There were about a million other ways Beca could have spent her Saturday afternoon. She could have taken another shift at the radio station. She could have worked on writing her philosophy paper. Hell, she could have asked Kimmy Jin if she wanted to hang out and play that weird tennis video game that she and her Korean Club friends always seemed to be playing.

Okay so maybe that last one was a bit of a stretch, but at least it would have been better than having to listen to a bunch of tone-deaf nerds screeching out Kelly Clarkson.

Hell, she didn't even know why she was there. She had told Chloe that she wasn't coming, so it wasn't like she was expected to show up. And she seriously did not want anything to do with a capella. Like, who even liked a capella?

(Other than Chloe, of course)

She hadn't planned on showing up at all. She had sat in her room and purposefully ignored the clock when it turned to 3:00 because there was absolutely no way in hell she was going to the auditions. She maintained that conviction at 3:15 and 3:30 as well. But then it was 3:45 and she could hear her dad chastising her in her mind and if sucking it up and singing a song for a bunch of weirdos meant that he would pay for her to go to LA, then she should probably just go sing that song.

It wasn't like they would ever choose her, anyway. The stuck-up blonde who had been with Chloe at the activities fair obviously hadn't liked her, and Beca was fairly certain that she was not going to like the fact that she didn't even bother to prepare "Since U Been Gone." In fact, she was banking on it. Hopefully her dad would accept her auditioning as "putting herself out there" and stop pushing the issue and she would be able to go back to focusing on her music.

Just one song. That's it. Hell, it didn't even have to be good. She could just throw the audition and it would be fine and-

"Okay, that's everybody!"

Beca's ears perked up, and she realized that in her attempts to block out everyone else who was auditioning, she had managed to miss the fact that they had stopped singing. Shit.

Her feet were moving forward before she had the chance to stop them, taking her out of the shadows that she had been lurking in. She spotted Chloe sitting next to that blonde chick, noting that both of them looked less-than-thrilled, and she was about to say something to get their attention when Chloe spotted her.

"Oh, wait! There's one more!" she heard Chloe say to the two guys on stage. And then she was turning back to Beca and flashing her the most excited smile she had ever seen and Beca knew she was fucked because there was no way that she would be able to throw the audition and risk disappointing her now. "Hi!"

Chloe had waved at her and so she returned it awkwardly. "Hello."

Chloe motioned her forward, and Beca realized that she was moving way too slowly. "Um...I didn't know that we had to prepare that song." A lie, of course. It had been on all the flyers that were posted in seemingly every bathroom stall on campus (and on the one that was currently lying on Beca's desk).

But if Chloe knew she was lying, she didn't show it. Instead, she gave her a reassuring wave, the smile still on her face. "That's okay! Sing anything you want."

Of course she'd be accommodating, Beca thought. She knelt down on the stage and pointed towards the yellow cup of pens on the desk in front of them. "Uh...may I?"

She ignored the look on the blonde's face and focused on Chloe, who was already nodding and motioning for her to take it. So she did, dumping the pens on the desk as carefully as she could, wincing as some of them rolled away. Then she crossed her legs beneath her and tried to get as situated as possible before throwing a nervous grimace in Chloe's direction.

And then she started clapping.

She didn't look up right away, choosing instead to focus on the rhythm of claps and cup movements, but she wished that she had because then she would have been able to see the look on the blonde chick's face and she just knew that it had to have been hilarious. As it was, when she did cast a glance towards them, the blonde looked like she was ready to snap her pen in half.

Chloe didn't look like that, though. Chloe still looked excited. And when Beca finally started singing, she looked almost contemplative. She was barely smiling anymore, at least, not the toothy smile that she had flashed at Beca earlier, but she was nodding in a way that made Beca feel like she was doing something right.

It wasn't a long audition at all; just one verse, actually. She could have done the whole song, and had done so when she had practiced it in her room during the rare instances when Kimmy Jin was gone, but there was a spotlight on her and definitely more than just two pairs of eyes and if one verse wasn't enough than that was too damn bad.

She ended the song with an echoing slap of the cup against the stage and crossed her hands on her legs before looking up at them with a slump of the shoulders and an expression that she hoped said "there you go" but that she feared read more along the lines of "I'm about to have a panic attack."

The looks she got in return were vastly different. The blonde didn't look like she was going to break anything anymore, but Beca didn't really care for the pensive pursing of the lips that had replaced it.

Chloe, though. Chloe was beaming.

Crazy Shower Chick (Chloe), 8:37 p.m.

Beca! Oh my god! That was so amazing, holy shit! I knew you could sing, obviously, but! I didn't think you were going to show up?

Crazy Shower Chick (Chloe), 8:38 p.m.

Oh, also, I'm outside your dorm and you have about two minutes before I knock on your door and I'd suggest changing into normal clothes in that time if you're not already wearing some!

Beca, 8:40 p.m.

Wait, what?

"You are literally the worst, Beale," Beca whined for what felt like the fiftieth time, stumbling when her foot caught against an uneven segment of the sidewalk.

"Oh, hush," Chloe said, tightening the hold she had on Beca's arm so that she didn't go flying into a shrub. "Just be thankful that I offered to come get you and not Aubrey, because she would be a lot less gentle than I am."

"You're kidnapping me, Chloe!" Beca raised her voice, twisting her head from side to side in a vain attempt to attract the attention of any passerby that she couldn't see beneath the hood. "Help! I didn't consent to this!"

Chloe sighed and stopped walking. The sudden lack of motion caused Beca to pitch forward again, but just like before, Chloe's grip prevented her from falling. "Dude!"

"If I take the hood off, will you stop complaining?"

Beca nodded vigorously. "Yep, definitely."

"Promise that you're not just going to try and escape again?"

"Cross my heart."

The second that the hood was off her head, Beca broke that promise, wrenching herself out of Chloe's grasp and whirling around so that she could run back to Baker.

Chloe had been expecting that, though. So instead of standing there dumbfounded with the hood in her hand, she tackled Beca. She had made sure neither of them ended up face-down on the concrete, but in doing so, she caused them to fall into a hedge.

"Oh, come on!" she heard Beca groan, and she smiled despite the irritation she felt about having to resort to such drastic measures.

"You're the one who tried to run!"

"Yeah, well, you were kidnapping me!" Beca tried to get up, but Chloe's weight was still on top of her, pinning her against the shrubbery. "I'm literally eating leaves here, Chloe!"

"Should have thought about that before trying to make a run for it, Becs!"

"Oh, so now you're using nicknames? What kind of Stockholm-syndrome game are you trying to play here, Beale!?"

Chloe rolled her eyes and pulled the still-struggling freshman out of the hedge. The hedge hadn't been thorny (thank god) but it had still managed to leave tiny scratches on both of their arms. Beca had gotten the worst of it, though, and Chloe found herself reaching out to pluck a leaf out of her hair. Her other hand, though, remained firmly grasped around Beca's wrist. "You promised that you weren't going to try and escape, Beca. It's not my fault that you broke that promise."

Beca glared at her, twisting her wrist in a half-hearted attempt to break free again. "I didn't realize that auditioning for a freaking a capella group meant that I'd be taken against my will!"

"So you didn't read the fine print at the bottom of the audition flyer?"

"There wasn't any fine print," Beca muttered, and Chloe shot her a knowing smirk.

"Didn't know that you had to prepare that song, huh?" she said, leaning closer so that she could brush a twig off of Beca's shoulder. Beca groaned again, and Chloe was pretty sure she saw a hint of red on her cheeks.

"Dude, look, I..."

Chloe shook her head and began pulling them along the path again. "You're not exactly a Kelly Clarkson type of girl anyway."

Beca shot her an offended look. "I could sing Kelly Clarkson if I wanted to!"

"I didn't say that you couldn't!" They came to a stop at a crosswalk, and even though there weren't any cars around, it was obvious that Chloe wasn't going to walk across until the little walking man symbol turned on. "Also, you totally have to teach me that cup routine sometime, okay?"

"Yeah, okay." Beca glanced down at the hood that Chloe held in her other hand, realizing that she hadn't been made to put it back on. "Uh, so, are you going to get in trouble if I'm not wearing that...thing?"

"Oh, you're going to wear it," Chloe replied. The little walking man appeared, and they began to cross the street. "But honestly, it's easier to get you there if you're not tripping over everything, so I won't make you put it back on until we're outside. Just don't tell Aubrey."

"Outside of where?"

Chloe just grinned and continued to lead her forward.

Beca should have known that things were going to get weird from the second Chloe had shown up outside her door with a hood in her hand and that grin that stretched from ear to ear. And sure, the whole "being led across campus in a hood" thing was fucking weird. But not as weird as the initiation ritual that she and the rest of her ragtag cohort had just been made to go through.

The hood had gone back on once they reached their destination, which, if the sign outside was any indication, was just a gymnasium. But the excitement pouring off of Chloe had been enough to make Beca not complain too much when the hood came back on over her head.

"This sucks," she had muttered, and Chloe had shushed her before leading her inside.

And then there had been a dramatic removal of the hoods, and a forced drinking of "the blood of the sisters before them" (which Beca was adamant about not drinking until Chloe leaned over and whispered that it was just Boone's Farm), and then a recitation of a really weird creed that for some ungodly reason focused way too much on their sex lives.

(There had also been a lot of candles for some reason, and all she could think about were all those damn fire safety seminars that the University required them to sit through at the beginning of the term)

Then there was a lot of screaming and cheering and Beca was pretty sure that that Fat Amy chick chugged the rest of the Boone's blood and suddenly she was a Barden Bella.

It would have already been way too much if the night had ended there, but of course there was more. There was always more.

Aca-initiation Night, as Aubrey had called it, turned out to be a party held in an outdoor arena, with members of all the a capella groups on campus (Beca still couldn't get over the fact that there were multiple groups of people who wanted to do this shit) stumbling around and mingling with each other. It was fine, she guessed. A party was a party, even if she still didn't know what she was doing there and was certainly far less excited than literally everyone else.

And talking about excitement-

"Becaw!"

Fucking Jesse.

The dude was persistent, she had to give him that. And he really wasn't too bad when he wasn't making really lame pop culture jokes or trying to ask her a million and a half questions that she was never going to answer or singing to himself constantly but he was also apparently a really flirtatious drunk and she was not nearly inebriated enough to deal with his comments about how they were destined to have "aca-children."

But she didn't have to put up with him for long before he got distracted with fetching drinks for them both (something she hoped would take a long time). She thought she was going to get a moment of reprieve, or at least silence, after he left, but that hope was dashed when Chloe Beale appeared out of nowhere and took the place where Jesse had been standing only a moment before.

"Hi!" Chloe said, grabbing both of Beca's wrists in her hands.

"Oh!" Beca didn't have to time to stop herself from being tugged towards the redhead. She was distinctly aware of how close their faces were- hell, she could smell the vodka and fruit on Chloe's breath. The grip that Chloe had on her wrists was surprisingly strong, though, and she knew it would be pointless to try and break free.

"I am so glad that I met you," Chloe said, her voice airy and excited. She leaned in closer, forehead almost touching Beca's. "I think we're going to be really fast friends."

"Yeah? Well, you saw me naked, so," Beca replied, throwing in a wink without thinking about it. "Also haven't you already decreed that we're friends, Beale?"

Chloe's grin grew wider. "I sure did! See, I told you that we'd be fast!"

"You're drunk," Beca said with a laugh, and Chloe nodded.

"Oh, totes." She let go of one of Beca's wrists, keeping the other firmly in her grasp. "Come on! This ginger needs her jiggle juice, and you need to start catching up!"

Beca let herself be dragged along down the risers and towards an obscenely large trashcan filled with what looked to be fruit punch with slices of oranges, limes, and pineapples floating on the surface. Chloe finally let go of her so that she could grab two plastic cups. She dipped them into the trash can before turning and handing Beca one that had an orange slice. "Here!"

Beca looked down at the drink in her hand and wrinkled her nose. "There's absolutely no way I'm drinking something that came from the garbage, Beale."

"It's jungle juice, Becs! See, look." Chloe took a sip from her own cup, swallowing dramatically. "It's safe!"

Beca lifted the cup up, sniffing it hesitantly. "Uh huh. And it comes in a trash can because...?"

Chloe reached out and took her wrist, leading the cup towards her lips. "Just because. Now would you shut up and drink some?"

Beca rolled her eyes, but took a drink. "You're peer pressuring me, Beale."

A look of horror formed on Chloe's face. "Oh my god, I'm so sorry, I..."

It took Beca a moment to process what was happening, and when she did she immediately started laughing. "Hey, Red, I'm joking!" She took another sip, larger this time, and tried to ignore how the orange slice hit her nose. "See? I was joking. You didn't peer pressure me, okay?"

It was too late. Chloe was already pulling her in for a hug that threatened to spill both of their drinks and it was all Beca could do to keep hers from splashing down the other woman's back, and she just hoped that Chloe had enough sense to keep hers from doing the same.

"You're...crushing me...Beale!"

Chloe hummed in her ear, tightening her embrace. Beca was pretty sure that she took a sip of her drink behind her back, too, based on the swallowing noise that she was sure she heard. "What did you say, Becs?"

"Personal space, dude!"

"Oh." Chloe held on for a moment longer before letting Beca go. "Sorry, I forget that other people might not be huggers, too."

"It's fine! Just...a little warning would be nice next time."

"Can do!" Chloe's smile re-appeared, and Beca couldn't help but grin back.

"Dork," she said, taking a quick sip of her juice so that Chloe wouldn't be able to see her smile.

"Yeah, but I'm your dork," Chloe replied, reaching out with her index finger and tapping Beca on the nose for emphasis. Beca rolled her eyes and tried to ignore the voice in her head that was telling her to run.

"You're everyone's dork, Red."

Chloe arched an eyebrow as she looked at Beca over the rim of her cup. "That's the second time you've called me that, you know."

"What? Red? I'm pretty sure I heard Fat Amy call you that first," Beca said, hoping that Chloe wouldn't be able to tell that she was lying. As it was, she couldn't quite figure out what the expression on Chloe's face was supposed to convey, and it was beginning to make her a little uneasy.

"Hmm," Chloe hummed, mostly to herself. "Maybe."

Instead of saying anything else that would dig her deeper into embarrassment, Beca decided to chug the rest of her drink. If she was drunk, then she'd at least have something to blame for the way her cheeks kept burning every time Chloe looked at her.

"Refill?" Chloe asked, and Beca nodded, handing her her now-empty cup. Chloe dipped it back into the juice and handed it back to her. Beca noted that the orange slice had now been joined by a sliver of pineapple. She also tried to ignore how much backwash must be in that trash can if that was the method for refills.

"Thanks," she said, and Chloe smiled and nodded before she turned to top off her own cup. When she turned back around, she looked like she was going to say something to her, but then the song changed and her eyes lit up.

"Oh my god, I love this song!" she squealed. "Becs, come on, let's go dance!"

"Oh, uh..." Beca started to say, but Chloe's fingers had already closed around her wrist and she had started pulling her towards the teeming mass of bodies that had congregated in the center of the atrium. "Look, Beale, I don't..."

They reached the makeshift dance floor, and Chloe immediately started swaying back and forth in time with the music, practically shouting the lyrics as she did so. It was a song Beca hardly knew, but based on the energy of the crowd around her, it was something popular and so she tried to pretend that it was more familiar than it was. She also tried to pretend that her personal space wasn't currently being invaded by Chloe Beale's hips.

"Becaw!" she heard Jesse yell from somewhere to her right. She winced, and for what felt like the thirtieth time that night, wished that she had just taken that extra shift at the radio station instead of going to auditions.

"I think you're being summoned," Chloe said, bending close to her ear so that Beca would be able to hear her over the music.

"Yeah, I..."

"Do you want to go hang out with him?" Chloe glanced back up towards Jesse, who was trying to fight his way through the crowd towards them. "I don't mind if you do. He's pretty cute, and-"

"No." Beca slipped behind Chloe, hoping that the few inches in height difference would be enough to hide her from Jesse's sight. "No, I really don't."

"Becaw!"

Chloe looked towards Jesse for another moment before turning her attention back to the freshman currently trying to use her as a human shield. "We can get out of here, if you want?"

"What?" Beca shook her head. "No, I don't want to take you away from the party, and..."

"It's not like there won't be more parties, Becs." She smiled down at the younger girl, who was very obviously trying to keep an eye on the rapidly-approaching Treblemaker. "Besides, I have wine and a bluetooth speaker back in my room, and we can have our own party!"

Beca finally tore her gaze away from Jesse and looked at Chloe. "Look, Beale, I can just head out on my own. There's no need for you to feel like you have to accompany me or anything, especially when your friends are still going to be here. I'll be fine."

"BeCAW!"

Beca's eyes flew back over towards Jesse, who had managed to get stuck behind a group of students (led by Fat Amy, of course) doing the limbo. "Jesus Christ."

"Beca." Chloe waited for her to look back up before continuing. "Let's get out of here, okay?"

She thought about arguing with her, or demanding that she stay put while she went back to Baker on her own. Thought about the mixes she could be working on, or the sleep that she desperately needed to catch up on now that she was actually attending her philosophy lectures. But Chloe was smiling at her, and the jungle juice had started to make her brain feel a little like a cotton ball, and so she found herself nodding.

"Okay. Lead the way, Red."

Chloe's smile grew wider at the sound of the nickname, and she held out her hand. Beca glanced down at it, worrying her bottom lip between her teeth, but then she intertwined her fingers with Chloe's and let her pull them off of the dancefloor.

Bree 3, 10: 45 p.m.

Please tell me that I didn't just see you leave with the alt-chick, Chloe!

Bree 3, 10:47 p.m.

You're co-captain! You can't just ditch aca-intiation night!

1 missed call from Bree 3, 10:49 p.m.

Bree 3, 10:50 p.m.

Chloe Anne Beale! Answer your phone!

The first Bellas rehearsal was...well, not great.

Chloe knew that it was going to be a shitshow when she woke up to find that she had seventeen unread texts, five missed phone calls, and one voicemail from Aubrey. She played the voicemail first, holding the phone away from her ear when Aubrey's shrill shouting crackled through the speakers. Beca had been watching her carefully from the pile of pillows and blankets on the floor, and so Chloe clicked out of the voicemail and hoped Beca wouldn't ask about it. She didn't, but Chloe was pretty sure that she saw a flash of concern in the freshman's gaze when she sat up and asked if Chloe wanted to grab something for breakfast.

Chloe had turned her down, giving her a half-assed excuse about having to get some homework done before rehearsal began. Beca just nodded and offered to help clean up the mess they had made, but Chloe shook her head and said that she would take care of it. She wasn't all that surprised when Beca didn't argue (she didn't really seem like the tidying-up type).

After Beca had left, Chloe had pulled her phone back out so that she could finally open the texts waiting for her, discovering that they ranged from "where the hell are you?" all the way to "I'm going to literally murder you, Chloe Beale!" That didn't really surprise her, either. What did surprise her was that she didn't bother to text Aubrey back.

It wasn't like she had anything to make excuses for, anyway. She and Beca had just hung out for a few hours, drinking the bottle of Boone's Farm that Chloe had stashed away in her mini-fridge and listening to Spotify playlists that Beca had pulled up on her phone. When the wine was gone, she had honestly expected that Beca would just want to go back to her room. But they had kept talking instead, and when Beca's head had started to nod forward, Chloe told her to stay the night. Beca shook her head and began to argue, but her words had grown slurred and her eyelids grew heavy, and so she gave up her protestations pretty quickly. She had insisted that she sleep on the floor instead of sharing the bed, though, even though Chloe told her that was ridiculous.

("You're being ridiculous," she had said, and Beca had just nodded and curled up beneath the blanket Chloe had given her.

"Shut up and go to sleep, Beale.")

But Chloe didn't go to sleep, at least, not right away. She had laid in her bed for what felt like hours, going over the new information that she had learned about Beca Mitchell.

Beca didn't like movies. Like, at all. Chloe had discovered that after offering to throw in a DVD, only to be turned down with a grimace and the admission that she didn't like them. At first, Chloe was sure that she was joking because seriously, who doesn't like movies, but then Beca had apologized and offered to watch one anyway, and Chloe realized that she hadn't been joking. The look of relief on Beca's face when she had put away her DVD collection had made something in Chloe's chest ache.

Beca preferred white wine over red, though she'd drink both. She hated rosé because it "tasted like cheap boxed red wine that had gone wrong."

Beca worked at the radio station with the Treble who had been trying to get her attention.

Beca hadn't declared a major because she didn't plan on sticking around long enough to need one.

There had been other things, too, little tidbits that had sounded almost like confessions when Beca said them, but Chloe didn't focus on those as much because she had realized that even though Beca had joined the Bellas (which Chloe had meant to ask about, but had forgotten to), she certainly didn't plan on staying at Barden. In fact, Chloe was pretty sure that if given half a chance, Beca would leave the University and never look back.

That's why she wanted so badly for the first Bellas rehearsal to go well. If she could just show Beca that the Bellas were worth sticking around for- that there was a reason for her to stay- then it would all be alright.

But, instead, Aubrey spent the fifteen minutes before rehearsal began chastising her and demanding answers that Chloe refused to give, and then she had kicked out both Kori and Mary-Elise without even consulting with her, and Beca had called her out on it, and Chloe found herself trying to calm her best friend down so that she didn't hurl everywhere again.

She should have called it there. But Aubrey insisted that they keep going, and Beca kept pointing out the same sort of things that Chloe had brought up to Bree more than once (like, keeping the same set that Alice had created last year? What was even up with that?), and even though the smile on Aubrey's face didn't waver, Chloe knew that she was about to lose it if Beca didn't shut up. She tried to get Beca's attention during the choreography segment of rehearsal, pretending that she needed to actually move Beca's arms for her so that she would get it right. However, when she leaned in to whisper a warning in Beca's ear, the younger girl had muttered that she knew what she was doing and shuffled out of Chloe's grasp before she could speak. And then Aubrey was yelling for her to get Stacie to stop molesting herself, and she was forced to walk away from Beca before she could tell her to stop needling her co-captain.

Then they were singing, and her throat burned in a way that had become familiar to her, and they didn't sound great but they didn't sound terrible but it wasn't enough. Still, Chloe thought they were safe once Aubrey decided to end the rehearsal.

She was wrong.

"Beca, a word?"

Chloe's ears perked up, and she quickly turned away from the chairs she was stacking aside to watch as Beca stopped in her tracks and turned back towards Aubrey.

"You know you'll have to take those ear monstrosities out for the Fall Mixer."

"Au..." Chloe began to say, but she was interrupted by Beca. (Not that it mattered anyway, as it seemed both women had forgotten that she was even there.)

"You really don't like me, do you?" Beca asked, her facial expression remaining pleasant enough, but even from a couple yards away, Chloe could see the steely glint in the freshman's eyes.

"I don't like your attitude," Aubrey replied, and Beca's half-smile began to grow, though it did nothing to settle the nervous butterflies in Chloe's stomach.

"You don't even know me."

"I know you have a toner-" Chloe cringed, and opened her mouth, about to protest, when she heard the rest of Aubrey's statement. "For Jesse."

Chloe shut her mouth.

"What?" She could hear the shock in Beca's voice, and she could see how the smile on her face grew and shifted into what she thought was genuine amusement. Aubrey wasn't going to like that.

"A toner? A musical boner? I saw it at Hood Night. It's distracting," Aubrey explained in that matter-of-fact way of hers' that Chloe knew Beca wasn't going to respond well to.

The smile finally disappeared from Beca's face. "Yeah, that's not a thing. And, uh. You're not the boss of me, so."

Oh, Aubrey was definitely not going to like that. She knew she she do something, anything, to end the conversation there, but-

"You took an oath," Aubrey said, emphasizing her last word like it was the most important thing in the world.

"That oath cost you two girls already today. I'm pretty sure you need me more than I need you." There was a hint of humor in Beca's voice that was accompanied by a smirk, and even though Chloe was truly impressed by the way the freshman was standing up to Aubrey, she could also see the anger beneath the stone-cold expression on her best friend's face and she began to walk towards them just in case Aubrey decided to start swinging.

But then Beca was turning and walking away, and although Aubrey didn't move to go after her, Chloe could see that she wasn't going to let the freshman have the last word. And she was right.

"I can see your toner through those jeans!" Aubrey yelled, and Chloe didn't even have time to blink in surprise before Beca was turning around.

"That's my dick," she said, flashing a smug grin towards the fuming senior before turning around again and walking towards the exit. Both of her captains stared at her as she left, processing the quip Beca had tossed out so naturally.

It took a moment for her to shake off the surprise, but Chloe eventually turned towards Aubrey. "Everything okay?", she asked, and if looks could kill, the glare that her best friend shot towards her would have had her six feet under.

"We better have our shit together before SBT," Aubrey hissed out. "And you better get your mind in the game, Chloe, because I don't know what the hell your issue is, or why you suddenly think that it's okay to just skip out on key Bellas' events just to hang out with juvenile dirtbags like Beca-" Aubrey spit her name out like it left a bad taste in her mouth- "but it's going to stop. Now. Do you understand?"

Chloe felt her cheeks burn as a flash of red-hot anger surged through her. "Aca-scuse me?"

"You're co-captain, Chloe, and it's ridiculous that I can't even rely on you to keep your shit together long enough to help me lead our first rehearsal!" Aubrey's expression remained hard, but her voice softened just enough for Chloe to notice. "I need you, Chlo. I can't do this alone."

She wanted to argue; wanted to point out that she had spent the last four months going over every aspect of their setlists and choreography with her just so that they had the barest of chances to get back to the ICCAs, but then Aubrey was pulling her into a tight embrace and she choked back the venomous words that had been dancing on her tongue.

"I just want to win," Aubrey whispered, and that was enough to make Chloe's shoulders slump down in defeat as she returned the hug.

Crazy Shower Chick (Chloe), 5:47 p.m.

Hey, are you okay? That was really intense

Crazy Shower Chick (Chloe), 6:55 p.m.

I'm sorry that Aubrey went a little crazy. And I don't know why she even brought up Jesse, because THAT'S just insane, right?

Crazy Shower Chick (Chloe), 7:05 p.m.

Becs?