Barden seemed like a million years ago. It has been eight years since graduation, eight years since Beca and Jesse packed their lives up and moved across the country to Los Angeles to follow their dreams. Eight years since Beca's Dad helped put first and last month's rent down on a little apartment in the city. Eight years since they scrimped and saved to get by while looking for their dream jobs. Eight years since their lives had begun.
In the beginning it has been hard but they had had each other. Beca took a job at a coffee shop that let her play her mixes. While it wasn't what she wanted it paid the bills while she looked for a job in the industry. Jessie lucked out right away; Cutting Edge a well known scoring company based in the UK was opening an office in LA. The company was staffing from the bottom up and Jesse was in the right place at the right time. His was hired for an entry level position but his determination and enthusiasm helped him work his way up. Within a year he was holding the position of music coordinator and helping the music supervisors score their movies, it would be only a matter of time before he was given the supervisors positions.
Never one to be second Beca stepped up her efforts to find her dream job. Every other night she was DJing at a party or club, anywhere she could get her music out there. But it was her silly coffee shop gig that ended up getting her music in the ears of the right people. It was almost closing time, Beca was sweeping up and blaring one of her newest tracks just a little too loud. "Who is this?" asked a middle aged customer waiting for a drink her coworker was fixing. After explaining it was hers the customer gave her a once over then nodded to the broom in her hand, "I guess we all have to start somewhere. This is good… Here is my card, if you have more stuff like this, drop it off." The card said he was a producer for SoundBox Music, a smaller company in the industry but one that was getting a lot of attention for producing hot tracks. She dropped off her music the next day, two weeks later she was their newest employee.
Life was great. They were both where they wanted to be, spending their days on their passions and their nights with each other. As time went by though their careers became more demanding. They were spending more time with their coworkers than with each other, and while they both understood and supported each other completely the magic that had once been present in their relationship began to fade away.
They had been in LA for three years when Jesse's company offered him a supervisor position, total control scoring movies, everything he had dreamt of, but it was at their UK office in London. Jesse said no, Beca said yes, they would make it work; there was no way she would stand in the way of his dream. So he took the job. A week before Jesse moved the two decided to call it quits. They loved each other and always would but they had grown apart and this move gave them the opportunity to say goodbye on good terms. The spent the last week packing up and making love, then they said goodbye and faced their new lives without each other.
That was six years ago. They had stayed in contact in the beginning sending emails and updating each other about their lives. They had even seen each other once. A year after the move they both met up at Donald and Lilly's wedding. They smiled and hugged and felt the instant attraction. They spent the weekend bantering back and forth and hanging out with all their friends just like old times. The wedding night they found themselves in Beca's hotel room drunkenly making love until the early hours. But the next day they had to go back to reality, they found themselves back at the airport heading in different directions. After that all communication stopped. They knew that they loved each other but they needed to let go, they figured time would lessen the love and they would both be happier without each other. Six years had done the trick.
"Beep beep beep beep," sounded the alarm on Beca's night stand.
"Aughhh, whyyyyy?" Grumbled Beca as she hit the alarm and covered her head with her pillow. It had been a long weekend and Beca was in no mood to get up. Saturday had been Ella's third birthday party, Beca loved her God daughter with all her heart, but she could only handle so many screaming toddlers, and of course Chloe had invited a million three year olds to her daughter's birthday.
Since the girls were all in town for their favorite aca-nieces birthday, Beca spent the rest of the weekend taking them around to all of the hot spots in town. She, Fat Amy, and Stacy had even gone out Sunday night to Avalon a popular LA club. Beca had done some DJing at the club over the years so she was able to get the girls in as VIP's. After a few hours of drinking and dancing the girls hopped on their red eyes and Beca wearily made it back to her place.
That is how Beca found herself bright and early on Monday morning, exhausted and slightly hung-over heading into work. She knew it was going to be a long day, Friday night her boss has couriered over a package regarding her new super secretive project. Apparently she was going to do some tracks for a movie. There had already been a lot of talk about this film in the media, there were a lot of big names attached to it and the actors had been butting heads. Beca assumed this was the reason the film was in its current predicament, completely over budget and way off of its required timeline. From the info she read in the package she received, the film was supposed to be done with post production, it should have been edited and sitting on a shelf waiting for its premier one month away, but it wasn't.
From what she read the film already had 60% of its scoring done, all that was left was the special tracks that they wanted from her. She gathered from the note typed out by the scoring company that they had been brought on last minute too. They didn't sound too pleased to be doing a rushed job, but sometimes this is how the film industry works. One of the reasons Beca preferred not to work on films, but someone working on the film requested her and her boss had said yes, wasn't that kind of him.
After thirty minutes in traffic Beca was walking into the studio. She had an hour before her meeting with the music supervisor on this film and she wanted to review the tracks that they had sent her. She had listened to them Friday night and again after Ella's birthday party, but the Bellas had demanded her attention, after all it wasn't every day that they were all together. So she hadn't gotten to give the music as much attention as she wanted. What she had heard she liked. Whoever had put together this score was good. The music had it all, suspense, romance, it evoked happiness and melancholy if she didn't know better she would have guessed that Jesse had score this movie, but she knew he hadn't . First Jesse was a million miles away living it up in the UK and whoever scored this had a SoCal zip code and second Jesse worked on blockbusters. He had already earned himself two Academy Award nominations for his scores, and once you earned one of those you don't take jobs for little hip hop films, even if they have a start studded cast.
As Beca set her bag down on her desk her assistant Angela popped her head in, "How ya feelin' Miss Party Animal?"
"Excuse me? That is completely inappropriate, how dare you speak that way with your boss?" Beca smiled at her assistant letting her know she didn't mean anything she was saying.
"Oh I am so sorry, after all that drunken debauchery last night I thought you could use some coffee, I meant no offence." Angela handed Beca a coffee and then went to sit at the spare chair in the room, "I am not sure I have seen three women more drunk on a Sunday night." Angela laughed as Beca groaned and took a sip of her coffee.
"They are insane! Thanks for going with us last night," said Beca as she pulled the scored music out of the bag and plugged it into her Macbook.
"Hey any time I get to hear stories about the tough DJ Beca singing a capella in an all girls group I am there!" Angela laughed and shook her head, "I think you appointment is here early. I saw a really hot guy get here a few minutes ago and go into Phil's office. Do you want me to check?"
"Ugh. Of course they are early." Beca started scrolling through her hard drive looking for a track she had done a few months back that would work well with the already complied score.
"Yeah tell Phil I am here and that I will be in in a sec, I just want to review this one more time," she smiled up at her assistant and went back to work, slipping a pair of headphones over her ears.
Jesse sat in a chair across from the head of the studio and smiled as the man prattled on about how honored he was that his team was chosen to help get this film out of a bind. "Beca is awesome, she will get these tracks finished for you in no time, then you can work your magic and get it all turned over to the editors."
Jesse smiled, he knew Beca was awesome that is why he had suggested her to his friend John when he came begging Jesse to help him out of his bind. He had met John a few years back while scoring a film, back then John had been an assistant producer. This was John's first solo project and it had all gone to hell. He needed someone to score his film fast and he wanted some unique tracks that could be played in the clubs and even get some radio play, he needed positive exposure anything that would distract people from all the shit being said about the production problems with the film.
Jesse had said yes. He was setting up his new offices and didn't have any current project, plus he could see desperation in John's eyes and he didn't want to be the guy to let him down. And it gave him a chance to see Beca. He had avoided any attempts to contact her since he had gotten back but he didn't want to wait any longer. He passed on a cd he had acquired of Beca's current work, one that had been passed to him in secrecy from Donald that Beca had sent to Lilly. He also pointed out some popular radio songs that he knew Beca had done the tracks for. It took a day for John to get back to him saying he was sold and had already set up a meeting with her company.
There was a knock on the door and a tall blond poked her head in the doorway, "Hey Phil, Bec's in her office, she said she needs a few minutes to run through the tracks and then she will be right in."
Phil looked at Jesse and smile, then turned back to the blond, "We were just going to head over there right now I am sure Mr. Swanson won't mind going over the tracks with her." Phil signaled for Jesse to stand as the blond pushed the door open and stepped in, the look on her face clearly asked, 'are you insane.' "Whatever, it's your life. You know how she feels about being interrupted."
Phil and the blond exchanged glances and then proceeded out of the office. Jesse smiled to himself, he knew all too well how pissed Beca could be when you interrupt her working on her music. He liked that things hadn't changed too much in the last six years.
She was so enraptured by the music that she didn't notice people standing outside of her door in the hallway. She had finally located the song she was looking for and she was playing it alongside the other music that had been scored. "It is perfect," she thought to herself it was enough like the other music that it wouldn't seem out of place but it was a solid track something that would set the particular scene it was meant for apart. She would just have to tweak it a bit, try it out with the scene to make sure it really worked and then convince the guy in charge that it was the right song for the movie. "One down five more to go," she thought to herself. She pulled her headphones off just as the door to her office swung open, the sound of it made her spin her seat around. Phil had one foot in her office but his body was turned towards someone in the hall, she could hear him talking about how one of her tracks just made its way onto the top ten billboard chart. As much as she appreciated her boss bragging about her accomplishments she did not enjoy him not listening to her, didn't she just fucking say she would need a few minutes and then she would come to him?
Beca pushed back her irritation, she was definitely going to give Phil an earful but it was probably not the best time to do it. But as Phil turned to face her that thought went right out of her mind. The smirk he gave her let her know that he knew she would be pissed but he didn't care. "Your ability to follow simple tasks is fucking amazing Phil," Beca sneered at her boss.
Phil smiled, "Good morning to you too! I have someone here I want you to meet." Phil stepped into her office and motioned for someone to follow. Beca pulled her seat out from her desk and stood up to face them.
Beca knew that Phil was talking, it sounded like he said, "Beca this is…" but the rest of his sentence and anything else he said was unheard. Standing in her doorway was Jesse.