Chapter 3

Disclaimer: I don't own Pitch Perfect or any of the characters

Six Years After Graduation

A severely sleep deprived Beca Mitchell was wandering around her kitchen one August morning after a long night of video conference calls and problems with her latest project at work. So as you can imagine she was already irritated to be up at seven in the morning. In fact, in the words of Beca to her boss Dan the night before, nobody should have to be up at that "ass-crack of dawn" time of the day. But it got worse from there. She was out of coffee and any other imaginable form of caffeine and that meant she would have to go down the street from her work to the coffee shop and interact with the overly friendly people at Cup of Joe's coffee shop.

She sighed and went back up stairs to go put on her work clothes for the day. Her sense of style was no different than it was in college and she ended up putting on a patterned blouse, jeans and her combat boots she wore basically everywhere. However to anyone who knew her back then a slight change in wardrobe was obvious. Beca Mitchell no longer wore clothes from any cheap department store that she could find, no, her clothes now were designer. Designed specifically for her actually.

It wasn't something that she wanted to do, but as she started working her way up in the business Dan had pointed out that she might want to start to look the part if she was going to work with such high-end artists and celebrities. So, in came Courtney, a high end stylist and wardrobe specialist who had Beca's same style and was able to help her keep her dark and mysterious look yet raise the quality of it. It wasn't a total loss for Beca either because her and Courtney became pretty good friends, which Beca didn't have much of.

Beca's change in clothing wasn't the only evidence of her success either. Her house in the hills outside of LA had a gorgeous view and whenever they stepped inside people would comment on how beautiful the home itself was too. Of course it wasn't a huge mansion either because Beca would never be the type of person who measured her success by the size of her home, but it wasn't tiny either. It had a kitchen, which she barely used, a living room, two bedrooms and two bathrooms. However the house had one other room which Beca spent most of her time in and considered it to be her favorite. A music producing and mixing room.

This was the one area of her house where Beca didn't mind using money to her advantage and she turned the space into one she had always dreamed she would have. It had mixing boards and equipment lining one entire wall and a couch on another. One side displayed, some of the awards she had gotten over time, a decision that Courtney had made when they decorated the area, and the entire room had a plush carpet lining the floor. The place was soundproof too and often Beca would loose all track of time and end up spending entire nights working away at whatever project found her interest. Her boss Dan was convinced this room was the key to her success, something which Beca wasn't all too unsure of herself, and after she ended up winning two Emmy's and a Grammy Dan allowed her to do most of her work from home.

Unfortunately that day in late August Dan was making Beca come into the office to work face to face with the two artists they were acquiring and this forced her to leave her house.

She grabbed her purse and headed for Cup of Joe's where she ordered a coffee black with two extra shots of caffeine. She had a half hour before she had to be in the office so she picked a table outside and took a seat fully prepared to zone out for a while. But something caught her eye just down the street. It was a magician. But that wasn't what caught her eye, I mean street performers were no strange occurrence in LA. It was the life size storm trooper replica that stood next to him that drew in her attention.

Beca's mind immediately flashed back six years to Barden, or more specifically to Benji. She chuckled to herself thinking that the man down the street probably had Benji's dream job but then realized that her train of thought was starting to go towards another Barden boy, one she hadn't thought of in at least three years.

"No!" she told herself, "Don't even think about going there, its all in the past!"

And with that she got up and started to walk to work. So what if she was a little early? Dan might think the world is ending , but she couldn't risk thinking about Barden.

As she walked closer towards the magician she swore her eyes were playing tricks on her. The guy looked so much like Benji it was creepy, even startling. Then as she came within a few yards of the guy it hit her.

It WAS Benji.

To put it nicely she freaked out. Well maybe spazzed out was the better word. She choked on her coffee, ran into a person next to her, and clamored to the ground in front of the magician now known as Benji.

He stopped his performance and went to go help Beca.

"Hey are you alrigh-" he stopped in the middle of his sentence when he realized whose face he was looking into

"Beca? Is that you?"

"uh yeah.." she choked back "How's it going?" She said with a small smile, embarrassed about the scene she had just caused.

"Pretty good" he smiled back, "Listen I've gotta finish my show but what do you say we meet up for coffee or something later and catch up?"

She was startled. The Benji she knew at Barden would have never been so forward and normal about a run in like this.

"Yeah sure that'd be nice" she said back hesitantly. She wasn't sure whether this was a good idea. She had cut off all ties with Barden and never looked back. And now she was going to have dinner with Benji? It made her nervous.

"Ok how about I meet you at Cup of Joe's at five tonight?" he questioned as he pointed back down the street to the shop she was just at.

"Ok sounds good, see you then!" She smiled back, putting on a happy front to make sure he didn't catch on to how weird this situation seemed to her.

"Bye, see you tonight!" Benji called back as he went back to performing his show.

Beca walked down the street to work thoroughly shaken by her run-in with the magician. She didn't know what she had just gotten herself into and frankly she hadn't even considered what they would talk about.

Would he bring up Jesse? Would he yell at her and ask how come she didn't try harder to work on her relationship with his best friend? It was all flooding back to Beca. Little memories of her time at Barden seeped through the walls she had put up, now six years strong. She shook her head as she walked into her office and tried to get to work.

Work.

It was her life. Basically her only relationship in the time since college. Sure she had been on dates since then, Courtney made sure to get her out and about at least a couple times a month. But nothing was ever serious. She would go out with a guy, hook up a time or two after that then nothing. She never tried to continue it because she didn't see the point, they would all end sooner or later anyway so why even try to fool herself? She would never be the type of girl to have anything serious with a guy. It just wasn't meant for her.

Music on the other hand was something she couldn't live without. It was what got her out of bed in the morning and when she was sad or occasionally let herself feel lonely it was music that would comfort her.

She went through work that day ignoring the events of the morning, as she would do with any event that made her question what she felt towards people.

Beca had a couple meetings and workshops that were required for the new group they were working, so she worked through them concentrating on only the specifics, details that required her entire focus took up her whole day and before she knew it it was four. She was supposed to be meeting Benji in an hour.

She cleaned up her work from the day, rushed to the bathroom to make sure her makeup was alright and she didn't look like a total wreck after such a hectic day and then walked out of the office at 4:45 headed for Cup of Joe's.

Benji was already seated at a table when she showed up and he had changed out of his magic clothes into a pair of jeans and a t-shirt. As Beca approached him she still couldn't believe how average he looked. His hair was cut shorter and his jeans were no longer tucked into boots that over the course of college Beca had determined was his signature Benji look.

"Hey Benji!" she waved as she sat down across from him.

"Oh hey! Glad to see you made it," he responded back to her.

They talked for a while just catching up on what the other had been up to since college. Turns out that street performing was just a hobby for Benji and he actually ran a pretty successful magic shop in the middle of the city that also sold Star Wars paraphernalia. Beca told him how she was working in music production and how the company she worked for had built up a strong clientele over the years that she'd been there. Overall, the conversation was going much better than she had expected. That is until a silence came up between them. She racked her brain for more questions she could ask him about what he'd been doing since college but nothing came. They had pretty much talked about everything. And then it happened, what she'd been dreading,

"So, have you seen Jesse at all?" He asked her with hesitation laced within his words. Benji wanted to see what her reaction to his friend's name would be, but Beca thought it was just him being curious and honestly wanting to know

"Um no. Actually I havn't," She responded quietly "I actually haven't talked to him since before graduation."

Benji heard her response but simply nodded. It was clear to him she didn't want to talk anymore about the subject and obviously Beca was just as reserved about her feelings as she was during college. "Some things never change" he told himself.

She was grateful when he changed the subject to what they were eating and soon the conversation had returned to a safe topic for her.

They said their goodbyes a little while later and promised to not stay out of touch for so long this time, and with that both were on their way back home.

Beca walked through the door to her house with a sigh, glad that this day was over and anxious to just fall asleep. Little did she know that she would have to face her past even more over the following week than she did that day.

Benji returned to his apartment above his Magic shop and wondered if he should call Jesse. The two of them were still as close as they had been the day they graduated and Benji thought he deserved to know that Beca was living in the area.

So he grabbed his cellphone and dialed the familiar number. It rang and soon enough he heard Jesse's voice on the other end,

"Hey man what's up?" Jesse said through the phone. Benji could hear that he was smiling just like he always was and for a fleeting second he wondered if he should go through with bringing Beca up because it might bring back the awful Jesse that Benji remembered from the summer after they graduated, but nevertheless he felt Jesse deserved the right to know.

"I saw her today," Benji said seriously through the phone getting straight to the point. His tone was like none Jesse had ever heard before

"I'm gonna need a little bit more than that Benji,"Jesse replied back through the phone, "Was it that girl who keeps coming into the shop just to make fun of you? Because I told you man just kick her out and ban her from coming back anymor-"

"No Jesse," Benji interrupted with his tone still serious, "I saw HER."

There was no more clarification needed. Jesse knew exactly who is friend was talking about and, to say the least, Jesse Swanson was speechless.