Horror Movies and Shampoo in creative writing bits

This wasn’t the first time I’ve had the room alone with Chloë, but it feels like it should be the last. This was the fifth time we’ve hung out alone and watched dumb horror movies together. Before we would get to that however, it was a ritual to go and get high with our buddies down at the Creek. We’d always meet up with these guys at the same log, and the conversation would always end on some crazy note.
As we were leaving the Creek, Chloë and I were talking about how deep the ocean floor is and how the vast majority of it is still unexplored. Brad (this man is a clown), jumped into our conversation and started going off about how “We’re humans, we’re the smartest species. If we invest enough money into it we can build something that can survive down there in the ocean.”
Man, Chloë and I couldn’t get enough of it. It was hilarious how confident Brad was but how far off-base he was. We can’t build anything that can survive that water pressure down there, wouldn’t it instantly collapse and implode on itself?
We paced ahead of the group on the walk back, and I nudged her arm. “Hey you were hearing everything that Brad was saying right?” I already knew the answer though. Chloë and I would keep bouncing back and forth between listening to Brad talk and checking in with each other, smiling as our eyes silently danced with each other as we enjoyed hearing Brad spout out his 12 credit hours of his philosophy minor in front of us.
The movie was dumb and funny. It was a horror movie, but a really bad one. It had become our ‘thing’ to watch movies together since 9 months ago, the beginning of freshman year. It wasn’t really a big deal that we would hangout in here alone. We had gotten permission to from my girlfriend, so we weren’t stepping on anyone’s toes. Not only had I gotten permission, but Chloë was also one of her best friends. So that was kinda great because my girlfriend could trust both of us, as she was best friends with both of us.
But with all these times alone, we’ve been playing with fire. We didn’t need to talk about it to know there was a tension. We would cuddle, which was also greenlit, as we would watch scary movies. Chloë has asthma though. It wouldn’t take much for me to hear her breathing normally when she was resting. But when she would start to breathe hard into my ear and take the role of being a more ‘active cuddler’ as her hands would grow restless- it doesn’t take a lot to put two and two together. When we would lay in bed together, it was scary. There was something about the way I could feel her heartbeat in her chest pressed against me, and there was something about how her hands had a grip on my arm that was delicate yet firm at the same time. Or it could be the way she looked in her washed out blue denim jeans whenever she walked away. She’s never gotten as bad as she has now. I had to grab her hand and remind her about how I’m in a relationship, and it wouldn’t be right if we did anything.
The movie started to wind down and I was getting sleepy. I was coming off the high and the plot was getting too pretentious for me to really care. My head was buried into her shoulder and all I could smell was the smell of that one shampoo that he never knew the name of but always reminded him of a friend back home. I sprawl out when I lay down so we looked somewhat like a pretzel with how our legs would intertwine and weave over each other in some kind of a beautiful mess towards the bottom of the bed. I kept drifting in and out of sleep at that point. Whenever I’d wake up, she’d always be in the same position. She was still laying next to me, but her head was propped up on some pillows so she could stare down at her phone. Intermittently a faint murmur or gasp could be heard from her, she was probably just reacting to some of the characters in her manga that she would constantly tell me about and that she was oh so in love with. Her right hand kept alternating between scratching my back or playing with my hair, and I had to struggle to stay awake.
We both noticed it at about the same time, but we could hear the heavy-footed footsteps from down the hall. Chloë and I smiled at each other and said her name in unison. There’s only one person it could’ve been who walks down the hall with those kind of lead footsteps.
There was a light rapping on the door, and then more light started to creep into the room. “C’mon baby, I’m done with my work. I wanted to go to sleep a little earlier tonight, I’ve been behind this past week.”
I felt like a zombie and got a head-start walking down the hall. I heard Chloë hug Bre goodbye, and the sound of the door latching reverberate through the hallway. Bre’s room was only a few doors down from Chloë’s. As I laid in bed, I couldn’t help but struggle in vain to remember the name of that shampoo that Chloë used. The scent stayed lingering. It was all I could smell until Bre crawled back into bed into my arms.