legs are now bare thanks to her soft-looking sleep shorts. I can just make out the points of her nipples through her matching pink tank top, where she holds the remote in front of her chest, and I stifle a groan.
“What did you pick?” I ask, my voice slightly hoarse, and I grunt when Scout jumps up on the couch and squeezes his big body in the space between me and Astrid. The fucker. He turns around and around before finally plopping his ass on my hip and settles his head into the nook between her stomach and raised thighs.
Astrid giggles, resting her arm on his back so her hand takes up residence on top of his head, and he lets out a huff and nuzzles his head against her tits. The goddamn showoff.
“So, I had an idea,” she tells me, and my narrowed eyes shooting daggers at my dog raise to meet hers and soften when I see she’s a little nervous about her selection. I raise a brow for her to continue. “I’ve been seeing things on Facebook about this show on Netflix, and I really wanted to try it out.”
“What’s it about?” I prompt, liking this idea already for the possibilities, my mind instantly filling with Netflix and chilling with my woman.
She’s not your woman, asshole.
“So it’s about this matchmaker, and she’s Indian, so she’s introducing these people to basically set up arranged marriages. But people are saying the show is like… super addicting. Do you want to try the first episode with me, and if it sucks, we can watch something else?” she asks hopefully.
And I’m so happy she’s chosen to ask me about this instead of just waiting to watch it by herself that I want to whoop with pride. But I hold it in, not wanting to embarrass her, so I say instead, “Only if you promise that if it doesn’t suck, you won’t watch it without me.”
Her lips purse as she searches my face with slightly narrowed eyes.
“Come on. It’s like an unwritten rule of Netflix. Once we start something together, we gotta finish it… together.” I let the innuendo hang thick in the air that I mean something much more than just a television show.
Her hand twirls one of Scout’s ears between her fingers almost unconsciously. And then she nods. “Deal.”
I smile and face the TV but focus my attention on her in my peripheral vision. She watches me for a moment longer, and then lifts the remote, and I see her select her own profile on the Netflix home screen. It still does something to me, seeing her name next to mine, her profile picture set as Jonathan from Queer Eye, because he’s her “spirit animal,” as she called him.
Curious, I’d watched an episode in bed one night, just to see what he was like, and it was both heartwarming and broke me at the same time. The therapist in me dissected the fact that Astrid saw this dude that was so full of life, exuberance, and who was so animated and happy in everything he did and said, and she identified with him on the inside, who she really was as a person. But then she’s now such a soft-spoken, meek, and frightened woman on the outside thanks to her ex. It made me want to work harder to get her strength back, make her stronger than she ever was before, so she can let that spirit animal inside her show through and break free.
I’m not ashamed to admit I ended up binge-watching every episode, because that shit is as hilarious as it is emotional.
It also made me feel closer to Astrid somehow, watching a show I know she loves so much.
Not even a full minute into Indian Matchmaking, I have to interrupt. “Would you mind putting on the subtitles please?”
She snorts. “Sure, old man,” she murmurs, and when I look at her, she flinches, and her eyes are wide. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean—”
I chuckle softly, even though I want to throw my head back and laugh but don’t want to scare the shit out of her. “No, it’s okay. They’re just talking so fast and switching back and forth between Hindi and English that I can’t keep up.” She relaxes, so I add, “And I’m not that old.”
She uses the remote to switch on subtitles, then murmurs under her breath, “Pretty old, dude.”
“I’m only forty-two. Forties are the new twenties,” I joke to cover up that I hope