"Get over here and do it right."
She scoots over until she's about a foot away from me. "Better?" she asks.
I pull her closer. "Stop acting like I'm contagious or something."
"Sorry. I didn't know if you wanted me on top of you."
Raising an eyebrow at her, I reach into the bowl and take a handful of popcorn. "I can't wait to get you on top of me, baby. Anytime you're ready, just hop on."
"Everything with you goes back to sex. You're like that Kevin Bacon movie game."
"No idea what that is, babe. I'm just trying to enjoy a movie with a chick properly."
A smile lights up her face. "Am I really your first real movie date?"
"You are. You're my first wife too. I see why you wanted to skip the dating part of a relationship. You're not very good at it from what I can see."
"Look who's talking."
I put the popcorn bowl on the coffee table and stretch my legs out across the couch, pulling her so she's half lying on top of me. She rests her head on my chest and turns so she can still watch the movie, and after a few minutes, her hand slowly creeps from my wrist up to my bicep. "I guess these don't wash off?" she muses, tracing my tattoos.
"Nope."
"They're kinda cool close up. There's so much more detail than I noticed before." Her hand travels farther, pushing the fabric of my T-shirt up so she can inspect my shoulder, and I like how it feels to have her touching me so softly, her fingertips delicately gliding over the designs.
"Thanks. I saw you have that little one on your shoulder. What is that, a comma?"
"It's a semicolon."
"It's cute."
Her hand stops moving. "It's not supposed to be cute."
"Okay…sorry."
Her body tenses up and a sad quietness overcomes her that's thick like fog. Her eyes stay on the TV, but I can tell she's not really watching it and is somewhere else in her mind. I'm assuming it's got something to do with that tiny mark gracing her shoulder. I can fully respect that, though. Lots of ink has a special meaning to people that may also be attached to not-so-good memories, like the one I have on my leg of a tiny teddy bear in memory of my five-year-old niece who passed away. I like knowing it’s there, but I don’t want to tell people what it means to me because it dredges up too many sad memories.
I relax into the couch and wrap my arm around her, slowly rubbing her back as we watch the movie. She snuggles deeper into me, pulling the blanket up over us, while the cat sleeps on the top of the couch above our heads. The feeling of closeness is so foreign to me, having a woman's body entwined with mine, touching but not touching, fully clothed but still so warm and close. It feels nice, to know she’s not waiting for me to start doing a sexual performance on her based on rumors she’s heard about me. I can just relax and touch her however I want, with no expectations. It’s equally as nice that she seems content just lying in my arms and doesn’t feel like she has to prove something to me by gobbling on my dick.