Next chapter in this tale of fluff and nonsense. Hope you guys are still enjoying it and thanks for the patience between chapters- I'm back at uni now so still trying to write as much as possible between actual essays.
Still cheesy as ever, do not fear.
...
After washing her hands in the bathroom and rounding the last few girls from the upstairs, Chloe made her way downstairs to dinner. She walked into the kitchen, following the amazing smell of freshly baked bread and pesto, and felt a warmth settle in her heart as she looked over to the dining table.
All of the Bellas were sat around the table, bar Jessica and Ashley who were bringing over two large plates of warm buttered bread. They placed them on the centre of the table and sat down next to each other, their hands linking and coming to rest in the gap on the table between them.
Then there was Stacie and Cynthia Rose doing their best to serve up nine portions of pasta, with Stacie doing the scooping and Cynthia Rose doing the holding of the plates. Lily was passing out the full plates, murmuring something under her breath to each individual plate- probably cursing it in some obscure language- before passing it to a chattering Bella.
Flo was pouring out the last few glasses of wine, distributing them to different girls and trying her best to be heard over the chaos of mealtimes with all nine Bellas. Fat Amy wasn't really helping, more just shouting vague instructions into the room and nobody in particular whilst eating her first slice of bread.
Chloe walked to the last empty spot at the table next to Beca, who was sat looking disgruntled at the plate of pasta in front of her. Chloe just about managed to keep the smile from her face as she slid onto the end of the bench, wondering why Beca would willingly eat pasta that she couldn't stand. Was it out of guilt or something else?
"Thanks Jess, it looks super good!" Chloe grinned down the table to the blonde Bella, who shrugged with a humble smile. The rest of the girls, even Beca, all chorused Chloe's thanks whilst picking up their forks in preparation. Ashley leant over and kissed her girlfriend before Jessica smiled back at the Bellas.
"Okay, well dig in." She beamed before diving her own fork into the pasta she'd made.
And with that, the table divulged into dinner mode. For a minute or so, there were no noises except chewing noises and various compliments and contented moans about how amazing the food was. Chloe let out a sigh of her own as the light pasta hit her tongue, the basil flavour so well balanced with the filling of the homemade pasta. She literally didn't know how Jessica did it, she was the most amazing cook that Chloe knew- don't tell her mother.
Eventually, the shock of how incredible the food was died down and the table began conversation. It was mostly about what had gone on in everyone's days until Fat Amy had mentioned her latest boyfriend trouble and all the girls had focused on that, partially trying to give advice but mostly just for the gossip. Well, nearly all the girls.
Chloe glanced to her left and did a double take at the sight of Beca's plate; it was still practically full of the pasta whereas everyone else was just over half finished. She was currently eating her second slice of bread, her fork untouched on the side of her plate and her fingers picking at the bread to make each bit last.
Chloe felt her heart sink a little. She knew that Beca didn't like pesto at all and it was probably her fault that the younger girl had suggested it and would be hungry as a result. At least she had candy she liked later, Chloe reasoned as she continued to eat her dinner and tuned back into the conversation.
Apparently they had moved on from Amy's temporary boyfriend situ and Cynthia Rose was just discussing her recent trip to Cali to visit her girlfriend back home, all of the girls listening with a smile as the 'hardass' of the Bellas spoke so sweetly about someone.
"I just miss her when I'm here, you know?" CR shrugged, taking a sip of wine as the girls around the table murmured their agreements. "Even sleeping in the same bed even if she does always steal the damn duvet." She laughed, shaking her head as stabbed a piece of pasta. "Man, I'd wake up to that girl forever."
Suddenly, Beca choked halfway through a gulp of wine, spluttering the liquid back into the glass and subsequently onto her face and into her eyes. Chloe jumped before turning and grabbing the glass from Beca's hand in prevention of any glass related incident.
"You okay there DJB?" Stacie laughed from across the table, leading the other Bellas to laugh at their co-captain as she struggled out from the bench, kicking Chloe accidentally, to stand a foot away from the table. She was coughing wildly and her eyes were screwed shut to prevent the wine from dripping into her eyes.
Beca just about choked out a "Fine, yep" before she stumbled blindly to the downstairs bathroom, spluttering and groaning as she went. Chloe stood from the table and followed her hurriedly, just about remembering to put down the wine glass before she rushed to Beca's aid, leaving the seven remaining Bellas to laugh and smile at one another knowingly.
The toilet door was shut when Chloe got there, but the sound of running water and annoyed muttering from behind the panelling let Chloe know that Beca was in there. She reached up and knocked lightly on the door.
"Hey Becs, you okay?" Chloe asked trying to keep in laughter of her own as she heard Beca rant away to herself. There was a single cough before an answer.
"I'm good. Go and eat dinner before it goes cold. Oh, and tell the others if they laugh I'm going to kill them." Beca instructed, making Chloe laugh once more before she obeyed the instruction and went back through to the kitchen. The girls turned to her, amused smiles on all their faces as she sat down.
"So what was that about?" Ashley asked with a grin. The girls all leant forward, their forks temporarily abandoned in preference for embarrassing their captain. Chloe shrugged, picking up a slice of bread from the plate in the middle of the table and transferring it to her own.
"Don't know." She stabbed a piece of pasta with her fork, sparking the rest of the Bellas to follow her lead and begin eating again. "She's acting super weird today."
"Even weirder than usual?" Fat Amy challenged, taking a large bite of food. Chloe nodded, chewing on her own mouthful. Lily muttered something about hallucinogens into her wine, sparking a perplexed look on Flo's face, who sat next to her. Stacie finished her mouthful of wine and put the glass down before she leant forward into the table.
"Has something happened? Between you two I mean?"
And then it was Chloe who choked, swallowing a piece of bread too quickly. Luckily, a quick sip of wine and she had avoided any major disasters like her best friend had done a minute earlier. Chloe laughed nervously, not wanting to confess what- or more like who- she had found sleeping in her bed that morning.
"No, why would you think that? We're just friends. No. Why, what has she said?" Chloe stumbled, nervously pushing pasta around her plate and avoiding the raised eyebrow of questioning from Stacie.
"Nothing. It's just the whole asking for pasta she hates…"
"And suggesting a movie night when it's not even a Sunday." Interrupted Flo before Fat Amy nodded and gestured to what Chloe was wearing.
"Not to mention that's 100% Beca's shirt." She smirked, making all the girls apart from Chloe snicker into their food. "Wonder where you would've acquired that? Maybe after needing to find some clothes? In a hurry? Because a certain sexy Australian roommate was ascending the stairs?" Amy winked exaggeratedly with each rhetorical question, her implication so clear you could see it from space. Chloe rolled her eyes in response, ignoring the swell of laughter that erupted from around the table, mixed in with agreements of Amy's theory from several of the table.
"No, I just got it mixed up whilst I was sorting laundry actually." Chloe said defensively over the laughter before transferring a piece of pasta into her mouth disgruntled. She was frustrated not at the Bellas and their assumptions but more so at the fact that said assumptions weren't true.
She swallowed her mouthful and was just about to scold the laughing girls by assuring them that she and Beca hadn't slept together when they all fell silent at the same time, focusing their attention on their dinner hurriedly.
"What are we talking about?" Beca asked suspiciously as she sat back down at the table, peering at each silent Bella as they ate their pasta. It was Jessica that broke the brief silence, thankfully for the rest of the girls who were suffering at the hand of a Beca Mitchell death glare.
"Um, we were just talking about which movie we're going to watch later." She lied, every Bella jumping on the back of the lie and nodding.
"So, I was thinking a horror?" Stacie started the conversation, leaving the awkward silence in the past and moving the room back into the chatty relaxed setting it had been in before, with all the girls throwing in movie suggestions. Well, all except Beca who would probably happily watch paint dry instead, Chloe thought.
The conversation lasted the rest of dinnertime, until every plate was clear and there was no more bread on the tables and every girl was full. At least that Chloe could see until she glanced down to her left and saw Beca's mostly full plate.
Beca was still picking at her food, pushing it around the plate with a fork trying to find pieces of gnocchi with little pesto on them or scraping any basil from the pasta she could find and nibbling them. She had eaten her bread already and was clearly just trying to eat so she wouldn't be hungry later because being Beca Mitchell she didn't really care about seeming polite and eating so she wouldn't leave food on her plate.
Chloe just watched her for a while, the conversation still happening around her but now sounding like it was underwater as she just focused on Beca and the way her left hand manoeuvred the fork around the plate. The left hand that had snaked it's way under Chloe's t shirt earlier that morning.
Chloe sighed despite herself at that thought.
The sigh made Beca look to her right and into Chloe's eyes. Chloe raised her eyebrows in a silent question of, 'You okay?', not needing words to communicate to her best friend who just grimaced and shrugged lightly. Chloe interpreted that to mean 'I'm not loving the food but I'm okay.' and so sneaked a glance at the other girls to check they were still in conversation before handing Beca her leftover slice of bread with a smile.
Beca took the bread with a grateful smile (and maybe a hint of a blush on her cheeks if Chloe's imagination wasn't running away with her) before gesturing to her plate with her fork in an invitation for Chloe to help herself. Chloe did so, scraping just over half onto her plate before setting Beca's plate back down and winking in a silent thanks.
They didn't need words. Not when they were figuring out acapella numbers or running Bella rehearsals. Not when surreptitiously dividing up food or gauging the others mood. And, to Chloe's slight annoyance, clearly not when they woke up in bed together.