Thanks to everyone who's favorited, followed, and commented :) Every little thing means the world, so thank y'all. Here's chapter 2!
She's kind of surprised when she wakes up the next morning and remembers everything. And it's not even the kind of "remembering" where your mind is in a blissfully ignorant state for a moment until everything comes crashing down on you—no, it's the kind of remembering where, as soon as Beca's mind is conscious, she's thinking about Chloe and Chloe only.
It doesn't really help matters that they're kind of tangled up together, either.
All Beca sees when she opens her eyes is the bright red of Chloe's head on her chest. The older girl has herself half-draped on top of Beca, long arms wrapped tightly around her waist. Their legs are tangled together, and Beca tries to push that niggling voice out of the back of her mind—the one that realizes how nice this feels, because it shouldn't.
She cheated on her boyfriend the day they got together, for Christ's sake. What is wrong with her?
Beca gently slides out from underneath Chloe's (perfect) body and realizes that maybe she doesn't remember absolutely everything, because they're both missing their tops and when did that happen?
It's now that she kind of starts to maybe-panic, just a bit.
She grabs a shirt off the floor—not hers, she vaguely realizes once she's in the hallway—and makes her way down to the breakfast bar to get something to alleviate the pounding headache she's suddenly suffering from. She's pouring herself a cup of coffee when he sneaks up behind her (or, at least, that's what it feels like).
"Good afternoon, Phil. Or are you Stu? Alan, maybe?" he says in his ever-jovial tone, though, now, there is a hint of nerves lying underneath it all. Like he doesn't exactly know how to proceed after yesterday's… events.
"I'm sorry?" Beca says after a moment, brow furrowing as she takes a sip of her coffee to try and clear the fog in her mind.
His eyebrows raise, as they always do when Beca doesn't get one of his movie ref—"The Hangover? You really haven't seen that one, either?" He sounds so astonished, and Beca's so hung-over, she can't really care to do much more than shake her head in a silent apology. "Wow, we are so watching that when we get back to Barden."
She takes a big gulp of coffee.
Jesse's hands jut into his pockets as he rocks back on his heels a bit, shoulders slouching as if he's forcing himself to relax. "Okay, so, listen…" Oh, boy.
Beca raises her eyebrows and leans against the counter, waiting for him to continue.
"I really enjoyed yesterday. You know, not the getting our asses kicked in a singing competition by a bunch of girls, but, y'know, the kissing you thing… That was pretty amazing." She smiles a bit, at that. "And, so… I'd like to take you out on a date. A real date, not just, like, hanging out at the station or something. We don't even have to go to a movie."
Jesse's looking at Beca with that damn hopeful look in his eyes, and she wonders, for a moment, how easy it would be. Look, Jesse, I'm sorry; you're a great guy, but last night was just the result of an adrenaline rush from winning and loneliness because I'm falling in love with Chloe Beale but she'll never love me back. I'd love to stay friends, though.
Along with that, though, comes the image of his face after she says it. The pain in her heart when the one person who's been there for her this entire year doesn't want to be there any longer. Because she broke his heart.
Because, not to be vain, but, she knows that Jesse is in love with her. It goes with that rom-com cliché: the stubborn, closed-hearted girl finally opens up to and falls in love with the boy who's been in love with her for the entire movie.
And as much as Beca doesn't want to be that girl, she doesn't want to be alone, either.
The girls are waking up, when Beca returns to the hotel room. Her eyes hone in on Chloe, slowly sitting up, topless, on the couch. She watches as Chloe runs a hand confusedly through her red hair and looks around the room, trying to remember the previous night. And when their eyes meet, Beca can see, in her eyes, all the memories crashing down on her in that moment Beca had forgone.
Chloe's lips part slightly, and Beca can tell that she doesn't know what to say. She watches as the older girl's eyes drift down below her face—Beca had forgotten that she was wearing Chloe's shirt instead of her own.
The smile that appears on Chloe's face warms Beca's heart. It's Aubrey that shatters it.
"Did you really only get coffee for yourself, you asshole?" The blonde's tone reminds her of the first day they'd met, and it successfully snaps Beca out of the ginger-induced haze she'd been in.
"Actually, this is for Chlo. I drank mine on the way up." There's an implied sticking-out-of-the-tongue in her tone, somewhere, but Aubrey simply huffs as Beca moves to hand the hot beverage to the girl still sitting on the couch.
"You're lucky you two are cute together," the blonde continues haughtily, throwing back her own blankets. Both Beca's and Chloe's heads snap over to Aubrey in embarrassment, even as they realize that all the alcohol must not be out of her system. "Whatever happened to that Treble you were kissing, though, Beca?" Aubrey keeps going, not noticing both girls' stricken looks.
Beca literally gulps. She feels like shrinking into the carpet, because this so was not the way she wanted to talk to Chloe about this. "I'm, um—well, we're dating now. We're going out on our first sometime this week, once we get back to Barden," she chokes out, caught between avoiding Chloe's gaze and checking for signs of the other girl's reaction.
Surprisingly, it's Aubrey that says something, even if it is a simple, snappy "What?"
Fat Amy comes to her rescue, though, scrambling over from the other side of the room to announce, "You guys, checkout deadline is in ten minutes!" This, of course, leads to everyone scrambling around to find room keys, lost items, and generally clean up so that it doesn't look like there were a bunch of college freshmen (and two of-age co-eds) drinking the night away.
Beca knows it won't last forever, but she's thankful for the small allowance of time she has to think about what to say—even though she does have to witness that heartbreaking, wounded-puppy look that Beca never wanted to see on Chloe Beale's face.