You are bigger, she repeats to herself. It's small. So small. You can kill it by just stepping on it.
(But Chloe doesn't want that because it will be gross and no one wants to clean that up.)
"Crazy idea," she's suggested this about seventy times already. "How about we get ourselves a nice can of insecticide and—"
"No!" Chloe cries out immediately. "Those things are harmful to the environment."
So are cockroaches. They're called pests for a reason. But Beca knows what Chloe is going to say. She'll say that at least they are a part of nature and insecticides aren't.
The other option is to tell Chloe that she is as afraid of the damned thing as her. But then Chloe will run to Aubrey and Aubrey will know that Beca is afraid of something that is the size of her toe. Aubrey will never let her live that down. Unless, Aubrey is afraid of cockroaches too.
She doesn't even get to weigh the risks when Chloe screams, "Beca! It's there!"
"Where?"
"There!" Chloe points to Beca's feet.
The next thing she knows, she is standing on the kitchen table. Chloe, suprisingly, isn't.
She pretends to check the lightbulb. "All good," she says.
Of course, Chloe isn't fooled. "You know that I love you, right?" she asks.
"Uh-huh," Beca nods.
"And I'll love you even if you're afraid of tiny bugs?"
"I know," Beca says meekly.
"I'll just call Aubrey. She can take care of it," Chloe says, reaching for her phone on the kitchen counter. "They used to call her the exterminator back in freshman year." But then she puts the phone back on the counter. "This is not about being my macho protector, is it?"
Chloe does this sometimes; read Beca's mind. Beca has no idea how she does it. Beca can't do it. Actually, Beca doesn't have to do it because Chloe is an open book. She tells Beca every minute detail of her day. Like how the receptionist took all day to replace the toner for the printer. What each of her coworker ate for lunch. All the lame jokes her boss told the office.
That's how they work. Chloe overshares until Beca finds a way to shut her up, or make her louder. It depends on the day. And Beca undershares until Chloe tells her how she feels and she has to admit to all of it.
Like now.
"You don't want Aubrey to know."
"Just imagine this," Beca says. "Every conversation we have with Aubrey for the next twenty years will start with, do you remember that one time I had to save you from a teeny tiny insect?"
Chloe shakes her head. "She wouldn't do that."
Beca responds with a hard stare.
"Fine," Chloe says eventually. "She will be insufferable but we can't have a cockroach in our house. It will breed and there will be more of it in a week and before you know it, there will be baby roaches crawling all over our stuff. What do we do then?"
"Call pest control?"
"No."
"Because of the environment?"
"That, and I don't want to have baby roaches on my anything."
"Fine," Beca sighs. "Call Aubrey."
But Chloe doesn't pick her phone up. She leans her back against the counter.
"How about this?" she says. "You go to the studio tomorrow, work until late. I'll tell her that you have a very important meeting with a client and I don't want to disturb you. She doesn't have to know about all this."
"Sounds like a solid plan," Beca nods.
Chloe smiles. "Now, why don't you come down?"
"Are you really sure it's gone?"
"Babe," Chloe chuckles, "it wasn't even here. I think I saw it go into the living room."
"What?!" Beca cries out. "Call Aubrey, now! If it can go into the living room, it can go into our bedroom."
She figures twenty years of shame is nothing compared to waking up with a cockroach in her bed tomorrow.