A/N: Okay, I'm trying to do a little drama again but I'll go a little easier with this one and probably not update daily, so, have a little patience, please. The title is taken from a Melissa Etheridge song, and in that case as in every other there's no copyright infringement intended. I'm always just borrowing things.
"You really think so?"
"Not that she would ever admit to it," Chloe told Beca and grinned. They were sitting on the backrest of one of the many benches on campus, watching some of the Trebles give one of their impromptu performances. While looking at Beca Chloe noticed an older woman coming toward them and she looked fairly familiar. The tall brunette stranger put her finger to her lips for Chloe not to alert Beca.
"Not Aubrey, she would never admit..."
"Hello, angel," the woman threw her arms around Beca and hugged her tightly from behind.
"WHAT THE...? What, mom? What're you doing here?" The DJ hopped from the bench and returned the hug.
"I'm coming to visit, obviously," Grace Thomas answered her daughter.
"Why, I mean, how? I thought I would see you in a couple of weeks," Beca smiled. She was really glad to see her mom, and really surprised.
"Well, Justin has a business meeting over in New Orleans and he asked if he should drop me off and pick me back up in a couple of days. And I said: hell, yeah!" Grace laughed and so did Beca. Chloe still sat on the bench but observed the scene smiling brightly.
"You're together with Justin again?" Beca asked ready to roll her eyes on the on-again, off-again resilience of that particular relationship.
"No, we're not together. He was just being a friend because he knows I miss my little angel," Grace stroked her daughter's cheek.
"Oh, mom, please... I'm no angel," Beca squirmed out of the embrace now and turned to her friend. "I want you to meet someone, this is Chloe," she introduced the redhead.
"It's so great to finally meet you, Chloe. Beca has told me so much about you... and all the other Bellas," she added.
"She talks about you a lot, too, I'm happy to meet you," Chloe answered with a warm smile.
"So, how long are you gonna be here?" Beca asked her mom.
"I'm not sure myself. Justin said something about four days but it could be longer - or shorter, I guess. Y'know his business.."
"Actually no, I never got what he's actually doing. Have you?" Grace just shrugged.
"He will call when he's ready to pick me up again, so..."
"So, where're you staying? 'Cause I don't think my roommate would tolerate a four-night-long sleepover with my mom," Beca said and rolled her eyes.
"Don't worry, I've found a B&B not too far from here. It's cheap and it's clean and the lady who runs it is really inquisitive. I feel like I've accidentally entered an episode of Gilmore Girls, only with a different accent," Grace said and laughed. Gilmore Girls was her favorite show, she liked to think that she and her daughter were a little like Lorelai and Rory - if Rory was an aspiring, sarcastic DJ with scary ear-piercings, and Lorelai an artist/nurse.
"Sounds perfect, you wanna go back and take a nap, or something?" Beca asked and Grace looked at her comically.
"Take a nap? How old do you think I am, Beca?"
"I just thought that if you have come all the way from home today - you did come by car, right? - you're probably exhausted. I would be," Beca reasoned.
"Well, we actually drove through the night, or rather, Justin was driving and I was sleeping, so, I'm very well rested. Unless you have other plans... with Chloe, here?"
"No, we... no, we didn't have any plans," the brunette stammered.
"Great, then I'm going to invite you two to lunch. You have to pick the spot, obviously, because I don't know where's the best place to eat around here. They should have vegetarian, though," she told Chloe and the redhead smiled.
"I know just the place, but I would really like to invite you two," Chloe said.
"I won't hear of it. You guys are students, you shouldn't spent your money on your parents and especially not somebody else's parent," Grace told the girls. Chloe grinned a little sheepishly, her parents were providing her with enough money that she could actually invite all the Bellas to every meal of every day of the month and would still be able to cover all her other expenses. But she didn't want to bring that up infront of Beca's mom since Beca obviously hadn't told her that she was loaded.
Half an hour later they sat at a table in a cozy place called 'Chez Chuck's.' It was a queer mix of French and American cuisine, not too expensive and delicious, at least Chloe thought so. And Beca and Grace had to agree after they tasted their respective meals.
"Wonderful. This is really good. Have you eaten here before, honey?" She asked her daughter but Beca shook her head.
"She has actually eaten from here a couple of times. Those sandwiches you like so much, they make them," Chloe told her.
"Really? I love those," Beca confirmed and Chloe giggled.
"I know that's why I get them when I know you're working at the station," the redhead said.
"You feed my daughter when she's working. I think I owe you a lot more than lunch."
"No, you don't owe me anything. It's what friends do for each other," Chloe disagreed and took another bite of her salad.
"Well, then I'm glad Beca has such a good friend, Chloe." The redhead just smiled and Grace turned toward her daughter. "So, I haven't heard from you since you called from New York - drunk, I might add..." Beca had the decency to blush. She had called her mother from the ICCA-party - or rather the party after the ICCA-party, since the official party didn't provide alcohol for minors. So, they had returned to the hostel where they had stayed, those over 21 had gotten some alcohol and then they had partied pretty much with the whole hostel until they had to leave for the airport. They had been lucky they had been allowed on the plane. But mostly everybody had been too tired to make much of a fuss for the flight personnel.
"We had just won the ICCAs, mom... I mean... I wasn't that drunk," she laughed lightly but Chloe had to actually suppress her laughter. Beca had been completely hammered that night, not that she herself wasn't. Only, Chloe tended to remember things she did when drunk, Beca seemed to have lost a couple of hours of that particular night.
Grace looked from her daughter to her friend and then back at Beca, lifting an eyebrow.
"Not that drunk, huh? You sang some 80s song into my ear, at 1.30 in the morning, angel. I think we can all agree that you were toasted." She wasn't angry, Beca could tell. "Do you even remember what we talked about?"
"Ah, I told you that we won, then I sang 'Don't you forget about me' and..."
"And you told me about a young man named Jesse who you said was your boyfriend," Grace reminded Beca.
"Right, I told you about Jesse," Beca smiled. She didn't remember but, of course, she had told her mother about her boyfriend.
"Yeah, something about him being cute with puppy eyes and that he likes movies too much."
"So, basically what I would have told you had I been sober," Beca declared. She looked at Chloe who nodded.
"And you guys are still together, Jesse and you?" Grace asked and Beca nodded.
"Yeah, sure, why wouldn't we be?"
"I was wondering if maybe... that was just something that happened because you were drunk, maybe? It happens - it sure happened to me when I was in college. Before I met your dad, that is," Grace confessed. She was looking intently at her daughter and Beca wasn't sure where her mom was going with this. She had an idea but it was a topic she found a little sensitive and she didn't want to talk about it infront of Chloe.
"But I told you about Jesse before that night, right? We were... I mean, we were friends and... I told you that I liked him," Beca said.
"You have told me of a lot of people you met and liked, so, I didn't think much of it. But if you're together, I would, of course, like to meet him while I'm here," Grace told her daughter and the DJ nodded.
"Sure, we can do that. But not today, we have practice later..."
"I thought practice was over. I mean, you won that competition, right?" Beca rolled her eyes at this and Chloe giggled.
"Well, if we were in any group but the Bellas practice would be over but this is Aubrey's last year, so... she wants to make sure we're fulfilling our Bella-duties and keep up the good work. So, she's trying to take us hostage as long as possible." Chloe laughed. For once, she agreed with Beca's assessment of Aubrey's behavior these days.
"She sounds... a little scary," Grace said and both Bellas nodded.
"She is a little scary but... mostly she will just miss us all," Chloe said but Beca snorted.
"Yeah, I bet she's gonna miss me. She told me last week that she had a nightmare of wolves attacking all the Bellas and ripping out their vocal chords - those wolves were wearing dark red blazers and had boygroup dance-moves..." Beca looked meaningfully at Chloe who laughed.
"She's just worried that now we all get treble-boned," Chloe said but it was Beca who blushed when her mother cleared her throat.
"Treble-boned?" Beca's mother asked.
"Our rivals, the Treblemakers - Aubrey hates them with a passion but Jesse is one of them," she explained.
"And no one's getting boned, honestly. I mean..." Beca stammered and blushed some more. She looked at Chloe intently but the redhead just shrugged.
"Beca, have I ever told you not to have sex?" Grace asked her daughter who looked like she was close to a heart-attack. But she managed to shake her head. "All I ask of you is to use protection so you won't get pregnant or catch something, okay?"
"Yes, mom," Beca ground out. She stared at the remains of lunch, suddenly not hungry anymore.
"Do you have a boyfriend, Chloe?" Grace asked her daughter's friend.
"No, I don't. I like to keep it casual but at the moment, I like to be single," Chloe told Grace and the older woman nodded.
"I think that's very wise for someone so young. I mean, I got married out of college and that was a mistake."
"Mom?" Beca said.
"You know, your father and I didn't work out. I think we were too young, we shouldn't have gotten married but your grandmother insisted," Grace continued, unfazed by her daughter's discomfiture. "I was already pregnant with Beca and Ken's mother made an aweful fuss about us not wanting to get married. She finally got Beca's father to talk me into it." Grace shook her head at the memory.
"But you were happy for some time," Beca argued.
"Of course, we were happy, darling. We had you and you were the most adorable little baby girl. Well, you still are adorable," her mother took Beca's chin into her hand and looked at her lovingly. Chloe grinned at her friend who blushed a bright color.
"Mooom...," Beca groused and Grace laughed. She let go of her and turned toward Chloe again.
"Beca told me you're graduating this year?"
"Well, actually no. I'm staying for my master's in psychology," Chloe beamed. Beca screeched. She leaned over to hug her friend who giggled. Some of the other patron's looked over but Beca didn't care. They had talked about Chloe's options now that she would have her bachelor's degree but Chloe hadn't been sure if she wanted to continue - obviously that had changed.
"You're really staying?"
"Yeah, I'm staying," they looked at each other, both grinning from ear to ear. Grace watched them amusedly. She wondered if her daughter was aware of how cute she and her 'best friend' looked together or of how long they had been staring into each other's eyes now. She would bet anything that Beca ignored these thing, the way she always did.
"That sounds great. Are you planning on a doctoral-degree?" Grace asked the redhead who turned toward her still beaming.
"I'm not sure yet. My dad would love it, of course," and at Grace's questioning look she said: "My dad is a psycho-analyst." Grace nodded. "But I don't know... You can't do much with a bachelor in psychology but the fields opens when you got your master's, so, there're really plenty of options."
"You dad would freak if you did the doctor-thing. Another Dr. Beale in the family, shared practice..." Beca laughed as Chloe rolled her eyes. The DJ had met the whole Beale-clan after the ICCA finals; they were really a family ideal: parents married since college, one daughter, two sons, all redhaired and freckly. They were the most adorable group of people Beca had ever met and they had treated all of Chloe's friends with respect and admiration. And that was what really made Beca warm up to them, they weren't snobs, they were just people who happened to have a lot of money and they actually did some good with it from what Chloe had told her. And, of course, Chloe was the most giving and lovely and generous person Beca knew, so, she saw where she got it from.
"I'm not sure our relationship would survive a shared practice. Don't get me wrong, I love my dad, he's amazing and he's so good at what he's doing. But he would be so overprotective and concerned. And I'm not sure if I want to go back to Virginia to live there. That's what my mom wants, for me to come home, to get married..." Chloe rolled her eyes some more and Beca giggled.
"Well, you're young. You have plenty of options, Chloe," Grace said and the redhead nodded.
"Yeah, and I want to look at them all and make my own choice. Maybe I'll become a professional singer and go to L.A.," she mused, smiling.
"If you wait a couple more years, we'll go together and be roommates," Beca said. "And I will play all your songs at the clubs I'll be working at."
"And I will tell everybody that my best friend is the hottest DJ in town," Chloe gave back and they smiled at each other again.