I am literally so sorry that I fell off the face of the planet. I went home and apparently left my productivity back with my job atschool. Anyway: GOOD NEWS EVERYONE, new chapter. SLIGHTLY DISAPPOINTING NEWS EVERYONE, I'm starting back with actualclasses in about a week and a half and am taking the GRE before that. Those are my main focus right now, and I'm also trying tocrank out eight fics for Becommissar week that starts the 31st, everyone get excited. So in the mean time I'm going to drop downthe updates from every couple days to once a week, which sucks, I know, but I have to stay sane to write, u feel? Anyway, withthat, enjoy, and hopefully I can keep my shit together again and keep these actually constant.


A couple weeks later it was actually starting to cool down in LA. Beca was amazed. She thought it was going to stay hot for a fucking eternity or something. Now she could actually wear a jacket and jeans without burning up on her walk to work. It was great.

She walked into work and went to her desk. Veronica's first single off the new album was dropping today. Mack had actually decided to go with the song she'd written first. She had argued against it gently, stating that Veronica deserved to have one of her songs first, but Mack and the marketing gods decided otherwise. Veronica had understood, for which Beca was grateful.

Beca resisted the urge to go straight to iTunes and see how the song was doing. That would be stupid. It was only the first day. She should really wait until at least the end of the day. If not the end of the week. Veronica was right in that she wasn't in a super popular genre. But still, she had a good feeling. Veronica had a lot of skill. She made good music and people would notice that eventually.

Beca started to plow through her pile of demos for the day, trying to keep her mind off everything. She wondered if Lily had actually went through with those plans to hack into some foreign iTunes to send their sales skyrocketing. She hoped not, but then again, she sort of did? But still, she wanted Veronica to make it on her own, not because one of her weirdos helped them. And she would probably feel guilty and tell Veronica about it too, which would ruin it for her. No, hopefully Lily had just gotten the message and hadn't done it. She was going to have to check on that later.

She'd already gotten some texts from her friends that they'd bought the song right as it released. Beca had sent them all thanks and smiley faces and asked them what they thought. Of course they all said great things about it. Beca appreciated it as much as she knew at least some of it was trumped up because she was their friend and they'd never say a bad word about it.

At some point today someone would call her with the song blasting in the background singing along. Beca would laugh and smile and it would mean the world to her. But for now she still had hours to go on a work day that was never going to end because she was waiting for something to happen. She knew a watched pot never boiled or whatever shit the old sayings said, but still. How exactly was she not supposed to watch the so called pot in this case?

She stuffed another demo into the computer and started to listen. Beca picked up her phone. The only one that would really know what she was feeling right now was Veronica. She might as well check and see how the other woman was doing. The demo she was listening to wasn't exactly all too inspiring anyway.

"Are you dying to check how sales are doing too?" Beca sent.

"Dude, you have no idea. I hate this part of being an artist, just sitting back and waiting to see if people like it. I'd rather do a concert in front of like a million people."

Beca didn't know about that. How in the world would they even fit a million people into a stadium somewhere? There wasn't any place big enough, right? Whatever, probably not the point here.

"I just want to know. Oh my god. But like I'm forcing myself not to look until the end of the day because if I look now I'll just keep refreshing every five minutes and it'll be bad," she replied.

"I did that with my first round of singles. It was bad. I cheered every time the number went up. I think my roommates at the time wanted to kill me."

"Considering I'm sitting in the middle of the label right now, someone would definitely kill me if I cheered every five minutes. Or at least throw a stapler or something. I'm not down for getting a stapler thrown at me."

"I doubt anyone really is. Sounds painful."

Beca snorted and set her phone aside. Yeah, painful was probably an understatement considering all the staplers around here seemed to be those giant ones that could punch through like fifty sheets of paper at a time. She would get at least a concussion from getting hit with one of those.

She went through a few more demos before she picked up her phone again. She had another message from Veronica, but more interestingly she had a Snapchat from Mina. She opened that immediately, almost dropping her phone when it started playing music really loud. She turned the volume down quickly and listened in. Mina was sitting out in a courtyard with a couple other people that Beca recognized as Mina's lab buddies and they were dancing around to Beca's song. The caption on the video said "I may have introduced my friends to your song."

Beca smiled. She was glad they liked it. That made the desperation to check the sales a little less. Mina's friends weren't really pressured to like her songs like her own friends were.

She took a picture of her smiling face and sent it back to Mina. "Glad you guys are having fun."

Beca opened up Veronica's message. "I keep almost chucking my computer out the window because it's so tempting. I need to go do something. You want to get lunch later? That's something."

"Yeah, sure, gets us both out and not obsessing. Btw, all the my friends have bought the song and say they like it. Though since they're my friends who knows how accurate that is. But then Mina showed it to some of her friends and they looked like they were into it. That may be a bit more accurate of a response."

"Awesome, that vegan place again? You like demolished the nachos the last time. Ah! Good. Even if they're friends and have to like it, I don't care at this point. Ugh, sometimes I hate being an artist for that whole 'oh look uncaring public, here's a piece of my heart. Please don't squash it.' It's Not a fucking fun feeling."

"Yeah, I get that totally." She finished scribbling down her notes for the last demo. "But when they do like it, it's so worth it," she sent as an added message.

"True, but. Slightly losing my mind here."

"Also true." Beca moved on to the next demo. She looked down at the clock. Half a fucking hour had passed. Ugh. Fuck her this day really was going to drag ass.

"I think I'm going to go for a run. I'll meet you later for lunch," Veronica said.

"Cool, have fun, or at least as much fun as you can on a run. I'll see you later."

She put her phone away and went back to demos. Maybe if she found a really good one to listen to the time would pass faster, but she doubted it really. Ugh to the max.