred by my incoherence, he launched Netflix and started scrolling through categories. “Definitely not drama,” he muttered, mostly to himself as best I could tell. “Too serious. Musical?” he asked, looking over at me and pausing the selector on a Bollywood flick.
I managed to shake my head. No, musicals would mean trying not to sing along and look like a fool, and still managing to look like a fool anyway because I’d squirm with self-restraint. Not sexy.
“Hmm.” He kept scrolling. “Paranormal romance,” he read off the screen. “Oh, Ilikeyour taste.” There was a teasing note in his voice, but no judgment, so I managed not to tense up. “Nah, would require too much focus to follow.”
Luckily, it seemed like he didn’t need much input from me for this conversation. Finally, he settled on “Feel-good romance,” Netflix’s label for what was essentially Hallmark holiday movies. I could live with that. He slowed down his scrolling, pausing so we could read the descriptions of each item.
“Ooh, gay romance!” he announced after a good two minutes of searching. “We’re watching this. We’re obligated to.”
I wasn’t going to tell him I’d already watched this one twice. Hey, there wasn’t a lot of representation to choose from in this genre, and I liked to give as many views as I could to encourage them! I waited as Jamison clicked “Play” and set the remote down on the table. He sighed deeply and relaxed back into the couch, his shoulder brushing mine.
Yeah, I was totally going to be able to focus on the movie, uh-huh.
Jamison appeared to have no such problem; he spent the next twenty minutes alternately watching delightedly and speaking to the television as if it could hear him -No, you don’t want to datethe big city banker, don’t you realize your fate is waiting for you in the delightful, remote village near the mountains?- and bouncing in his seat as his excitement built.
It was fucking adorable. Soon, Curie had migrated off the back of the couch into his lap and he had a hand buried in her fur. If I’d done that, I’d have some new holes in the back of my hand, but she tolerated his touch as if he were bestowing a gift on her. Traitor.
At the forty-minute mark, we paused to get new drinks - non-alcoholic this time, because I wanted toremembertoday, thank you very much - and take a bathroom break. Curie hung onto Jamison’s leg until the last second as he stood up, and I definitely saw him wince as her claws sunk in, but he didn’t say a word against her or push her off of him, just let her dismount as if it had been her own idea. Perfect.
Why was he so perfect, ugh.
When we met back up at the couch, I handed him a can of Coke and popped the top on my Sprite. “I actually kinda like the rival,” I confessed as he picked up the remote to restart the movie. “He’s not a bad guy.”
Jamison gasped and widened his eyes at me as if I’d confessed to wanting to eat human flesh. “You can’t like therival!” he announced firmly. “That goes against the spirit of the whole thing!”
“Well, I mean…” I took a sip of my soda. “I didn’t say I wanted him to endupwith the rival. They’re clearly not as suited for each other as he and Kevin are. The rival prefers cats to dogs,” I said, as if that explained everything, and in Hallmark-land, it sort of did. All happily-ever-afters came with lovable dogs gamboling around the couple’s feet. “Not that there’s anything wrong with that,” I hastened to add, patting Curie where she lay between us, each of us having settled naturally on one side of the cat. The last thing I wanted was to piss off my cat by making herthink I preferred dogs. “But he’s not a ‘bad guy’, like a villain. He’s just wrong for him. Maybe they’ll make a sequel where the rival finds love.”
“Aww.” He smiled at me. “You’re just a total romantic, aren’t you?”
Was I? I didn’t think so. No one had ever accused me of being a romantic. My ex had claimed that part of why he cheated was because I didn’t give him as much attention as I did to my woodworking.
Well that memory sucked some of the enjoyment out of the moment. I felt myself deflate. “I don’t think so,” I said, unable to hide the glum note in my voice.
He frowned, pouting slightly. “What just happened?” He paused the movie again and focused his attention on me. “We were teasing and then you went all emo.”
