Chapter 1
Coming to a sudden stop outside of the auditorium, Beca paused to catch her breath. She was running late on the first day of practice and needed to collect herself before she went in to face the rest of the Bellas. Most of them had returned from last year, but there were a few fresh faces and she needed to make a strong impression as their leader. Bracing herself for the usual chaos and ruckus, Beca pushed open the door to the practice room and was met with...vocal warm-ups?
This is weird. What possessed them to start warming up? Amy? No definitely not. Beca looked around as she tried to process the scene in front of her.
"Oh so you decided to show up after all?" Beca cringed at the accusing voice. "I thought that when I left, you promised you wouldn't run this group into the ground? It's 5 minutes into the first practice and you weren't even here!"
Guiltily Beca turned to explain herself. "Look Aubrey, I didn't-"
"I don't want to hear it Beca! Luckily Chloe and I decided to surprise you all for the first Bella's practice of the season. How do you expect them to respect you if you don't even respect the valuable rehearsal time? Are you even listening to me? Beca? Beca!"
Beca had tuned Aubrey out at the mention of Chloe and looked around to spot the redhead sitting at the piano leading the team in their vocal exercises. A smile adorned the woman's face as she instructed the new girls through the exercises and refreshed some of the veterans who "forgot them" over the summer break. Beca smiled as the redhead's giggle floated to her ears. God how she had missed that sound.
At just that moment, Chloe glanced up and caught Beca's gaze causing her smile to grow. Beca realized how beautiful Chloe looked after spending the summer at her family's beach home. A nice tan caused the woman's skin to glow and radiate warmth from across the room. Moving her gaze back towards Chloe's face, Beca blushed as the redhead threw a wink at her.
I wonder what that was for? It's been weeks since I last saw her, maybe it was just a hello wink? Are those even a thing? Hello winks…It's Chloe, she's always super friendly and winking. Maybe I'm—
"OW!" Beca was pulled harshly from her thoughts at the throbbing pain in her shoulder. "What the heck Aubrey?!"
"Ughh! See I knew you weren't paying attention! How is anything going to get done with you in charge?" Aubrey let out an exasperated sigh. "I don't know why I agreed to leaving you the pitch pipe."
"What pitch pipe? We threw that out after the hole puke incident."
"The metaphorical pitch pipe!"
"I don't even know why you're here! Can you not let go of control for one second? Like seriously, you graduated. Don't you have a job or something?"
The bickering between the two had finally become loud enough that the others had stopped their exercises in favor of watching the two. Amy muttered under her breath, "Mom and dad are fighting again…"
Chloe giggled at the comment and decided that it was time to do something. The last thing they needed was for a repeat of any of last year's drama. A loud wolf whistle quickly shut the pair up.
"Well now that I have your attention. Beca, they're all warmed up and ready to start. Bree, let's go check out the student center and see what's new." Chloe made her way over to Aubrey and grabbed her arm, practically pulling her towards the doors.
"But what if Beca screws up again! I need to be here Chlo, just in case she can't handle this."
"She'll be fine." Chloe turned her head towards the group and shouted back, "We'll see you guys after practice and catch up!"
And with that the pair disappeared through the double doors. Beca let out a sigh of relief as she turned back towards the group of girls, who had already dispersed and were joking around in their chairs.
Suddenly Beca wished Chloe hadn't pulled Aubrey away.
Practice had been a disaster with Beca being unable to control the Bella's. The girl's excitement of being back together and retelling stories of summer fun was overwhelming and Beca had to bring the session to an end early after handing out their schedule and song list. From there the day only seemed to get worse. Fat Amy had commandeered their room to get a jump start on studying for her anatomy class with one of her boyfriends. Recently, Amy decided that it was just too much to keep all of their names straight and has instead started to number them. How does she manage...
Having grabbed her laptop in the mad dash out of her room, before being exposed to too much of Fat Amy and her "anatomy partner," Beca resorted to working on her latest mix in the quad. Which lasted all of 15 minutes before it started to pour. Throwing her stuff in her bag, she booked it into the closest building. Beca rang out her hair and looked at her surroundings. The student center had been remodeled over the summer, not that Beca knew what the old one had looked like. She had rarely hung out here since it was typically a social scene, which wasn't her thing - being social. Noticing all of the people around talking, playing games, and such, Beca considered whether she could run fast enough to make it to the campus radio station without getting soaked.
Her debate was cut short when she her a sound that had become one of her favorites last year. Looking around to locate it, Beca saw Chloe sitting in the corner laughing at something someone had just said. Beca smiled and began to make her way over to the pair.
As she approached, Beca took in the man that was talking with Chloe. Who is that? Chloe laughed at yet another thing the man had said. Do I know this guy? Beca eyed up the man. Standing a little over 6 feet, the man had messy dark brown hair and looked quite fit. He seemed to have a carefree charming atmosphere to him that complimented Chloe's. Beca didn't realize that she had stopped moving and was shooting daggers at the guy as his hand touched Chloe's arm and gave a light squeeze.
"Oh hey Beca!" Chloe's voice broke through Beca's analysis and put a halt to her jealously grinding her teeth.
"Hey Chlo." Beca started towards the pair again.
The man turned to Chloe and gave her a hug and kiss on the cheek before turning away. With a quick "I'll see you later then!" the guy was gone.
Chloe was beaming as she yelled bye and turned back to Beca who was staring at the woman.
"Who was that?" Beca tried to make her voice even and throw the question out there as if she didn't really care. Chloe's smile faltered a little at Beca's tone, making her believe she wasn't exactly successful.
"Oh that was just Ben." Chloe's smile came back and she tried to redirect the conversation. "How are you Becs? I missed you so much!"
Chloe threw her arms around the smaller woman, bringing her into a tight hug. Beca inhaled deeply taking in the older woman's smell. She always loved how Chloe seemed to smell like vanilla and flowers. Smiling, Beca pulled back.
"I saw you a few weeks ago. Thanks for inviting me to your beach house by the way. It was nice to get away."
"The pleasure was all mine." Chloe threw the girl a wink and started walking towards the door.
Beca stood stock still as a blush creeped over her face. Was she just flirting with me?
"Hey Becs, you coming?" Chloe called out to the girl.
"Yea! Sorry." Beca jogged to catch up with the redhead as they made their way out into the now sunny quad. The weather here is so weird.
Shoulder to shoulder contact broke Beca from her thoughts as Chloe just smiled at the girl and giggled. God I love it when she does that…Focus! What did she just say? "Sorry, what?"
Chloe laughed again, not at all bothered by Beca's tendency to get lost in thought. "I asked if you were going to the Trebles party tonight?"
"Oh right. I forgot about that." Beca groaned.
"How could you forget? You're dating the captain." Beca tried not to read into the tone Chloe's voice took as she stated that Beca was dating Jesse.
Beca shrugged, "Yea, actually we kinda broke up."
After a few seconds, Beca realized that Chloe was no longer next to her and looked around. Walking back to where the redhead stood, Beca looked at her curiously. She tried to act like it was no big deal but she was secretly examining the taller woman's face to get any hint of how the break up impacted her. After a few moments, Beca gave up and looked at her shoes as she waited for the other girl to say something. Chloe's face was completely neutral and it was freaking her out that she had no idea what she was thinking.
Beca's head snapped up when she heard a Chloe ask in a small voice, "Why didn't you tell me?"
"I guess it just didn't come up…" In reality, Beca didn't tell Chloe because she didn't want to explain why they had broken up. Beca was pretty much incapable of lying to the older girl and didn't want to let it slip that she had broken up with Jesse after realizing her feelings for Chloe. Jesse hadn't taken the break up too well and things were still a little awkward between the two.
"Oh so it was just when you two got back to school?" Chloe sounded a little more hopeful, like it had happened in the past couple of days and the brunette just hadn't had the chance to bring her up to speed.
"Um, no…I actually, uh, happened while I was visiting you this summer." Beca kicked at an invisible stone on the ground to avoid looking at Chloe. She didn't mean to keep something from her, but she knew that Chloe was probably very hurt, thinking Beca didn't trust her or something like that. Beca chanced a look up at the quite girl before bringing her gaze to the ground again.
"Oh, uh, right, well I have to go. I'll see you at the party, maybe." And with that she turned and quickly made her way across the quad.
Before Beca could even realize what had just happened, Chloe was gone. Beca looked up from the ground and sighed to herself. "Why can't you just grow a pair, Mitchell?"
I own nothing obviously. Otherwise Beca and Chloe would be on their way to having aca-children. Story title is from The Veronicas song Everything I'm Not. It's pretty great.
I've had this story idea for a bit and have been searching for it, but finally gave up and decided to write it myself. Let me know what you think!