Chloe took Beca's hands in hers.
"Beca, I'm sure we will always be fast friends," she started, as she leaned in to press their foreheads together, "it's just a shame we never got to talk more about experimenting in our college years." She drew back and winked, but still held onto Beca's hands.
"Maybe let that go now Chloe," was the dismissive reply from Beca. She released their hands and threw her arms around Chloe. They held each other silently for a long time.
oOo
Beca had known for a while that when the time came, saying goodbye to Chloe was going to be the hardest.
From day one in her freshman year she thought Chloe was weird, yet she was still drawn to her. They had wildly different personalities and that wasn't something that Beca usually responded to well. Chloe had completed freaked her out when she barged in on her shower for their second ever encounter, but as soon as they were singing together, she forgot for a moment that they were both naked. The invasion resulted in Chloe successfully convincing her to audition for the Bellas, and so eventually Beca could excuse Chloe's unconventional tactics.
Four years later she couldn't imagine her college years could have been much better, having had the Bellas, and Chloe, in her life. Now that she was moving to LA while Chloe was staying in Atlanta, they would have to get used to not seeing each other and not knowing what was happening in each other's lives every day.
She had grown to love the things that made them different; that Chloe was a sharer while she was so guarded, that Chloe's future plan were general and vague whereas she was very focussed on her career after college, and that Chloe always looked for the positive, compared to her sarcastic view on things. It became the basis of the comfortable routine of how they interacted.
Still, some occasional weirdness remained. Sometimes Beca found Chloe's overt sexuality quite amusing; she was so confident, so uninhibited. But at other times she found it a little intimidating. 'Experimenting', that was the word Chloe had used. She wished she had done more 'experimenting' in college. Beca wasn't certain how she meant it. She wondered if Chloe was seriously propositioning her. For a moment, for just a split second, she was tempted to play along and pretend it wasn't an outrageous suggestion. She assessed it as 'Too Risky', so Beca shut the conversation down in her typical sardonic style.
Beca suspected that sometimes when Chloe was being particularly audacious, it was only because she enjoyed how uncomfortable it made Beca feel, how Beca would get nervous and panic and say something embarrassing or inappropriate. Beca knew how it felt to want to unsay something. Chloe seemed like someone who had never experienced that. Example one - "I failed maps". Example two - "It's my lady jam". After that shower incident, but before she got to know Chloe better, Beca wondered about what kind of person would make a statement like that to a total stranger, while standing naked in front of them. It was impossible not to speculate on the message being sent by that bold move. Then she got to know Chloe, and it wasn't so weird, it made sense. Chloe had almost no filter, nothing embarrassed her and while Beca loved that about her friend, she was definitely not the right person to try to push that boundary.
oOoOo
Chloe knew that when the time came, saying goodbye to Beca was going to be the hardest.
She was immediately attracted to Beca at the activities fair four years earlier, despite Aubrey's protestations about her alternative appearance and unsuitability for the traditions of being a Bella. Chloe took a big risk invading the other woman's shower and forcing her to sing, although in reality she hadn't thought that through at all. Chloe had been compelled to act when she heard Beca's singing voice filling the shower block, and she felt vindicated when Beca subsequently did turn up for the Bellas' auditions.
From the start they were clearly quite different personalities but Chloe never saw that as a deterrent to making new friends. Beca was so cautious and private initially while Chloe forced her over-sharing zeal onto everyone. It was only sometimes her intention to make Beca uncomfortable for her own amusement, and she knew she was just as likely to find herself on the receiving end of some of Beca's biting sarcasm. But gradually Beca had started to drop her guard with Chloe allowing their friendship to grow, despite their differences.
She thought that after four years of friendship she might have stopped taking pleasure in provoking her friend, but she couldn't help pushing it a bit too far from time to time. When she made the "experimenting" comment during their retreat, she was a little disappointed that didn't play out differently. Of course she hadn't expected Beca to agree, but she could have had so much more fun with the conversation that followed. Especially while they were confined to a overcrowded tent, with no way for Beca to escape. As a champion of making Beca uneasy, that was an opportunity missed from Chloe's point of view.
oOo
Now as they said their goodbyes outside the Bella's house, faced with not seeing each other for a while, and probably not ever again with the same regularity, Chloe hadn't been able to resist poking that bear one last time.