A/N: This turned into a bit of an ordeal. Thus, it took two days instead of one. Thanks to Jack E. Peace for the little things here and there. Your input is invaluable. Prompt:
Chloe just went to a scary movie with friends and is convinced that the apartment she shared with Aubrey is haunted. She spends the next few days reading up on rituals to speak to the spirits and sneaking into Aubreys bed in the middle of the night. She pulls out a ouija board one night despite Aubrey's protests and makes her join in. Aubrey moves it around to mess with Chloe scaring the girl which causes Aubrey to laugh and accidentally admit her feelings.
The cold breath of paranoia chilled her mind until every sound, every movement in her periphery seemed to herald a potentially violent end. The leaves rustled around her feet, making her walk faster. Beca had convinced her and a few of the other girls to go to the Halloween horror movie marathon at the dollar theater and she was now regretting the decision. She was already prone to wild imaginings and adding the fear of imagined psychopaths to that was a mixture that didn't sit well with her nervous system.
When Beca had pronounced to them that the only movie genre that she enjoyed was horror Chloe had laughed. It made sense. She wouldn't have agreed to go but after graduating she rarely saw the girls from the Bellas anymore. Without practices there just weren't that many places that their paths would naturally cross. Therefore, when Beca had suggested the get together she had agreed to go.
She pulled her jacket closer around her and shivered. The temperature was mild enough but she felt chilled. Someone had taken her parking spot, forcing her to park further away from her apartment building than she would normally. As soon as she reached the sidewalk she cut straight across the grass. The most direct path to the apartment that she and Aubrey shared was right through the darkened pool area.
The shadows that lurked there deterred her but not enough to give up the advantage of the shorter distance. The quicker she made her way across, the faster she would be safe and warm inside their apartment and everything would feel normal again. She could see the side of their building from here but with all of the space between it seemed farther away than ever and there were so many places that someone could hide along the path.
She stepped on a collection of twigs and they snapped, giving her heart a jolt of panic. She didn't stop moving. Past the pool house, across the tennis court, and around the side of the building and she would make it. When her feet hit the green surface of the court she jogged across and went through the open chain link gate. When she got to the grass she looked back and saw only darkness and leaves wavering in the breeze.
She turned back and kept walking quickly toward the corner of the building. When she got to the sidewalk a small smile tugged at her lips. She was almost home. The sound of a car starting masked the footsteps at first but after she heard them. Steady beats in between her own. Her eyes darted to the side but she didn't turn around, only walked faster, her pace almost at a jog again. The footsteps sped up to match her own, or was that in her mind.
She rounded the corner of her building and saw the light glowing in the stairwell. The slap of the footsteps behind her continued to close. Her eyes widened and she took off at a run, all the way into the lit area in front of the downstairs apartments and up the stairs, her feet taking them so quickly that she nearly missed one. When she reached the balcony overlooking the complex she edged near the railing and peeked over. A little old man walking his poodle passed by below, surely the source of the earlier footsteps.
She backed away from the edge of the balcony and walked the five feet to her door. It was a relief to see a light in the window and their plain old doormat with three little duckies on it. She had picked it out at the store, despite Aubrey's obvious disdain of the cutesy motif. It made her smile. She was just being silly. There was no crazy serial killer or murderous ghost after her, it was just her very active imagination.
Yet, her hands shook a little when she opened the door, remembering a scene in the last film they watched where the main character unlocked and opened a door just like this and on the other side was a maniac with a knife waiting for her. She let her hands drop and sighed. This wasn't going to work. She needed to calm herself down. The only person in her apartment was her best friend and Aubrey might be a little uptight and she might yell from time to time but she was definitely not scary, at least not to Chloe.
She actually might be the only person who saw the sweet and generous side of Aubrey that seemed to only come out when she was around. She was beginning to relax so she tried to open the door again, this time successfully. When she got inside she found Aubrey at the kitchen table with an assortment of textbooks opened in front of her.
She had a system, which amused Chloe to no end. She studied each subject for twenty minutes before switching to another. Going counter clockwise around the table until she repeated the cycle. It was amazing and so very Aubrey. She took in the sight of her best friend glasses sliding down her nose, engrossed in what looked to be her Immunology book. She had two different colored highlighters in one hand and a pen in the other.
Chloe dropped her keys into her purse and set it on the entryway table, grinning at Aubrey's studious state. "Did you even notice me come in?" She asked. She walked past the table on her way to the fridge, patting Aubrey's head and narrowly avoiding getting her hand smacked. She opened the fridge and looked in, with no real intention of getting anything out. Fearing another lecture from Aubrey on wasting energy, she grabbed a bottle of water and shut the door.
Aubrey didn't even look up when she waved her hand in Chloe's general direction, knowing that the pat of affection was merely an attempt to make her pay attention to her roommate instead of her books. "Of course, I did," she said. Her glasses slid a little lower down her nose and she pushed them up with one hand and flipped the page with the other. "I simply chose to ignore you because I have a test tomorrow morning."
Her voice trailed off getting softer and more muffled as she got lost in the text again. She put pink highlighter to the page and drew it across a sentence. Chloe sat down, rocking the table and making Aubrey's hand slip, her highlighter trailing off the page and onto her notebook.
"Chloe!" Aubrey looked up over the rim of her black framed glasses and glared. "Seriously?" She rubbed the mark on her notebook but the highlighter had dried on the faux leather cover. "I'm trying to fit all of this crap into my head and you're not helping. You should be more careful."
Chloe's grin widened. Aubrey always got extra grouchy around test days as she was well aware. She even liked to egg her on a little from time to time, comforting herself with the assumption that she was providing Aubrey with a chance to loosen up a little. "Sorry," she said. Aubrey simply raised an eyebrow at her, clearly unconvinced of her contrition, and returned to her book.
"How were the movies anyway," Aubrey inquired.
Chloe shuddered and grimaced. "Scary," she said. "Remind me never to do that again. Three horror movies in one sitting is so too much to handle." She pulled her chair closer to the table, bumping it again but Aubrey was prepared. She didn't even look up this time.
"I told you not to go," Aubrey said. She knew exactly what was going to happen. Anytime Chloe watched a horror movie, she always ended up being weird and scared for days. "You're not going to be able to sleep tonight."
Chloe bit her lip and released it, her lips sliding up into a grin. "I will if you let me get in bed with you," she ventured. That got her attention.
Aubrey's head snapped up, her hand instinctively pushing at her glasses again. "That's not a good idea," Aubrey said.
It happened more often than not. Chloe always slept better with someone else there, especially Aubrey. Over the years they had learned each other's ins and outs, developing an intimacy that spilled over lines and boundaries. It didn't even occur to Chloe that it might be less than normal friend behavior or that it might make the long buried feelings that Aubrey had for her flare to an uncomfortable temperature. She was blissfully unaware of the mess that she made of her best friend every time she crept into the room and slipped her arms around her.
"I've got a test tomorrow morning, remember?" She flicked her gaze over Chloe's face, which fell at her tone. "I need to get some sleep." It didn't matter that Chloe being there would actually make her fall asleep faster, or that she never managed to sleep through the night if she was alone. What mattered, was that she had promised herself that she wasn't going to let it happen anymore. She would miss the feeling of Chloe beiside her dearly, but it was time to move on and try to reach a point where she was free of the strings that bound her too close They were strangling her ability to have a relationship with anyone else.
She needed to pull back before irreparable damage was done to her heart. It was already riddled with cracks from all the times when she had selfishly indulged in the little displays of affection that blurred their relationship. Still, Chloe's expression convinced her that just this one last time would be okay. Her blue eyes were wide and vulnerable, her lips were on the verge of a pout, and her shoulders were slumped.
"Please, Bree," she said She could see that she was wearing Aubrey down. It always worked this way if she approached the subject from the right angle. It was a valuable asset. Her charm and sincerity always seemed to win over people but Aubrey was especially susceptible to it and she had never really figured out why. She just enjoyed reaping the benefits, within reason. Exploiting it to often or taking it too far was always a fear she held because she loved Aubrey dearly, more than anyone else.
"If you just give in now, I won't have to sneak in and wake you up." She let her lips poke out in a full pout and leaned forward just a little. Aubrey blinked slowly and sighed under the heavy burden of her feelings. Maybe she was right. The excuse of getting plenty of sleep the night before her test was flimsy at best considering the evidence.
"Fine," she said.
Chloe clapped and her face altered instantly to show the joy she felt at emerging victorious from a fight she had won the moment she stepped into the room. "Great," she said, standing and pushing the chair back under the table. I'm going to go shower and get ready for bed." With one lingering glance at the adorable that was study time Aubrey, she turned away. "Don't stay up too late, you know what happens if I fall asleep first."
"Yeah, you hog the entire bed and I can't wake you up! I swear this time I'll just push you off and into the floor so you better not fall asleep." Aubrey watched her go into her bedroom and then her eyes fell to the bottle of water Chloe had liberated from the fridge earlier. "Chloe, damnit." She knew it was useless so she grabbed the bottle, twisted the cap off, and took a long gulp. There were just some things that she couldn't change about her best friend and maybe that was a good thing.
Days later Chloe was still sleeping in Aubrey's bed. She had caught the tail end of Paranormal Activity on TV the night after their horror movie outing and it had reinforced the fear that she had been feeling but it also enticed the fascination she now held with the supernatural elements. Ghosts had always interested her. The idea that someone could die but their spirit could still remain behind to watch over their loved ones was something that had been a comfort to her from a young age. Ever since her mother had taken her aside after her grandmother had died and told her that she would always be watching over her.
Chloe had looked up books on the paranormal as a kid. Sometimes in Jr. High would walk to the library after school and find all the books she could on ghosts and spirits. Her heart would always beat a little faster when she read the descriptions of haunted houses and ghost stories that had been passed down through generations. She even asked her mom for a copy of her favorite book that she had found among the shelves.
Now, years later she had searched out the tattered copy of Ghost Stories of the American South and was reading it a little at a time. Just enough to sate her interest but not enough to make her overly scared. One story in particular intrigued her. The tale of a New Orleans medium who had contacted a spirit during a seance that had plagued her until her early and vaguely suspicious death.
Instead of making her feel better, she was jumpier than usual and had started to be afraid of being in the apartment alone at night. That's why she had been sticking close to Aubrey who had begged her to stop reading up on occult practices and contacting spirits but it was no use. Chloe was going to ride this train until it derailed.
That is why she had concocted a plan. She started to do little things here and there to scare Chloe, hoping that something would break her of the habitual scare fest. Aubrey's patience was growing thin. It was hard to wean herself off of Chloe if she was constantly there, touching her and clinging to her at night.
That's why, after much thought on the subject, she employed drastic measures in an attempt to correct the ill. If she had to guess, she would say that the plan had as much chance to blow up in her face as not, but short of confessing her feelings and asking for space she saw no other way. She knew that if she did it would alter their relationship forever and she would rather keep the status quo than have Chloe shrink away from her after she knew.
Chloe was sitting on the couch watching yet another ghostly reality show on the Travel Channel when Aubrey started to execute her plan. She pulled out her phone and brought up the TV remote app that she had downloaded just for this purpose. From her seat at the table she held it out and switched the TV off. She nearly snickered when Chloe's back stiffened but she held it in and looked down at her notebook when she caught Chloe's head turning to glance around the room. She looked back up and caught her looking at the remote in her hand as if it had somehow betrayed her.
Chloe hit the power button and quickly turned the channel to Food Network. Aubrey laughed quietly to herself and waited a few minutes before quickly pointing her phone at the TV again and tapping the button. Chloe nearly shot off the couch when the TV turned back to the Travel Channel.
"What the hell!" Chloe said. She looked back at Aubrey who was looking up at her with a quizzical expression.
"What?" Aubrey called on her poker face that had been perfected by necessity. Her father was very much of the ideology that kids needed to develop thick skins to be equipped for life's trials. Therefore, she had been included in the teasing and occasionally harsh practical jokes between her brothers and father. It was a wonder that none of them had ended up in the emergency room but Arthur Posen never really let things get too far out of hand.
Chloe's eyes were wide and her lip trembled. "The TV, it turned off by itself and then after I turned it back on the channel changed." She got up and walked over to the table feeling safer the closer she was to Aubrey. "We've got a ghost," she said, looking around the apartment like a spektor was suddenly going to appear in front of them.
"Calm down, Chloe." Aubrey closed her book and got up, gently pushing Chloe out of her way. "We don't have a ghost." She opened the cabinet and took out a skillet and held it out. "Help me cook dinner." Chloe only knew how to cook a few things but she could cook them well. It relaxed her and usually took her mind off her troubles, a fact that Aubrey was banking on due to the guilt she was currently feeling.
"Okay," Chloe said, "But I still don't believe that we don't have a ghost because that," she gestured at the TV, "Was freaky."
Aubrey just shrugged and continued to get the vegetables out of the fridge. They settled into an easy silence Aubrey working on her side of the kitchen and Chloe on the other, but soon her part was over and Aubrey sat down to resume taking notes out of her Cell Biology text.
"Shoot, I left those clothes in the washer." Chloe moved to the sink and washed her hands.
"You better go put them in the dryer before they get all gross." Aubrey said flatly. It was a common occurrence and most of the time she managed to avert it by stealing Chloe's dirty clothes and doing her laundry along with her own but the new boundaries thing included a line that stopped at her handling Chloe's underwear. She didn't know why it was different than it used to be. Chloe had definitely noticed but chose not to say anything.
Once she was sure that there was no chance of being seen, she sprang up and moved all of the items on the counter around, including placing the skillet on a different burner, then returned to her seat and stuck her head so far into her book that all that could be seen of her was her loose bun of blonde hair.
She heard the dryer door slam shut and chloe re-emerged and made her way back to the stove, humming a song and stopping to look over Aubrey's shoulder. "That looks complicated," Chloe said and continued humming. Aubrey leaned back but tensed when her back gently bumped Chloe's chest. She sighed when Chloe backed up a little but stayed close enough that she could still smell the perfume that lingered on her skin.
"Are you humming the Decemberists?" Aubrey asked. Her lips twitched and she could practically feel Chloe's eyes on the back of her head. She turned an accusatory glare in her direction.
"Maybe," she said. She tried to feign innocence but she knew she was caught.
Aubrey nodded and raised both eyebrows. "Did you put the CD back?" Chloe had a bad habit of borrowing Aubrey's CDs and losing them somewhere along the 's sheepish grin told her everything she needed to know
"I may have left it in my car," she said
"Just bring it in when you get home from class tomorrow." Aubrey would have groused at her more about being more responsible with other's possessions but she was eager to see Chloe's reaction to her little trick. "I think the chicken is burning," she said casually.
"Oh, crap," Chloe replied. She rushed over to the stove and stopped, looking back and forth between the things laid out on the counter and the skillet that had been moved. She reached out quickly and turned down the heat on the stove and turned back to Aubrey, trepidation coloring her features. "Did you move this stuff." She pointed at the counter and waited for Aubrey to look up.
"Hmm," Aubrey said, her voice muffled by the pen she had clasped between her teeth. She looked up, pulling a very convincing surprised face and let the pen drop from her mouth. "What are you talking about?"
"Everything here was in a different place when I went to get the clothes out of the washer," Chloe said impatiently. She wrung her hands and blinked rapidly. "Did you move it."
Aubrey shook her head. "No, why would I move it." She could see that Chloe was really freaked out this time. "Are you sure it was moved?" She was starting to crack at the edges seeing Chloe so afraid. If it had been anyone else she wouldn't feel so bad but the way Chloe's eyes were starting to water sent a dagger right to her gut.
Chloe straightened her back and sniffed, trying to maintain her cool. "It must be the ghost," she said and went back to cooking, slowly moving everything back to the where it was before. She turned the heat completely off on the burner and switched the other one back on, removing the skillet and putting it back in it's rightful place. "I have to say it's not a very mean ghost, just mischievous."
Aubrey's insides turned to mush. She hated when Chloe did things that she found adorable. Her stomach churned with a mixture of guilt and her pent up feelings, making it gurgle. This was going to be a long night and she knew that at the end of it she would let Chloe crawl into her bed so that she was safe from this fake ghost. Her plan had, indeed, backfired. Instead of clawing her way back out of the pit of emotion she had dug herself deeper.
The next day Chloe came home from class later than usual. Her errand had took her off her normal route. Because she was so late, they arrived at the same time. Aubrey pulled up in the parking space beside and got out of her car, joining Chloe on the sidewalk. She noticed that Chloe was holding a large brown paper bag that was decorated with a big tree. She read the name on the side of the bag, Passages.
"What's that?" Aubrey asked. Suspicion rose through her as Chloe clutched the bag closer to her and just smiled. "I hate it when you smile like that. It means that you're up to something," she said, fearful of whatever Chloe had purchased now.
"You'll see." Chloe said. The jaunt to her step made Aubrey even more curious. She watched for a few more seconds while Chloe got a lead on her and then jogged to catch up. "I'm going to prove to you that we've got a ghost."
After dinner Aubrey cleared the table and rinsed the dishes off before placing them in the dishwasher. She glanced over at Chloe who was finishing up her glass of tea and flipping through a magazine. "How are you going to prove that we have a ghost," she asked.
Chloe squinted her eyes at the print and then gave up, finally attending to Aubrey's question. "You're just going to have to wait." She returned to the magazine and held the page closer to her. "I think I'm going blind." Changing the subject seemed to be the best idea at the moment. If she was going to get Aubrey to agree to what she was about to ask of her, she was going to have to do some fast talking.
The scoff was barely audible. "You're not going blind. Now, what's in the bag?" She dried her hands off on a dish towel and stared at the bag sitting on the armchair in the living room. "If you don't tell me, I'm just going to look for myself." To punctuate her threat she started toward the living room.
At the same time Chloe surged out of her chair and beat a path to the bag but Aubrey got there first. She opened it and reached inside. Her hand met a hard, slim item. She pulled it out. It was obviously a board game. She flipped it over and looked at the title. "Ouija," she read aloud and turned to Chloe. Her lips formed a thin line, a giggle escaping from her after a moment. "Really? A Ouija board?"
"Shut it," Chloe replied and grabbed the box. "Just for laughing, you're going to do this with me."
"No way," Aubrey said. She followed Chloe from the living room into her bedroom. "I'm not messing with that thing." Chloe put the box on the bed and ripped at the edge of the plastic. She used her thumbnail to make a hole and pulled it away from the box until it was all gone. Aubrey watched her throw the plastic aside and open it, taking the board and pointer out.
"Come on," Chloe pleaded. Her tone was enough to crack Aubrey. It was her fault that Chloe was freaked out enough to go this far anyway. Once again she found herself caving, and leaving her better instincts behind her in favor of appeasing Chloe.
"Fine, I'll do it." Aubrey sat down on the bed and clasped her hands together. Her friend in elementary school had told her a story long ago about playing with a Ouija board and how the pointer had moved on it's own. Aubrey's skeptical nature made her dismiss the assertion but it had always been there in the back of her mind.
For some reason the things freaked her out a little but she wasn't going to let the weakness show. She was already too open to Chloe, bringing up her own childish fears would make her more vulnerable. The lengths she was willing to go to for Chloe surprised her because at first she hadn't noticed but little by little they multiplied until she was left to face the truth.
It had been so long. The emotional press of what she now recognized as love made her heart heavy enough to sink to the bottom of the ocean. She was in love with her best friend. She hardly felt it when Chloe brushed her shoulder. She was too busy coming to terms with the immensity of her feelings and the hopelessness of her situation.
"Aubrey, get down here," Chloe said and shook her pant leg.
She numbly complied, scooting down the bed and into the floor, sitting opposite Chloe. Her eyes didn't seem to focus. Her assumption that this crush would pass had just exploded like a water balloon, coating her in realization. Her hand was pulled toward the board. She looked down to see Chloe putting it on the edge of the pointer.
"What's the matter with you?" Chloe asked and let go of her hand.
Aubrey blinked and attempted a smile. "Nothing, I was just thinking." She slid her the pointer closer to Chloe and nodded. "Let's get this over with."
Chloe placed her hand on the other rounded side of the wooden piece. Her excitement at trying to make contact with the spirit that she thought was inhabiting their apartment was too strong to make her question Aubrey any farther. "I guess we're just supposed to ask the spirit to speak to us?" She looked up toward the ceiling. "Um, spirit if you're with us could you show up and… move the pointer?"
They both waited. Chloe with anticipation and Aubrey with resignation. "It's not going to work, Chlo." she said.
"Shh," Chloe warned. Her eyes traveled the room, looking for any signs of activity. "Please spirit, just tell us who you are."
Aubrey didn't know why she didn't it, but she did. Her hand gently moved the pointer toward the letters on the board. Chloe's eyes grew as wide. "Oh my god, it's moving. You're not doing that are you." She tried to stay still. "J," she said when the clear plastic of the pointer centered over that letter. It moved again and she called out the subsequent letters. "A" It moved again. "C" Aubrey swallowed hard. "K"
"Jack" Chloe said. "His name is Jack." Her body wiggled in place, getting a little closer to the board so she could see better. "Hi Jack, can you tell us your last name? Oh, and why you're haunting us?"
The pointer moved again. At first Chloe just said the letters out loud and then she realized what they were spelling. "Jack the Ripper," she whispered, looking up in horror.
Aubrey couldn't take it anymore. The comical look of terror on Chloe's face sent her over the edge. Laughter burst forth from her, almost hysterical in nature. Between this bizarre exercise and the shock from her inner confession she was cracking up. Stress usually just made her feel like she was going to vomit but this was different, deeper seeded.
Chloe punched her hard in the arm. "You were moving it, you asshole." She reached back to smack Aubrey again but she stopped. Aubrey had fallen over out of reach.
"Oww," She said and rolled onto her back. "I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I don't know why I did that. I've been doing everything. Moving the stuff in the kitchen and the thing with the TV." She wasn't laughing anymore, just trying to catch her breath. Chloe's face appeared over her.
"What the hell, Aubrey." The behavior was strange. In the years that they had known each other she had never known her to do anything like this. "Why?" Her voice had a hard edge to it. Aubrey rarely ever managed to piss Chloe off, no one did.
Aubrey shrugged, unable to think of a lie. She felt like that was all she ever did with Chloe now. She was tired of the hiding and lying, especially now that she knew that these feelings weren't going to go away. She owed it to her to say something but she still resisted. Rejection wasn't something she dealt with well and though, she wasn't asking Chloe for anything, knowing without a shadow of a doubt that nothing beyond friendship would ever exist between them would make it real.
"I just.."
Chloe poked her in the side, just above her ticklish spot. Aubrey hated to be tickled, almost as much as she hated disorganization, and even more than she hated it when Chloe borrowed her CD's and lost them. "Don't do it." she said. Her hands went down to her side in an attempt to block Chloe but she was too late.
Chloe's slender fingers ran up and down Aubrey's sides, hitting all the right spots. Aubrey screeched and wriggled underneath her relentless hands. "Stop, stop," she gasped out. The terrible sensation kept coming. She had nearly turned herself over in an attempt to get away.
"Why did you do it," Chloe said. "Just tell me and I'll stop. She reached her leg across Aubrey's squirming waist and used it to pull her in, straddling her. Aubrey hiccuped, air moving across her throat in bursts.
"I love you!" She wheezed the words out, her hands still scrambling to stop the torture. Chloe's body stilled and she dropped her hands from Aubrey's body.
"What?" Her throat was dry.
"I said, I love you," Aubrey said. "I'm in love with you. I just wanted you to stop sleeping with me because it was kind of like torture, so I figured if I scared you, you wouldn't keep looking up things about ghosts and then you wouldn't feel like you needed company at night, but that totally backfired. Not one of my more brilliant plans, I grant you." Her babbling ceased and she checked Chloe's face for a reaction.
"You're in love with me." Chloe rolled onto her side and off of Aubrey. "Love." Her mind was having issues interpreting the signals it was receiving. The concept was foreign to her, having only engaged in fleeting relationships over her college career. The only steady relationship in her life had been Aubrey. She leaned up and gathered her feet under her, rising from the floor.
"Where are you going?" Aubre followed and put out a hand to catch Chloe's arm. "Hey," she soothed. Her insides were ripping apart. She hadn't realized how hard this was going to be. "I'm sorry, I was stupid to tell you that way but I guess you needed to know eventually."
Chloe just nodded and broke free of Aubrey's grip. She made it as far as the doorway before she turned. Aubrey almost bumped into her. "Are you okay?" she asked.
Chloe's lips moved to the side and she bit the inside of her cheek. She looked up and took in Aubrey's face. The veracity of Aubrey's claim lay there, screaming at her from the concerned eyes to the hard set jaw. It made sense. The way they interacted, how Aubrey had been pulling away. She should have seen, should have realized what they were heading towards all along but love made you do crazy things. She leaned in but Aubrey backed away.
"What are you doing?"
Chloe's grabbed her arms and pulled her back in. "Will you stand still," the last word was smothered as their lips touched. Aubrey's eyes fluttered shut and she kissed Chloe back, not really sure what was going on. Their hesitation was short lived. Thoughts were dispelled by and doubt effervesced as they moved together. Chloe's lips parted to let Aubrey enter and their hands found homes they had not known before in places more intimate than even sleeping in the same bed had allowed.
Chloe broke away, taking a much needed breath. The kiss was overwhelming but the feelings that they brought to surface, like bubbles rising in a pool, were the real surprise. Once again she had been oblivious even to what she had wanted, but Aubrey had seen it from her side, even if it didn't occur to her that Chloe want it too deep down inside.
"You're an idiot," Chloe murmured as she leaned in and kissed Aubrey again.
"I'm okay with that," Aubrey muttered into lips she never thought she would experience. It had all been worth it and years from now she would have horror movies to thank for bringing them together. The thought gave her momentary pause but Chloe's insistent hand gripped the back of her head, drawing her back into the present, because that's where she should be. The future was for figuring things out.