Beca walked with her mom over campus. Chloe had left them after lunch to go change for practice. Beca, of course, had rolled her eyes at her friend but she knew that Chloe just wanted to give mother and daughter a little time to catch up before they would meet again at practice - Grace had insisted on coming to the Bellas rehearsal since she wanted to meet the group.
"Chloe seems really sweet," Grace said and Beca looked at her suspiciously before she answered.
"She's amazing and no, she's not my girlfriend."
"I didn't say anything about that, honey," Grace sighed.
"No, but you were looking at us, I saw it," Beca gave back a little testily.
"I thought you were too captivated by those amazing blue eyes to notice." The DJ sighed.
"Mom, please, can we not talk about this?"
"You started it," Grace gave back irritated but then shook her head. "That was a childish thing to say. And I'm sorry. You make your own choices in life and you chose Jesse as your boyfriend. And I'm happy for you, really I am," she told her daughter and lay an arm around her shoulders. Beca sighed.
"It's not that I don't like Chloe, she's my best friend, just..."
"I know, you're not into women and that's okay," her mother reassured her or tried to because Beca wasn't really buying it:
"Only, you don't believe me."
"It's not important what I believe, angel. You're your own person. I just think that it might do you good to... experiment a little, see what's out there. Not tying yourself down..."
"Tying myself down!" Beca huffed. "Having a boyfriend hardly constitutes as tying myself down. I mean... Jesse is... you'll meet him, he's cute and fun."
"So, you're in an open relationship, as they call it?" Grace asked and Beca looked at her wide-eyed.
"Hardly, I mean, not that we talked about it but...I don't think Jesse would like it if I went out with another guy... or girl."
"And that's the problem with your whole generation. You take monogamy for granted and if you don't talk about it you'll never know whether he would like to go out with someone else, male of female. Whether he would like to have a threesome, maybe, or..."
"MOM!" Beca yelled and stopped walking. "Can we please talk about something else?"
"Honey, you really need to losen up about this. Sexuality isn't something that is god-given. It's something you acquire through trying things out, seeing what is out there and sometimes just going for it. I'm not telling you to go and get some handcuffs and a whip - unless you're into that - but, for Pete's sake, angel... put yourself out there. You're such a beautiful young woman, a wonderful person... why not share that with other people?"
"I do share with other people - my friends. You don't have to sleep with everyone to be popular, mom," Beca told her mother.
"Are you trying to slut-shame me, oh, daughter of mine?" Grace smiled, she knew that her daughter thought her a little bit lose when it came to sex but she simply liked to enjoy herself and others. She wasn't tied down, as she put it, she had every right to as much fun as she wanted to have.
"If the shoe fits," Beca grinned and her mother laughed. "Seriously, though. I'm just trying to find out if... sex is at all for me," the younger woman contemplated.
"Why shouldn't it be?" Her mother asked. She lay her arm back over her daughter's shoulders and they resumed their walk. Beca shrugged to her mother's question.
"I'm 19 and so far... well, apart from taking matters into my own hands...," she blushed but knew her mother wouldn't mind the topic. "I haven't been with anyone, you know that. And I mean, I like Jesse and I like kissing him and... him touching me but..."
"It doesn't turn you on?" Her mother asked very honestly and saw her daughter blush some more and actually close her eyes in shame. Beca shrugged again. "That doesn't mean that you're not sexual. The fact that you masturbate is proof that you have cravings but maybe...," she stopped herself and her daughter looked up at her.
"But maybe I'm just not that into Jesse? Is that what you wanted to say?" Beca asked her mother.
"Beca, please, don't be offended. I know I've gone overboard last year when I said I thought you were a lesbian, okay? I learned my lesson. I'm sure Jesse is a nice young man and I hope he respects you and won't pressure you... I just don't want you to be with someone because society or the mainstream media tells you that's who you should be with. You're an intelligent young woman, too intelligent, in fact, to buy into all that crap," Grace told Beca.
"Exactly, I'm too intelligent to buy into that crap because I got a mother who taught me that. Now you have to trust me that I know who I am - or will at least find out on my own. Okay?"
"Awww, honey. It's just so hard. You're my little angel," Grace pulled her daughter into another tight hug. She had missed Beca so much, sure, they talked on the phone a lot but that just didn't cut it. And talks like these never seemed to happen over the phone.
Beca hugged her mother back, she too had felt the void in her life since she had left for college. But to a certain degree it had also been freeing. Her mother had certain opinions, opinions she would like her daughter to share, that just didn't sit well with the DJ. Not, because Beca was conservative or prudish but just because she hadn't had the same experiences, at all or yet. She wanted to form her own opinions about things and sex for her was much more complicated than it seemed to be for her mother, or ever seemed to have been for her mother.
"Okay, no more sex talk for today. Just show me your dormroom and introduce me to your roomie. And then I want to meet the Bellas, okay?" Beca nodded. That she could do, that was easy.
"And these are the vending machines where I sometimes get lunch, sometimes dinner, never breakfast, though," Beca pointed out to her mother.
"Because you don't eat breakfast," her mother nodded and smiled.
"Exactly. Dormroom is this way, excuse me," Beca made her way around some students standing in the hall and the next thing she knew she saw her father standing infront of her room. "Damn," she cursed under her breath but this was also the moment he saw her.
"Beca, there you are. Dr. Lemont told me you missed class again and...," and then he saw his ex-wife just behind his daughter. He tried a smile but his was as unconvincing as Grace's own. The women came over to where he stood.
"Hello, Kenneth," Grace said cooly.
"Grace, how're you?" she just nodded but didn't ask how he was. Useless to say the divorce had taken a toll on both of them and what little regard they had left for each other.
"Great," Beca mumbled under her breath. "I guess we better go in, I don't want to subject anyone to my life's dysfunction." She tried the door before she unlocked it, relieved that Kimmy Jin wasn't in. They all went into Beca's room and Grace started looking around curiously.
"It's nice... pretty small, though," Beca nodded to that notion.
"So, about that class. Dr. Lemont said that you might fail it. He's still waiting for an essay from you," her father told her.
"I know, so do most of my other professors, dad. I think I might have told you that I'm not that interested in a higher education when the year started," she told him.
"I thought that had changed with that singing group of yours. You really need to focus on your studies, Beca."
"You practically blackmailed me into joining campus life and now that I do you want me to focus on my studies? You really need to make up your mind what you want me to do here, dad. I'm a little at a loss," Beca shot back.
"Are you actively planning on leaving here without a degree. You know, most people can actually do both, get a degree and have a social life. I can't see why you can't, you are an intelligent young woman and..."
"I know, dad, I have heard that argument already today. Okay?"
"I think you should take whatever you want out of this experience, angel," her mother said and smiled at her from the window. She had looked out while her ex and her daughter were fighting, trying to get to the core of what she wanted for her daughter and this was it - whatever made Beca happy she should have and take. She did hope this would include a degree but if not then that was Beca's decision. She was an adult now and it was time that she and her ex-husband treated her as one.
Beca smiled up at her mother.
"Like you did?" Her father's voice snapped at Grace.
"You seem to forget that I did get a degree," the tall brunette answered him in the same tone of voice he had used on her.
"A degree in art history? That's like going to Hogwarts and being a Hufflepuff!"
"Dude, what? No," Beca stared at her father wide-eyed. What did just happen?
"Don't call me dude, I'm still your father. And I think the comparison was quite accurate," he prided himself.
"Who told you about Hogwarts, dad? And Hufflepuff?"
"Travis has been reading the books and students always seem to refer to them, too. So, I'm currently reading them. They're actually very fascinating. The references to Lord of the Rings and other works of the fantasy genre. Rowling obviously knew what she was doing, I would almost say that the whole series is quite post-modern," he told his daughter.
"If you're such an expert on all things Potter, Mr. Comparitive-Literature-Professor, you shoud know better than to slight the Hufflepuffs. Bacause most of the medical personell of the wizarding world, healers, they were Hufflepuffs. Madame Pomfrey was a Hufflepuff and she can grow back bones in your body, she's badass," Beca gave back and looked at him like she'd just schooled him.
"How does it feel to have your daughter teach you something about your field of expertise, Ken? And without her ever having had a class in it, too," Grace gloated.
"No one ever doubted that our daughter has brains, it's just that she chooses not to use them in class... that's at least how your professors see it," Ken Mitchell turned from his ex-wife back to his daughter.
"Have you talked to all of them?" Beca asked in horror.
"Really, Ken, you..."
"How else was I supposed to..."
"You can't just go around..." They were all talking over each other, voices raised and Beca suddenly felt a flashback to when she was younger and very angry at her parents for always fighting. She felt her stomach drop at the memory and held up her hands.
"Stop! Stop this! Damn, you guys are divorced. You shouldn't be fighting anymore, okay?" She told them and they all went very quite for a moment.
"You're right, I'm sorry, honey," Grace said and lay an arm over Beca's shoulders. "Fighting's over," she promised as she kissed her daughter's head.
Ken, on the other hand, just stood there. He knew that he was the outsider in this familial group. He had missed most of Beca's teens and he was painfully aware that he would probably never be as comfortable as his ex to comfort his own daughter. Of course, they would both tell him that it had been his decision and, of course, he could never tell them that he regretted it - the move further south, not the divorce because the divorce had been necessary.
"Well, I guess... could you please try and find something that interests you, Beca? And then dive in, please? Just try," he pleaded.
"You know what interests me, dad," she told him.
"Yeah, I know but there are music programs at Barden. You could do something like that... like Jesse. Doesn't he study music?"
"Yeah, he does," Beca said and nodded.
"You could take some classes together, maybe," Ken suggested.
"Maybe... we'll see, dad." Beca wasn't promising anything but he felt that he had gotten through to her.
"Okay, well... I guess, I'll be on my way then. Sheila's probably waiting with dinner," he said and blushed lightly when he realized who he had said it to. His ex just lifted an eyebrow, it was a mocking gesture. "It was good to see you, Grace," he said.
"As always good to see you, Ken," she said and almost sounded sincere.
"And you're supposed to be the adults here," Beca huffed.
"I think from now on we should just imagine that we were all adults," Grace said with a slight smile and looked pointedly at her daughter.
"I'm down with that if it keeps dad from stalking my professors," she gave back and in turn looked at her father. He rolled his eyes at the two of them.
"Alright," he groused. "And if we're so adult, maybe you two could come to dinner one of these nights? That is, if you're staying awhile?" He looked questioningly at his ex.
"Only a couple of days," she answered.
"Maybe we can still do it?"
"Is Sheila going to be there?"
"Of course, Sheila will be there. And Travis. We would all sit down at one table and eat a nice family dinner." He knew himself that it was a bad idea, his wife would never sit down to dinner with his ex and vice versa.
"I think that's called have your cake and eat it, Ken. Not going to happen," Grace promptly informed him and he nodded.
"Okay, it was just an idea - a bad one, apparently." This time it was Grace who nodded and he turned to the door.
"Well, I'll see you, Beca. And Grace... I guess, we'll be talking when you're back home."
"Bye, Ken," Grace said and those were really the only kind words she had addressed at him through their meeting.