She knew that there was just something about Beca Mitchell from the moment she laid eyes on her at the Activities Fair.
Maybe it was the thick black bracelet on her right wrist that didn't match the thin rope tied around her left. Or maybe it was the fact that she was wearing jeans even though it was August and they were in Atlanta. Or maybe it was that she looked like she was lost.
Looking back, though, she'd say that it was that she looked nothing like a Bella. And maybe that was what they needed.
"What about her?" she asked Aubrey, who, she noted, looked more and more like she was going to be sick at any moment. Aubrey looked towards the girl that Chloe had pointed out and tried not to grimace.
"Oh, uh...I don't know, she looks a little too... "alternative"... for us." Aubrey made sure to use finger quotes to emphasize "alternative", and Chloe found herself fighting the urge to roll her eyes.
Instead, she held out a flyer to the girl and tried to seem as friendly as possible. "Hi! Any interest in joining our a capella group?"
The girl glanced down at the flyer in her hand, then looked back up at Chloe with a smile on her face that Chloe could tell was at least a little forced. "Oh right...this is like a thing now."
"Oh totes!" Chloe replied, nodding her head. "We sing covers of songs, but we do it without instruments. It's all from our mouths." She pointed towards her mouth with her pen, emphasizing her point.
The girl's smile faltered for a moment and Chloe could see her bite back the urge to laugh at them. She would be lying if she said it didn't hurt a little bit, but she could understand. And besides, at least she hadn't actually laughed like plenty of others had when she'd given her pitch to them that afternoon.
"Yikes," the girl said, and Chloe could practically feel Aubrey tense next to her so she quickly continued with her pitch so that her best friend didn't speak first.
"There's four groups on campus. The Bellas, that's us. We're the tits." She pointed her pen towards where the Harmonics had set up and watched as the girl glanced over to take in their popped collars and pastels. "The BU Harmonics. They sing a lot of Madonna." She turned her head and gestured over her shoulder. "The High Notes. They're not particularly...motivated." As if on cue, some of the High Notes chuckled, and Chloe turned around again so as to not attract further attention. "And then there's..."
"Let it whip!" Chloe tried not to grimace as the Treblemakers finished their impromptu chorus. The fact that the guys hadn't even bothered to set up a booth at the fair had already irritated her for no good reason. She knew it was because they thought they were too "cool" for it- or, maybe it was because Bumper just wanted to show off. Either way...
She turned back again, catching Aubrey's eye on the way. They shared a knowing chuckle that just barely masked their irritation, and then Chloe looked back at the girl that stood in front of her, whose smile had been mostly replaced by a look that screamed "get me out of here." She decided to push forward anyway. "So, are you interested?"
The smile returned, though it wasn't accompanied by anything Chloe wanted to hear. "Sorry, it's just...it's pretty lame."
Uh oh, Chloe thought, and she thought about warning the girl to run before Aubrey had the chance to lose her cool. But it was too late.
"Aca-scuse me?" Aubrey said, stepping just ever-so-slightly closer towards Chloe. "Synchronized lady-dancing to a Mariah Carey chart-topper is not lame."
"We sing all over the world and compete in national championships," Chloe quickly interjected, desperate for Aubrey to stop talking, if only because she was pretty sure that Mariah Carey was not going to be in this girl's wheelhouse.
"On purpose?" the girl asked incredulously, and as Chloe felt her heart sink a little more, she could also practically sense Aubrey's blood pressure going through the roof.
"We played the Cobb Energy Performing Arts Center, you bitch!"
The girl's eyebrows shot up, and Chloe wasn't sure if she was offended or impressed by Aubrey's comment. From the faint grin she saw, she was pretty sure she wasn't offended, but Chloe decided to proceed with caution just in case. "What Aubrey means to say-" she saw Aubrey turn to look at her out of the corner of her eye, but ignored her- "is that we are a close-knit, talented group of ladies whose dream is to return to the National finals at Lincoln Center this year." She paused, trying to think of what she could possibly say to still salvage any hope of recruiting this girl. "Help us turn our dreams into a reality?"
She knew it was hopeless even as she said it, but she smiled anyway and tried to ignore how her voice had wanted to crack at the end.
"I'm sorry, I don't even sing. But it was really nice to meet you guys."
And then she gone and Chloe looked down at her clipboard so that she didn't have to look at Aubrey.
"What are we going to do?" Aubrey eventually asked through gritted teeth.
Chloe gripped the clipboard, watching her knuckles go white. "Well, maybe not insulting the prospective recruits would be a little helpful next time?"
"Chloe, she insulted us first! She said that we were lame!"
Chloe just shook her head and looked back up at the crowd of students still milling about. Another freshman caught her eye and she forced the smile back onto her face as she stepped forward with a flyer in her outstretched hand. "Hi! Any interest in joining our a capella group?"
(She tried to ignore the contemptuous snort that came from her best friend)
Beca was pretty sure that she was having a stroke.
That was the only thing that could possibly explain why there was a buck-naked redhead in her shower looking at her with a crazed look in her eye.
"Dude!" Beca exclaimed, quickly covering her breasts with her loofah with one hand and reaching for the shower curtain with the other. She drew it across, only for the intruder to open it again.
"How high does your belt go?" the still-extremely-naked girl asked, reaching past her to shut off the water.
"My what?" Beca glanced at the now-turned off valve before her eyes shot back up towards the girl. "Oh my god."
"You have to audition for the Bellas," the girl said, her tone extremely serious.
"I can't concentrate on anything you're saying until you cover your junk," Beca said, trying to keep her eyes trained at the ceiling while also keeping her arms crossed tight across her chest.
"Just...consider it," the redhead said. "One time, we sang backup for Prince." Beca reached for the shower curtain, drawing it across herself while the girl kept talking. "His butt is so tiny that I could hold it with like, one hand." She cupped her hand for emphasis.
A bottle of shampoo got knocked over, the sound echoing in the stall.
"Oops," the redhead said, but Beca ignored her and quickly picked it up, choosing to turn herself around so that her back was facing the girl who didn't seem to be leaving anytime soon.
"Seriously?" Beca said, turning her head so that she could see what the girl (who, now that she got a good look at her, was definitely familiar) was doing. She tucked her head away again. "I am nude."
"You were singing Titanium, right?"
Beca's ears perked up and she found herself looking back at the girl again. "You know David Guetta?" She fought the urge to wince at the excitement she could hear in her own voice.
"Have I been living under a rock? Yeah! That song is my jam!" She paused and leaned in closer to Beca. "My lady jam."
Beca turned away again, feeling her face grow hot. "That's nice."
"It is. That song really builds." She winked at Beca, who offered a tight-lipped half-smile in return.
"Gross."
"Can you sing it for me?"
"Dude, no! Get out!"
"Not for that reason," the girl said. She widened her stance a little, her hands coming to rest on her hips. "I'm not leaving here until you sing, so."
Beca bent her head for a moment, then looked back at her with another tight-lipped expression that was definitely not a smile. The girl sighed dramatically, and Beca knew. Just knew that she wasn't joking. She wasn't going to leave.
And so she turned around. Slowly, and with her arms still tight across her chest, she faced the redhead and tried not to look her in the eye as she began to sing. "Bulletproof, nothing to lose..."
"Fire away, fire away."
Beca went for the lower octave while the redhead went higher. She knew she should have been surprised that the girl had joined in, but she wasn't; not at all, actually.
Her gaze locked onto the sky-blue eyes that hadn't looked away yet. "Ricochet, you take your aim..." She felt a smile tugging at the corner of her mouth, but she fought it off. "Fire away, fire away."
Their eyes didn't leave each others as they continued with the chorus. "Shoot me down, but I won't fall. I am titanium."
Beca found herself thinking about their harmony as they repeated the lines again. It was one that she would have added to the song if she had been re-mixing it; a missing component to the original that would elevate it even higher. And so she found that her voice rang out louder than she normally would have let it, the barest hint of a smile pulling at her lips as they finished. That smile grew bigger when the redhead grinned at her.
(I should see if she'd be interested in recording some vocals)
But then she remembered where she was and what she had been doing, and she couldn't keep herself from glancing down at the taller girl's extremely-exposed body before she pursed her lips and quickly averted her gaze towards the ceiling again. That was apparently enough to cause the redhead to take the hint, because she looked down at herself. "Oh! Yeah." She placed her hands on her hips again and looked back at Beca. "I'm pretty confident about..." she gestured towards herself. "All this."
Beca tried not to smile, settling instead for an uncomfortable cross between a grin and a grimace. "You should be."
The girl nodded at her and kept smiling for another moment before she said "Oh," and turned around to grab Beca's towel off of the rack behind them. She turned and handed it to Beca, who took it and half-heartedly covered herself with it.
"I still need to...shower," she whispered. And then, because this stroke apparently brought along its buddy, mister brain aneurysm, a guy peeked around the corner of the stall, also completely buck-ass naked.
"You have a lovely voice," he said, and the redhead turned around to eagerly nod at him.
"Thanks," Beca said, her tone all but screaming "get the fuck away from me." He nodded at her in a manner that made it explicitly clear that he was checking her out, and she was fairly certain part of her soul died.
Beca shot the girl the most incredulous of looks, and eventually she took the hint. "Oh." She exited the shower, leaving Beca standing there with a towel pressed against her chest and nothing but confusion in her head. She was pretty sure that it really had been a stroke until she heard the redhead call over from the other stall.
"See you at auditions!"
"Oh my god," Beca whispered, her back pressed against the cold tile of the shower stall.
Chloe Beale, 8:45 p.m.
Bree! I found the perfect addition to the Bellas!
Bree 3, 8:47 p.m.
It better not be that alt chick, Chloe
Chloe Beale, 8:53 p.m.
…...
Chloe expected that the next time she would see the mysterious singing freshman would be at auditions.
So when she caught a flash of brunette hair and red and gray checkered plaid out of the corner of her eye while heading to meet up with Aubrey for dinner after her biology class, she didn't expect to turn and have it actually be her.
But there she was, with her back pressed against the trunk of a tree and a laptop held on top of her knees. A pair of ridiculously large headphones rested over her ears, and as Chloe watched, her head bobbed along to whatever she happened to be listening to.
God, Chloe really wanted to know what she was listening to.
It was that desire that found her veering from her course across the quad towards the tree the freshman was lounging against. And it was that desire that had her tossing her own bag onto the ground before she plopped herself down beside her.
"Hey!"
The freshman jerked away, and Chloe quickly realized that, somehow, she hadn't heard her approach. "Dude!" The laptop started to slip from her knees, and Chloe found herself reaching out at the same time as the girl to grab it before it could hit the ground. "What the hell?"
"Oops! Sorry about that!" Chloe smiled at her, letting go of the laptop as soon as she was sure the other girl had a good grip on it. "I guess you didn't see me come up, huh?"
"Definitely not!" The girl sat up straighter, lowering the lid of the laptop enough that Chloe couldn't see what was on the screen. She pulled the headphones off of her ears, moving them so that they wrapped around her neck before turning her head to glare at Chloe. "What do you want?"
Chloe tried not to feel hurt by the edge in the girl's voice. "Just thought I'd say hi! And to see what you were listening to, because you looked like you were really enjoying it, and-"
"Are you stalking me?"
Chloe blinked, the words she had been about to say dying on her lips. "What?"
The girl angled herself so she was as far away from the redhead as possible. "Are you stalking me? Because, like, I'm pretty sure you're stalking me."
The smile threatened to fall from Chloe's face, but she tried to keep it from wavering. "I'm not stalking you. Why would you even think that?"
She was met with a pair of arched eyebrows and an incredulous expression. "Are you serious, dude?" Her voice dropped so that it was almost a whisper, and Chloe watched her eyes dart around them quickly. "Dude, complete strangers don't just drop in on people while they're in the shower! Or scare them half to death while they're minding their own business!"
Chloe rolled her eyes."Fine! Let's not be strangers, then. I'm Chloe Beale!" She stuck out her hand. "And you are?"
The girl glanced at her hand, but made no move to shake it. "I'm not telling you my name."
"Why not?" Chloe said, jutting out her bottom lip in a pout that might not have been completely exaggerated.
"I don't want to make it easier for you to stalk me!"
"I'm not stalking you!" A few of the passing students around them turned their heads at that, and Chloe winced as she watched the girl hide her face in her hands. "Oops. Guess that was a little loud, huh?"
"What do I have to do to make you go away?" The girl asked, her words muffled by her hands.
"Oh, come on, stop being so overdramatic."
Stormy blue eyes peeked at her through parted fingers. "I'm so not being overdramatic."
"Yes, you are." Chloe waved her hand, watching the girl's eyes dart towards it for just a moment. "You know who I am now, so if you really think I'm stalking you, you're free to go make a report with campus police. But, and I stress this, it's kind of hard to stalk someone whose name you don't even know, so..."
"Well, you've done a fine job of it so far," the girl muttered, but she let her hands fall away from her face.
"Completely coincidental, I promise you," Chloe said. She wished that she wouldn't have stubbornly put her hand out, because her arm was really beginning to ache from holding it there. But there was no way she was giving up now. "So, how about that name, huh?"
"You're insane."
Chloe shrugged. "I mean, it's possible, but I don't think I am."
The girl pursed her lips, and Chloe saw her eyes glance towards her outstretched hand again. "If I tell you my name, will you go away?"
Ouch. She tried to not let the hurt show in her expression, but by the slight softening of the girl's hard features, she knew she had failed. "If that's what you want."
There was a brief pause, then a heavy sigh. "Fine." The girl reached out and gripped Chloe's hand for the briefest of moments before pulling it away again. "Beca."
"Beca...?"
"I'm not telling you my last name, dude." Her lip quirked upwards so quickly that Chloe wasn't even sure she had seen it, but the playful twinkle that remained in her eye told her that she had. "Last names cost extra."
"Well, Beca," Chloe said, drawing out her name just long enough for the freshman to groan. "Name your price, and I'll see if I can match it."
Beca rolled her eyes and reached up to grip her headphones. She didn't pull them back onto her head right away, though. "I'll invoice you."
Chloe fought the urge to roll her own eyes, and instead reached for her bag. She opened it and began to rummage through it.
"What are you doing now?" she heard Beca ask, a slight whine in her voice.
"One second!" she replied, pulling a notebook and pen out of her bag. She quickly jotted something down on the corner of one page before tearing it out and holding it out to Beca. "Here's my number. You know, so you have somewhere to send that invoice." She winked, and felt a surge of satisfaction rise in her chest as she watched the younger girl blush.
"You have the weirdest methods of trying to recruit people into that sorority of yours'," Beca said, but she took the scrap of paper anyway, tucking it into the front pocket of her jeans. Chloe hoped that meant that she would program it into her phone later.
"The Bellas are not a sorority, we're an a capella group, and I don't need to recruit you because I already know you're coming to auditions." Chloe glanced at her watch, then, realizing that she had, in fact, been heading somewhere before making her detour. "Shoot! I have to go."
She had risen to her feet and closed her bag before Beca finally had the chance to say anything. "Dude, I'm not coming to auditions!"
Chloe pretended that she didn't hear her. "I'll see you there!" She turned her head, grinning as she met Beca's perplexed gaze. "It was nice to officially meet you, Beca."
She turned back and began to walk away, ignoring the grumbling she could just barely hear coming from the freshman behind her. And then:
"I'm not joining your cult, Beale!"
Chloe just smiled and continued walking.
Unknown Number, 10:57 p.m.
I'm serious, Beale. It's not happening.
Chloe Beale, 11:01 p.m.
Hopefully this is Becca and not some random person who found my number written on a bathroom stall? Either way, it's definitely happening.
Unknown Number, 11:33 p.m.
Is your number usually written on bathroom stalls? Because I have some concerns about that
Chloe Beale, 11:35 p.m.
You're totally deflecting...and even though you technically haven't confirmed your identity I'm going to put you in my phone as "Becca ?" and hope for the best
Becca ?, 11:43 p.m.
Is the question mark because you're still not sure that it's me, or because you haven't earned my last name yet? Also it's spelled *Beca*. And we're definitely circling back to that bathroom stall comment at some point
Chloe Beale, 11:45 p.m.
Well, I mean, you just confirmed that it's you, so
Beca ?, 11:53 p.m.
Do you enjoy being a pain in the ass?
Chloe Beale, 11:55 p.m.
Immensely. Also, you texted me first so really, this is on you.
Beca ?, 12:45 a.m.
It definitely is NOT.
Chloe Beale, 7:13 a.m.
Is too
Beca ?, 10:54 a.m.
Why are you like this
Chloe Beale, 10:57 a.m.
You know you love it
Beca ?, 11:07 a.m.
Nope. Not even a little bit.
Chloe Beale, 11:15 a.m.
You do.
Chloe Beale, 11:16 a.m.
Also you still haven't sent me that invoice yet
Beca ?, 11:21 a.m.
…
Beca ?, 11:23 a.m.
Don't hold your breath
She didn't really know why she had texted Chloe. She certainly hadn't planned to; when the redhead had given her her number, Beca had taken it with the expectation of tossing it into the nearest trashbin when she got the chance. But she hadn't done that, and later that night after Kimmy Jin had gone to bed, Beca had pulled the scrap of paper out of her jeans and programmed the number into her phone and then, for some ungodly reason, decided to text her. She blamed her boredom.
That had started the back-and-forth exchange that had kept Beca's phone buzzing in her pocket during her Intro to Philosophy class. It wasn't like she gave a single fuck about philosophy so she sat in the back row and kept texting Chloe just because it gave her something to do that didn't involve old dead guys who, in her opinion, just needed to get laid more so that they could focus on something other than metaphysical and metaphorical bullshit.
Her last message had been pure bait, intended to see how the older girl would respond to a challenge, but she had sent it over ten minutes ago and still hadn't gotten a response and she was beginning to worry that she had gone too far and actually made Chloe give up. Not that she would really care, of course, but-
Her phone lit up with a new notification, and she quickly grabbed it so she could read it.
Crazy Shower Chick (Chloe), 11:37 a.m.
Fine, but you should know that I have *crazy* lungs, so I can hold my breath for a really long time
Beca rolled her eyes and was about to start typing back a reply when she heard the professor clear his throat. She looked up and realized that the professor (whose name she hadn't bothered to learn) was staring right at her with his arms crossed and with the same stern look on his face that she had seen on her own father's earlier in the week when he had reprimanded her for not "trying something new."
"Is my lecture on Descartes interrupting something, Miss..." he trailed off, and Beca realized that he had no clue who she was, which made sense considering this was maybe the third time she had actually shown up for his class.
"No, sir," she answered quickly, shoving her phone into her pocket as inconspicuously as possible. She tried to ignore the tittering and staring of her classmates' as they watched the exchange, but her cheeks had already begun to burn from embarrassment.
"I should hope not," the professor said, keeping his gaze focused solely on Beca. "And just as a reminder for everyone, this is a device-free class! Phones should be turned off and away, people!"
He finally turned around, and Beca let out the breath she hadn't realized she was holding.
"Nice going," she heard the guy next to her say under his breath, but she chose to ignore him.
Beca, 12:15 p.m.
You totally got me in trouble during my class, dude
She sent the text while she was walking back to Baker. Hopefully, Kimmy Jin would still be in class and she would be able to have the room to herself for once and maybe, just maybe, she'd be able to actually work on the mix that she had been trying to work on when Chloe had interrupted her yesterday.
The phone buzzed in her hand before she even got halfway across the quad.
Crazy Shower Chick (Chloe), 12:17 p.m.
Got caught looking at your phone?That doesn't really sound like it's my fault
She began to type out a response, ready to list the reasons why it was absolutely Chloe's fault, but then her phone buzzed again.
Crazy Shower Chick (Chloe), 12:17 p.m.
Also, wanna grab lunch? My treat
Beca stopped walking and re-read the message, the sharp words that she had begun to type staring up at her from the screen. She deleted them, then read Chloe's text again.
"Keep walking or get the hell off the sidewalk!" she heard someone say behind her, and she realized that she was still standing in the middle of the walkway. She moved to the side, letting the obviously irritated guy walk past her, not bothering to look up to see the stink eye he was throwing in her direction.
She decided that she was going to turn Chloe down. Simple as that. That way, she wouldn't have to listen to whatever spiel the older girl had prepared about why her weird-ass singing group was so awesome and she could just go on with her life without having to think about fucking a capella. And who cared if her dad wanted her to join a club? It wasn't like there weren't a billion and a half other clubs on campus. Hell, she could probably tell him that she joined the chess club or something. It wasn't like he was going to check, right?
She started to type out her reply, debating whether or not she should apologize for turning her down, when her stomach growled.
Right. She hadn't eaten yet. Like, at all. She had chosen to sleep in rather than seek out breakfast, like she had done most days since arriving on the Barden campus.
But that was no matter. She could always just go to the dining hall and grab something, right?
But then she actually thought about the food at the dining hall and how it never seemed to be quite the right color or texture and she was pretty sure that she had once seen a hair in her salad and her stomach began to turn.
Shit.
Beca ?, 12:21 p.m.
Fine. Where did you have in mind?
The Peach Pit wasn't the most popular restaurant in town, and it certainly wasn't the fanciest. But Chloe had loved it from the minute she stepped into it for the first time during her freshman year, when she and Aubrey had been wandering around in the early morning hours after their Bellas initiation, both drunk off their asses and in desperate need of a cheeseburger. Aubrey had wrinkled her nose in barely-disguised disgust when they walked inside but Chloe reminded her that she had literally just drank god-knows-what out of a goblet that was probably never cleaned and apparently that was enough to get her to get over some of her reservations because she sat down in the booth and let Chloe order her a burger without complaint. And maybe it was because they were both teetering on the edge of blackout, but they both agreed that the food was delicious.
("It's fucking delicious," was Aubrey's exact phrasing, and Chloe had slapped her hand over her mouth in shock because it had been the first time she had heard her roommate drop the f-bomb. That led to both of them dissolving into a fit of giggles that certainly annoyed the few other people who decided that a diner was the best place to be at two in the morning. It was one of Chloe's favorite memories.)
But Aubrey wasn't there now, and Chloe had made sure that she hadn't told her where she was going when she had texted her with an apology and a promise to have dinner together instead of lunch, like they had planned. The text she had gotten back had been full of questions and thinly-veiled irritation, but Chloe decided to hold off on answering until after she had lunch with Beca.
She honestly hadn't expected the freshman to take her up on her offer. Hell, she hadn't even really given much thought to the offer itself because she was so sure that she was going to get turned down. But then Beca had said yes and asked her where she wanted to go and Chloe had sent her the directions to The Peach Pit and hoped that the dingy diner wouldn't scare her off.
The bell above the door rang, and Chloe looked up towards the entrance quickly, hoping that it would be Beca who had walked in. Unlike the first five times that the bell had rang, where Chloe had looked expectantly towards the door only to find that the person walking in was certainly not Beca, this time Chloe's eyes landed on a pair of familiar headphones and she stood up.
"Beca!" she waved, trying to catch the girl's attention. "Over here!"
She saw the younger girl roll her eyes from across the diner, but she walked over and shrugged her backpack onto the bench opposite of Chloe before sliding in next to it. "Hey."
"Hey!" Chloe sat back down and smoothed out the skirt of her dress. "Glad you could make it!"
Beca leaned back against the hard red plastic of the booth, crossing her arms. "Well, it was either this or suffering through the sludge that they serve at the dining hall, so..."
"Yeah, it's so gross, right?" Chloe pushed her menu across the table. "Here, choose whatever you want, it's on me."
Beca's eyebrow rose as she picked up the menu. "You know that buying me lunch doesn't mean you get to learn my last name, right?"
Chloe sighed, propping her elbow on the table and resting her cheek against her hand. "It was worth a shot."
Beca's eyes remained on her for a moment before she glanced down at the menu. "Why do you want to know it so badly, anyway?"
"Because! It's kind of silly to be friends with someone and not know their last name, Beca."
Steel-blue eyes shot back up to glare at her. "We're not friends, Beale."
"Sure we are! Or, at least, we're going to be."
"Don't I get a say in this?"
Chloe shrugged, letting her arm drop so it could fold across the other on top of the table. "I mean, I guess, but considering you showed up here I can't imagine that you don't want to be friends with me."
"I wanted a free lunch."
"Uh huh." Chloe looked up and saw a waitress approaching them. "Hi!"
The waitress, a middle-aged woman named Nancy who, after three years, was used to seeing Chloe Beale sitting in her booths, smiled sweetly at them. "Chloe! How you doin', sugar?"
"Doing great, Nancy! How are you and Charles?"
"We're doin' just fine, honey." She nodded towards Beca. "You've got a fresh face with you today!"
"This is Beca! She just started at Barden," Chloe said, beaming in Beca's direction. Beca shrank down in her seat, her discomfort evident in the way she tried to make herself smaller than she already was.
"Hi," she said meekly, gripping the menu a little tighter and closer.
"Nice to meet ya, darlin'! How you likin' Barden so far?"
"Oh, uh, it's..." Beca trailed off, and Chloe could have sworn that the freshman looked almost queasy. "Fine?"
Nancy's eyebrow crept up, and although she didn't stop smiling, it was evident that there was a slight edge to it. "Oh?"
Chloe decided to step in before the younger girl had the chance to panic even more. "She just hasn't had the chance to have the full Barden experience yet, you know? It took a little while for Georgia to grow on me, too, but look at me now! Don't worry, I'm going to make sure she loves it here just as much as I do!"
Beca shot her a look, but Chloe didn't acknowledge it because Nancy's eyebrows had come back down and her smile grew warm again as she looked at Beca. "Barden is a lovely place, darlin'. And you've definitely found the right girl to show you that." She leaned in towards Beca, hiding the side of her face behind her notepad. "She's a real sweet girl, that Chloe is," she said, almost whispering but not quite. Beca's cheeks flushed pink and she looked like she was trying to think of something to say to that, but then Nancy winked at her and straightened up, turning back to Chloe. "So what can I get you two?"
Chloe arched an eyebrow at the waitress, but gave her her order and her menu. Beca mumbled hers' as well, though from uncertain look on the freshman's face, Chloe was fairly certain that she just chose the first thing she saw on the page without thinking about it. Nancy wrote them down and promised she'd be back soon with their drinks before sauntering away from their table.
"You're so adorable when you're nervous," Chloe said, and Beca shot her another look.
"I was not nervous," she said, crossing her arms. "Or adorable," she muttered, almost as an afterthought.
"Oh, really? Not nervous at all?" Chloe leaned forward. "Then what would you call it, because I don't think I've ever seen anyone look like they were going to puke just because a waitress asked how they liked their school before."
"I didn't..." Beca began, but Chloe was giving her that look again, the look that she received in the shower that day when she reminded the redhead that she was nude, and so she cut herself off and glared at her. "Why do you keep looking at me like that?"
"Like what?"
"Like I'm some kind of shiny new toy for you to play with."
"Is that not what you are?" Chloe joked, but from the look on Beca's face it was obvious that she didn't find it funny, so she held her hands up in front of her. "Sorry, I was just kidding. But seriously, Beca, I'm not sure what you're talking about. I'm just looking at you."
Beca was about to respond, but then Nancy was back and placing their drinks in front of them, and whatever she had been about to say disappeared. Instead, she picked up her Coke and took a sip, keeping her eyes trained on the bubbles in her glass rather than daring to look back up at Chloe.
Chloe took a sip of her own drink (a vanilla coke with actual vanilla syrup) and wondered again why Beca had actually taken her up on her lunch offer. But she didn't ask.
It was Beca who spoke first, much to Chloe's surprise. "Why did you ask me to lunch, Beale?"
Chloe had been in the middle of a sip when Beca spoke, so she took the time to swallow and set her glass down before answering. "I told you. I want us to be friends."
"But why?"
She shrugged like the answer should have been obvious. "Why not?"
"You don't even know me."
"So? That's the point of becoming friends with people, Beca. You get to know them."
Beca finally looked away from her drink and Chloe was once again struck by how dark her eyes were. "Why don't you drop the act and just say that you're desperate for singers for that stupid group of yours'? It would save you the trouble of having to pretend that you'd want to be friends with me."
Her words were cold and biting and so unexpected that Chloe wasn't sure if she should be heartbroken or pissed off. "What?"
And then Nancy was back, sliding plates in front of them. "Here you go, darlins! Turkey club for you, Chloe, and a BLT for Miss Beca."
"Thanks, Nancy," Chloe said, somehow managing to force a smile.
"Y'all enjoy now!" Nancy walked away again, seemingly oblivious to the tension that hung in the air between the two girls.
Beca picked up her fork, poking at the pickle on her plate with pursed lips and hunched shoulders and an absolute refusal to look back up at Chloe. "Look, I appreciate you buying me lunch and all, but..."
"Shut up, Beca." Chloe hadn't bothered to touch her food yet, choosing instead to cross her arms tight across her chest with her hands gripping her elbows."I don't know what your problem is, or why you feel the need to accuse me of anything, but if you haven't noticed, I haven't even brought up the Bellas since we sang together. You're the one who keeps bringing us up. So I'd appreciate if you'd give me the slightest benefit of the doubt and accept that I don't have any ulterior motives here other than wanting to get to know you. And if you don't want that, that's fine. Lunch is still on me." She watched Beca glance towards the aisle and for a moment was sure that she was going to get up and leave. But she didn't move, and so Chloe kept going. "But you texted me first, remember? So I'm pretty sure there's at least a little part of you that wants to get to know me, too."
Silence fell over their booth, broken only by the muffled conversations of the other diners around them and the clattering of pans in the kitchen. Chloe watched as Beca turned her attention back to her plate, pushing the pickle around some more before she sighed. "Mitchell."
"What?"
"My last name is Mitchell." Beca speared the pickle on the tines of the fork and took a bite out of it, chewing slowly and swallowing before looking back up at Chloe. She didn't speak again, though, and Chloe eventually realized that she wasn't going to.
"Oh." She let her hands fall away from her elbows, feeling the tension in her shoulders release as the younger girl took another bite out of her pickle. "Beca Mitchell, huh? That's a nice name."
"Yeah, well, don't wear it out," Beca grumbled, but Chloe could see the hint of a smirk at the corner of her mouth.
They didn't speak again for a few minutes, each pretending to be more focused on their sandwiches than each other. But the tension had mostly dissipated and after she had eaten half of her turkey club, Chloe began asking inconsequential questions and Beca had answered most of them, and by the time she had paid the check and they were saying goodbye, she knew at least five new things about Beca Mitchell.
Those five things were, in Chloe's determined order of importance:
5. She was from Portland, Oregon
4. She was an only child
3. She didn't like tomatoes (this wasn't an actual question that she answered, but Chloe had paid attention to the way she had removed each slice from her BLT like they were practically poison)
2. She hadn't declared a major yet
And the most important thing (and the one that Chloe was most determined to change):
1. Beca Mitchell really, really didn't want to be at Barden University