After Barden

by Stuckinmycocoon

Chloe worries that they'll lose touch after graduation, and determines to be the glue that keeps them together if that is what is needed. These are short, yearly drabbles from Chloe's perspective about what happens in the five years after the Bellas all graduate, during which Beca plays a big role. Canon compliant through PP2.

3. The Second Year

The Second Year

Towards the beginning of her second summer after graduating Barden, Chloe finally got a good job offer. An inner city school in New York City offered her a position running their music program that they had just gotten the funding to restart. It was perfect. She was sad to leave her Florida kids, but she was sure to leave them in good hands and she promised to be available if they ever needed help. She also said goodbye and thanks to her bartending job, and found herself a tiny apartment in NYC to move into at the end of the summer. The Bellas were all thrilled for her, many of them asking if they could come visit.

It was more difficult than she thought. She was lonely in the big city, and had trouble making fast friends for the first time in her life. It seemed like the New Yorkers just weren't that friendly of a people. But Chloe was nothing if not persistent, and soon enough, she found people to hang out with.

Her students were also different from what she expected. Her Florida students were always so bright and cheerful and happy to be there. They wanted to learn everything she had to teach them, to hear every story she could tell them. Her New York students tolerated her, and it took a lot of persistence to get that much from them. Chloe had never failed anything she put her mind to in her life (Russian literature didn't count because that was failed on purpose), but she felt like she was failing here.

Aubrey came for a long weekend, as did Stacie and CR, and those were three of the best times she had all year. But the best, by far, was the week Beca came. And it was like they never parted, so Chloe didn't care so much that it was hard for Beca to find time to talk to her once a month, or that one of the emails she sent Beca didn't get a response for three months. Beca was busy, but they were still friends. If they could reconnect like this, then maybe it didn't matter how often they talked. And Beca was doing so well in her professional life, that Chloe didn't even really want to tell her how dismally she was doing in her own. So she didn't.

And when the school didn't renew her contract the following year, she played it off like it was her own choice, and returned to Tampa and her father's house.

(At least she got to see the ICCAs again. And the Bellas won, not that she had any doubt of that.)