It's so embarrassing the next day. Fat Amy helped you to bed, and you cried all over her. It's so embarrassing because all Chloe did was kiss you and you all but collapsed. You could pass it off as too much to drink, but Kommissar had already kissed you and your knees had remained stable and the moment you get the message reading 'What rules?' you know you're screwed.
You're with Jesse; that's why you made those damn rules in the first place.
'can't touch u', you send her.
'I'm sure you're physically capable of touching me,' she sends back, needlessly formal. It makes you unaccountably nervous, even though she strives for grammatical correctness in her texts.
'not mentally capable,' you send back. 'not if i don't want to ruin things with Jesse. Or u.' You're being honest, too honest, and this is a conversation that you should have with Jesse before you have it with Chloe. Then again, she's the only one to notice what's been going on for two years.
Then again, she's not the only one you've withdrawn from.
'How would touching me ruin things?' Chloe texts back, and you sigh and run your fingers through your hair.
'i pretty much passed out when you kissed me. is that a clue?'
'Happens to everyone :P' she sends, and suddenly you're a bit mad.
'please don't. i can't do this. im sorry.'
'You're my family Beca, I can't just walk away when you're hurting.'
The word 'family' makes you throw your phone across the room, curl up into a ball and cry until Fat Amy comes back to the room and envelopes you with sympathy.
A few minutes later there's a knock on the door. It's Chloe, of course. It should by all rights be Jesse, but he's not here and Chloe is, Chloe, standing backlit by the hallway lights, her hair radiant, her mouth uncertain.
"I know you probably don't want to see me, but I bought these." Chloe holds up a couple of Styrofoam containers that smell like maple syrup. Fat Amy leans across you, snatches two of the three, says 'payback bitches' and wanders into the kitchen, presumably to eat. Chloe leads the way into the bedroom, sits on the bed that's obviously yours (discarded flannel strewn over the sheets, laptop open on the bedside table). You sit next to her, close but not touching and she cracks open the pancake box. There's a knife and fork in there, and Chloe cuts off a bite and offers it to you.
You shake your head. Your phone churps and it's a message from Jesse.
'what was that last nite?'
You nearly message back 'drunk and overwhelmed. sorry' but you keep backspacing. You think Chloe can see your phone screen but you're not sure. You make sure to angle it towards her before typing your new text.
'I may be gayer than I originally anticipated,' you eventually send.
'what does that mean for us?' he asks, and you love him, you do, but you look up and Chloe is pushing her hair back behind her ear with the most uncertain look on her face so you take the fork, take the pancake bite and hand the fork back.
You walk into the bathroom, lock the door and hit the call button. Roaming charges be damned, you're not doing this via text.
"Jesse. I tried to make sure this didn't happen," you tell him, ready for the accusations to start but he just sighs.
"Yeah, your rules. I appreciate that you tried, but Beca, Chloe is an amazing catch and I think I saw this coming."
"Wait, you knew about the rules? How did you find out? I never told anyone." You're freaking out a little; Jesse knew about this?
"I got back from that Sigma Theta Delta party and you were drunk, you showed up at my dorm and you told me I was adorable and you told me the rules. You seemed so certain that it was going to work that I didn't have the heart to tell you it really wasn't. I've seen the way you look at her. The way she looks at you. I just hope one day I find someone who looks at me like that." He sounds a little wistful.
"That's because you are adorable when you're drunk. And I trust you. And I love you. Are you sure you're OK with this? You just flew all the way to Copenhagen to basically break up with me. And you're doing it over the phone, which really defeats the purpose." Jesse laughs.
"Beca, we're both moving on after college. You know I'm moving a 5 hour plane ride away. I guess I wanted to get the most out of this because, well, you're amazing. And I'm sure going to miss you when you're gone, but I know you'll be in good hands. The best."
"I don't even know if she feels that way."
"The girl burst into your shower to force you to sing a duet with her. Naked. She wrestled you away from a very tall and intimidating German who, might I add, has also made me sexually confused which is weird because I already liked women. I think you got this, Beca."
"Thanks, I guess. Look, I really do love you. It's just… I don't shiver when you touch me."
"Oh yeah, she kissed you last night and you went down like a tree… I'm yelling timber," he sings, and that's the moment you know you'll be friends with Jesse forever. He's aca-awesome. "How was it?"
You sigh. You don't even have to words to describe how it was. "Pretty amazing, really. Can't believe it took three years. It took me way too long to figure it out. She's so… right."
You chat a bit longer, then he asks if you want to meet up for breakfast and you remember Chloe in the other room.
"She brought me pancakes," you whisper co-conspiratorially into the phone.
"Then go eat them with her, idiot! Get off the phone, I'll see you for lunch maybe?"
"Sounds good."
"Later BeCAW."
When you go back to the bedroom there are two pancakes left and Chloe hands you the box, stands up.
"I'd better go," she says.
"No, wait. We broke up." You set the pancake box next to the laptop.
"You don't seem upset," she says, a little confused.
"We're still friends. He understands."
"What does he understand?"
"That if one gorgeous and talented girl has to make rules about touching her almost equally gorgeous and talented friend, maybe the first girl should not be with the guy she's been dating for a few years but go and find that friend who makes the world stop with the palms of her hands on her shoulders." Chloe looks confused and you have no idea what you just said. "He gets it. Whatever this is. And if his girlfriend is so tempted by her physically flawless bestie that she spends two years awkwardly not touching her, maybe it's not going to work out in the long term."
"Beca, what are you saying?" There's a sinking feeling in your stomach. You know you're talking fast and making unnecessary hand gestures but you know she has to know what you're talking about so this has to be a rejection of sorts.
"I'm saying that I've been so attracted to you, so affected by your touch that since I started dating Jesse I had to stop touching you because I knew once I started I would never be able to stop. And that would be unfair on Jesse. And you. And me, because you have no idea what I'm talking about." You start digging at the pancakes with the fork.
"So if I were to…" she grabs your hand, intertwines your fingers, "that would be ok. But if I…" she lets her hand go limp, and you let it drop from yours. "I see."
"Well, not anymore, because there's no Jesse and no more rules." You take a deep breath and reach for her hand. You let your fingers drift between hers, then bring hers to your mouth. You kiss her knuckles, then raise your gaze to meet hers. Her breath has caught, and her teeth catch her lower lip. "Your hands are definitely softer than Kommissar's," you tell her, and she cups your face.
"I think I owe that woman a fruit basket. Or a toaster oven," Chloe lets out breathlessly. You just hum contentedly, nuzzle your face into her hand, close your eyes a little. She brushes some hair out of your face. "I wish you'd said something earlier."
"How do you tell someone that just touching them makes you feel like you're cheating on your boyfriend?" You meet her eyes and she nods.
"I thought I let you know that you were part of my lady jam." You laugh and pull Chloe into a hug in which you can wrap your arms around her, rest your hands on her back, run them across her ribs. She smells amazing and she feels so good pressed up against you like this. It feels so good to trace the ridges of her ribs, the knobs of her spine.
"Jesse called me a Chlomo. I think he's right."
Chloe laughs at that, pulls away a little and brings a hand to your face. She brushes your hair back but the eye contact she gives you makes you feel as naked as you were in that shower your first week of college. When she kisses you, she still tastes like coconut, but also a little like maple syrup and home.
Fat Amy pauses on her way out of the room to snag a 20 from Beca's purse. She owes Cynthia Rose some money now, but Lily owes her. It'll all shake down in the end, because everyone loves a Bloe.
Beca and Chloe have rules. Stupid rules, like whoever takes the garbage out gets to choose the movie that night, like if Chloe cooks Beca does the dishes and if Beca proposes, Chloe has to say yes.
Author's note: Vegemite chocolate is a thing you should try if you can. I think this is the end?
The reason I picked up on the way Beca keeps her hands off of Chloe as much as she can is because I've been doing the same dance with a straight girl who's become very touchy and also very remindey of how straight she is. So I keep my hands off her, and any other straight women for that measure. So as soon as I saw Beca deliberately not touching Chloe, I thought about Jesse, and how Beca is self-assured but also uncertain and saw in that a reason for not wanting to touch one of her best friends; because it might negate every other touch in her life.
Hope you enjoyed, review if you'd like or can see this going somewhere else.
I work in the corporate world, by the way, and a man very senior to me came into the kitchen and started talking about 'that Glee movie' he got free tickets to and this is how the rest of that went.
"It was terrible."
"Don't you dare. You do not dare. You're terrible."
"Worst movie I've ever seen."
"You're the worst movie I've ever seen. That movie is made of rainbows and Anna Kendrick is a goddamn unicorn!"
And then I stormed out of the break room. I am still employed which gives grounds to Anna Kendrick actually being a goddamned unicorn. In other news I need less caffeine and codeine in the afternoons.