Though, you think she knows. The world knows.
Four years and several different voices sang your love for Chloe through different music genres. You even wrote a musical with a friend, and you swear that the title of the love song before the end of the first act sounds a lot like her name when you say out loud, even if the world can't notice.
And there's also the songs that literally have her name on it.
("Eh, we're changing that." Beca says. "You're so fucking smitten, it's so embarrassing.")
You really wish, sometimes, that you could eternalize one of them with your own voice, though. You don't admit, but you have dreams about singing to her in front of a crowd. But they vanish as soon as she finds you at your music room, and you sing to her something knew, and the entire world is between those four walls.
They don't need to see the way her eyes fill with tears or that shy smile you give her when you are finished. She is the only crowd you need. Oh boy, you are blessed.
Somewhere between the years the media found you. Chloe deal with it a lot better. She holds your hand and well, you can live with that, you think. (Paparazzi found you once or twice. None of you are really a hot target unless you are with Emily or Beca. She just held your hand, smiled and asked them how their night was, as you passed by. This dirty industry doesn't deserve her.) You barely get annoyed as you see the pictures on the internet, later.
She's on your speech after you win that award destined for songwriters that you always thought was too ahead of you and your talent. (Thank you for holding my hand and my heart every single day.) She cried a little and you went out to celebrate with Beca and Amy, whose show – Fat Amy Winehouse - you watched a few months ago in Vegas.
Your father calls you the day after that. He says he's proud and you cry with joy. (Chloe is there to see your tears, she wipes them with her thumbs, kissing one eyelid, then the other, then one cheek, then the other, then the corner of your mouth.) Of course, he never pictured out a future as a songwriter for you. You were supposed to be a lawyer, or a doctor. So, him being proud of you in the career you chose and that you excel at, is more than you've ever expected from him. It means you've worked like a Posen.
He knows Chloe, of course. You've been home with her for Easter for the past two years. You are suspicious that he already settled on the idea that she is the one for you. (You are suspicious that you are settled on that idea, too.)
He tells you to no forget about your mother's birthday in a few weeks, before ending the call, and Chloe and you plan to go shopping for a gift on Saturday. All is well.
Beca decides to drop an album at some point. You know she'll do great. The public already loves her for the collaborations she has with other artists. You think there's something to do with her bad girl look.
(They don't know that she cried with the birthday post Chloe made for her, though.
Thanks, red. Love you too. She commented, but in real life it took her fifteen minutes to put herself back together.)
"We could do it together. Me, you and a stage." She says, one day.
"No way. Do you remember when I tried singing in public in college? Disaster." You say, pouring her a cup of coffee.
"I do remember that." She says, sitting on your counter and ignoring your disapproval look. "That was disgusting, I still remember the smell." She sips her coffee. "You could just play the piano, though. No need to sing."
You hum, thoughtful. Years ago, you wouldn't even consider it. But now, it doesn't sound that bad. Chloe changed so many things, and one of them is your relationship with the public eye. You feel like you are being honest with your art, you feel like you found the balance between your personal life and the words you produce.
And yeah, you are far from being fearless, but you found the mid-term.
A tour? Well, it's an option.
First of all, Beca will be there. Second, it would be a nice change. You love your job, but you admit it would be nice – for once - to go through the entire thing with a song, not only put the scratch together and send it to someone else. Third, it sounds like a story you'd love to tell the kids Chloe says you are going to raise together. And last, you'd love to have the autonomy of writing a full album.
"I know it's a huge thing, we're used to staying behind the scene. But don't you think we could do it?" Beca says in a tone that is almost sentimental. "We are getting older and soon we'll not have the same disposition anymore."
"Are you going to cry? Chloe is not here to hug you and I'm not going to do it."
"Fuck you, I'm trying to have feelings."
"Okay, I'm sorry." You say, biting back a smirk.
"If you say yes, we start tomorrow." Beca says and you know she is serious.
Okay, yes. You think. But what you say is different. "Let's take things slow and see what happens."
"Dude, why can't you just say yes?" Beca says and snaps you out of your thoughts.
"She is saying yes to what? That's rare." Chloe asks, entering the kitchen.
She kisses Beca's cheek, then your lips and you notice she just came home from a jog. Her skin is glowing lightly with sweat and she looks too sexy to be real in her work out clothes.
"I know, her first word was no." Beca says and Chloe laughs, uncapping a bottle of water.
"That's not true." You say, annoyed.
"Yes, it is. Your mom told me." You friend says and turns back to Chloe. "Your girl is going on tour with me."
"What? No way! This is great!" Chloe says, excitedly, looking back and forth between Beca and you. "I've been telling her for years that I love her singing voice."
"Hey, spare me you pillowtalks. I'm disgusted." Beca says and Chloe just laughs. (They're idiots together. They didn't even to try to be friends, they just sparked.) "So, she's not going to sing but she'll play the piano."
"I haven't said yes yet, you know that, right?" You finally speak.
"You will." Beca says, confidently.
You pretend to not see the winkle she shared with Chloe.
Eventually, you say yes, on the day before the album is ready.
"Why are you saying it now?" Beca asks you. "You didn't really think we were going to give this to someone else, right? Dude, we're married, and this is our son. We don't go around giving our children."
"It's literally what we did all of our careers."
"No. We never did this." She pushes play in one of the first songs you wrote for the album – Chloe's favorite. And you see her point.
You totally see it.
You spend one evening planning the tour.
It's meant to be small, almost private. Small places and limited crowds. Beca points out a small theatre off-Broadway for the first show. You are okay with it.
It will be Beca, you and your piano, a drummer, a guitarist and a bass player. Small stages, moody lightning. You love it.
The rest of the tour dates are yet to be planned by the people from the label that take care of that, but Beca having a fair share of its actions, she gets to have an opinion. It will last four months. It's enough, you say to each other.
"I want to feel like I'm playing for her every single time." You tell Beca, late night.
She has her body leaned over the balcony and a cigarette in her hand. (You only need your two hands to count how many times you saw her smoking.)
She gives it a smoke and somehow, you feel it in your own body. Her eyes are focused on the skyline and she turns to you after another smoke.
"Bring her with us."
You frown from the chair you're sitting with Chloe's dog on your lap. It's not a bad idea.
Chloe goes crazy with the idea. She wants to make a short film out of it. Beca thinks it's brilliant.
"It's a little bit too nostalgic. It's like someone is going to die, like we are never going to see each other again." You say one night, over diner, in an attempt of taking her out of this. "We all know when this is over, Beca will back in this very sofa, I'll be writing songs, she'll be trying to make music out of forks, or bottles, or anything. I'll try to stop her until she convinces me it's a good idea. And it will be. We'll work over this for a week or so, and then we'll give the song to someone else. Life will be normal again."
"This was awfully specific." Chloe frowns and kisses your pout away. "But you proved my point. Don't you think I can make something beautiful out of the year in which you guys decided to make something different? The year you are not spending in this couch."
You look at her. You really look at her. You see her beautiful face and the sauce stain on the corner of her mouth.
But you see past that, too.
You see how your place it's now hers and her dog's, too. You see the few framed pictures she took in a wall that was empty until a few months ago and the vintage camera she uses for fun resting by a side table. You see her coat (deep purple) hanging beside yours (plain black). You see the plants she is watering on your balcony.
"I think you can make beautiful things out of anything." You tell her, believing in your words like never before.
Less than half a year later, the album is out, and the critics are unbelievable kind.
"If you think this is not a debut album, you are wrong. Mitchell and Posen are on the road for years, yes. But only now, I dare to say, we know who they truly are as artists. Spoiler: they are better than you think." Someone says in a famous music magazine, making Beca beam.
Well, the mainstream success was, in a lack of a better word, unexpectable. This was supposed to be a really small thing, for the public that cares about music under the radar and know little about who sold more albums last year, but suddenly it became almost mainstream.
You watch as the numbers on your social media grow, and so do the news with your name on them. The lead single is on the iTunes top 100, around the fourth position. You and Beca debate over which interviews you are going to give (a few that the label recommended and another couple for journalists that you are friends with).
You want to cover Fleetwood Mac's Don't Stop on BBC Radio One, because it sounds so much like the music you are doing, but Beca says that the best covers there are the ones in which the artists pick a song very different from theirs and make sound like one of theirs. And she is right, you notice after she gives you examples. You end up making Gnarls Barkley's Crazy sound like 70's rock. Chloe is the first to listen and she loves it.
The tour tickets sell well enough to make your label want to schedule dates on Europe. Beca says yes immediately. You hesitate until you remember Chloe will be with you the entire time. (Being in Rome and in love is probably a great experience.) You say yes and suddenly add two months touring Europe on you planner.
"I have so many places to show you there." Chloe says, curled up into your chest one morning. "I mean, this is a sabbatical year for me and it's kind of the same for you too. You are taking a break from being a songwriter to be a rockstar! Can you believe we are doing this, with each other?" She smiles at you and you feel your heart beat like a love song. "And Beca." She adds with a laugh.
"And Beca." You laugh back. "Well, there's no place I wouldn't go with you."
She kisses you, and as your hands find her hair and she moans into you mouth, you realize that Chloe is your favorite musical instrument to play. You needed twelve years of piano classes and one week to learn your first ten chords on the guitar and one evening with an ukulele, but Chloe is like you were born with the ability.
The band works like a well-oiled machine. You are surprisingly comfortable on your piano and with the audience's cheers. Beca has an energetic, yet very emotional performance for every song and you want to tell her that you are proud of her. You exchange looks during the evening and she knows. She talks to the crowd and they love her, you feel that electricity that only good concerts have.
Sometimes, when she's not in the middle of the crowd, you can see Chloe in the wings with her camera. She smiles at you and you smile back. Her laugh lines burn on your mind as you let the notes pour from your hands into the piano. It's all about for her, somehow.
"Aubrey is a crazy talented songwriter, I'm sure you know that." Beca says before every single performance of Chloe's favorite song. "One day, she fell for a girl and since then I couldn't really stop her from writing even more beautiful pieces. This song is very special for her and if it's important for her you can bet you ass it's for me to. This one, we play for Chloe. We love you. Especially, Aubrey."
They always laugh, and you always look for Chloe. She is sick tired of hearing that, but she smiles every time.
You can't remember having so much fun as you have during the tour. You are always too tired to do anything after the concerts, but there's always a feeling that mission accomplished. On your days off, the three of you walk around the cities if there's any spare time, and Chloe makes sure she has her camera with her. Your social media is flooded with pictures (there's a perfect shot of Beca that you took from where you sit, there's Chloe with her camera pointed at you, there's the band together and there's only the three of you looking tired in a backstage couch). There's no way you are ever going to say it out loud, but you love Beca and her crazy idea of going on tour.
One night, nearing the end of the tour, you are spending the rest of the evening after the concert in a hotel in Madrid. Chloe shows you and Beca some of her shots and you can't wait to see it all edited. You feel like seeing this experience through her eyes will make you love it even more. Beca excuses herself to her room and Chloe sends her away with goodnight hug and a full bottle of water, ordering her to drink all of it before sleeping.
"You sound like her mom."
"She is kind of our daughter, anyway."
You roll your eyes and you pull Chloe to you by the hand. In two weeks you be back home, and domestic life will be back. You miss your old routine so bad. You miss waking up in your own bed and making Chloe coffee. You even miss Chloe's dog that is living with her friend Cynthia Rose. You think that everything will be back to be the same as always and it's true. Although, you don't really want it to be.
"You know I love you, right?" You tell her, sitting on the border of the bed and feeling her arm falling around your neck. You have to look up to see her face because she is standing, and you feel so small. You feel like she could just put you on her jean's back pocket.
"And I love you." She kisses the tip of your nose.
"Will you still love me when I'm not a rockstar anymore?" You fake a pout and she laughs.
"Well, I hadn't really thought about that, but now that you pointed out…" She trails off, laughing.
You laugh too, laying you lips against her collar bone and planting a kiss on it.
"It's all about you. Everything." You say almost in a whisper after a few minutes in silence.
You feel her hands running against your scalp and your skin and bones' are puddle in her hands. You look up to her and there's no doubt in your mind, there's no chance that all of it it's not worthy.
She leans down and kisses you repeatedly, dozens of pecks on your lips, between longer and deeper kisses and between lingering ones on your cheeks.
"I know." Chloe kisses your forehead, then your nose, then your lips. "Thank you."
You smile at her and your cheeks hurt. Your heart aches with love and your hands bring her closer to you.
"Thank you." You say back, and she smiles.
There's no symphony that compares to her and that the only defeat you accept.
You kiss her again. She knows, and you, finally, find your mind at peace.
I wasn't planning on writing this, it just happened. Aubrey as a songwriter just stuck with me and I wanted to give her Chloe and Beca some future. I hope you guys liked it. Maybe you could leave me a review? It would mean a lot to me.
Thank you for reading.