It took a while, but Stacie finally found the words to put together the jumbled thoughts that messed with her head and the tumult of emotions that coursed through her.
And all it took was Chloe to ask, high off the thrill of victory after a stressful week and completely without guile, "Where's Aubrey?"
The question Stacie had been wondering since earlier that day, before the Barden Bellas left for the theater hosting the ICCA semifinals, before the program started, before the Bellas took the stage before their Nashville rivals making their two backup sets unnecessary, and before the winners and finalists were announced. And the answer was the same.
"She isn't here." Stacie said softly, as they made their way to their bus to head back to campus. She noticed, but didn't address, the way the other girls all glanced at each other in concern, somewhat dampening their buoyant spirits after pulling off an easy win after the rigorous rehearsals they had endured the past week. She checked her phone, despite knowing it would show the exact same thing it had for the past three hours, which was absolutely nothing.
Chloe frowned, but her attention was drawn away to their bus, and Stacie followed her gaze to where Beca stood with Jesse, apparently engaged in a heated conversation, if their body language was anything to go by. Beca had her arms crossed defensively, while Jesse held a bouquet of flowers, trying to make her take it from his hands while she vehemently rejected that move and hissed something at him, the both of them oblivious to the approaching Bellas.
Stacie felt herself resenting the other couple, that Jesse was still in school with them and didn't have to do any scheduling gymnastics just to find time to be with his girlfriend, and even made the very real, very obvious effort to travel to watch his girlfriend own her semifinals performance and earn another berth at the ICCA Finals. And resented Beca for taking that for granted.
Hell, he even had flowers, and she was rejecting it.
Chloe cleared her throat, and Stacie resented her too, because Chloe had a front-row seat to Beca carrying on her relationship with Jesse, and she still opted to stay in college just to spend more time with Beca.
When neither Beca nor Jesse seemed to take notice of the Bellas, Chloe cleared her throat again, louder this time, not even trying for subtlety. And that seemed to catch the couple's attention, as they both turned to face the Bellas, Beca looking like a deer caught in headlights while Jesse – unsuccessfully – tried to hide the bouquet of flowers behind his back.
Which was weird in and of itself, but then they both shot a quick look at Stacie, and the tall brunette felt herself stiffen in defense, a creeping dread making itself known, and she braced herself for the information she suspected she already knew.
"What's going on?" Chloe asked curiously.
Jesse hesitated, glancing quickly at Beca, whose gaze stayed on the ground for a long time before she looked up at Stacie reluctantly. Beca opened her mouth, caught herself, and then glanced at Jesse.
"Are we really not going to ask why Jesse's trying to hide a bunch of flowers?" Fat Amy wondered aloud, breaking the impasse.
Beca sighed, while Jesse faltered at his obvious lack of finesse. He held the flowers in front of him, and approached Stacie.
"You know your girlfriend's right there," Denise pointed out.
Jesse gave her a long-suffering look, and held the flowers out to Stacie, who just stared at him even as he said, "This is for you."
Beca fidgeted, unsure of just how to proceed, while everyone else watched the tableau with utmost confusion and just a dash of morbid curiosity.
"Card!" Ashley coughed loudly, ducking quickly behind Jessica.
Stacie glanced in that direction briefly, before turning back to the flowers Jesse still held between them, and hesitantly took the card tucked into the arrangement.
Well, it was as he'd said: it was addressed to her name, making the flowers hers.
And it was in Aubrey's handwriting.
"Wait." Stacie blurted out, looking at Jesse in question. "Was she here?"
Jesse hesitated, but reluctantly admitted, "I don't know."
"Jesse." Chloe said in reproach. She knew nobody liked being the bearer of bad news, but surely Jesse couldn't be that concerned about the wrath of a woman left with just a bunch of flowers, right?
"I don't know." Jesse repeated. "It was at the ticket counter when I claimed the ticket Beca left for me. The guy said he was instructed to give it to me. Had my name and everything." He paused thoughtfully. "And my phone number, but I'm not sure why he has it…"
"Focus." Chloe reminded.
"Right." Jesse snapped out of it, and nodded at Chloe in acknowledgment before he realized Stacie still hadn't taken the flowers. He smiled awkwardly. "Are you gonna take these, or…?"
Stacie's brow knit, perplexed, her hands reflexively curling into fists and she looked up at Jesse. "I'm hot, right?"
Jesse's eyes widened in panic.
"Never mind." She shook her head, and she glanced at each of her fellow Bellas, gauging her audience, until finally she turned and looked at Chloe. "Why is she like this?"
Chloe, for her part, seemed reluctant to actually answer that question, rhetorical or not. "Stacie…"
"You know what? Never mind. I don't care." Stacie closed her eyes and shook her head, as if discarding whatever it had been she had been thinking about. She took a deep breath, held it, and exhaled slowly, trying to find calm and centering herself against the turbulent emotions she felt. When she opened her eyes once more, there was a look of fierce determination in them that took her friends aback. She roughly grabbed the flowers from Jesse. "Her loss. Party?"
There was an awkward current that ran through Stacie's fellow Barden Bellas, because that kind of emotional 180-degree turn was not only not natural, they also all knew that as concerned as they were, trying to prevent Stacie from getting what she wanted wasn't advisable.
Chloe looked at Stacie for a moment with worry, but turned to Jesse with a smile. "Deal's on, right?"
Jesse wasn't sure what was happening, but at least he wasn't in the middle of the most awkward tableau he'd ever been a part of – and he wasn't even the one who made a mistake. He blinked, and looked at Chloe, trying to remember what she was talking about, before he recalled the deal the Treblemakers and the Bellas made, that they would throw each other victory parties for their individual semifinals. He smiled in relief. That one, at least, he saw coming. "Yeah. All set."
"Yeah! Party!" Stacie exclaimed, with an almost manic cheer, forcing her friends to echo the sentiment, if with a hint of wariness.
Luckily, they had Flo and Fat Amy, who could be relied upon to reinforce cheer and enthusiasm even under the most dire of situations.
"Party!" Fat Amy yelled, and the girls all got on the bus, leaving Beca, Chloe and Jesse outside.
Jesse still looked confused. "What just happened?"
"Don't worry about it." Chloe assured him. "But make sure there's lots of tequila. Like, lots."
Jesse frowned at her as she entered the van, finally leaving him with Beca.
Beca sighed. "I know I said I'd ride with you back, but…"
"They need you." Jesse finished for her, nodding in understanding. "That's okay, I can get more supplies." He smiled wryly. "Like a lot of tequila."
Beca returned his smile with one of her own. "Don't get carded."
He shrugged. He grinned at her. "You'd bail me out, right?"
"I'd leave you there."
They said their goodbyes, and Beca faced the door of the Bellas' van with just a touch of trepidation, worried about Stacie and the upcoming combination of an emotionally-turbulent Stacie Conrad and a ton of alcohol. All that, and with the undeniable high of winning semis and once more making it to the finals of the ICCAs, Beca knew from last year's experience that all kinds of hijinks were bound to ensue, and Beca sent a silent prayer to whichever deities were listening that all the Bellas would come out unscathed at the end of the night.
Which, judging from the morning after, made Beca feel like maybe she should pick a deity and focus her prayers, because she was reminded why cheap alcohol and social media were the work of the devil.
The few Bellas who were already awake – Ashley, Flo, Denise, and Lilly – were all gathered around the kitchen counter, each one looking at their phones. When they noticed Beca, they all just nodded and turned back to their phones.
"What's happening?" Beca asked, groggily making her way to the fridge for some water.
The girls glanced at each other.
She felt the sudden impulse to hate everything. Beca frowned at them. "What?"
Lilly sauntered over, and handed Beca her phone, showing her the feed from the previous night's celebrations.
At first she wasn't sure what she was really seeing, given how cellphone pictures at parties were kind of a given around Barden, but then she realized what she was supposed to be looking at. Beca was instantly awake, going through it and torn between utmost relief – there was nothing explicit, nothing too incriminating, nothing that should be cause for alarm – but there was also the part that worried, because while there were just a bunch of pictures of a party going on, it was hard to avoid just how many included Stacie dancing with different people. "Does Chloe know about this?"
"She's still in her room."
Beca closed her eyes in relief, since Chloe usually got her cup of coffee first thing before she did anything else for the day, including checking her phone for her social media feeds. But that wasn't nearly enough of a reassurance, just a temporary one, and Beca forced herself to remain calm, not knowing how Chloe - who for all her strained relationship with Aubrey, was still Aubrey's best friend, and four years of friendship overruled any roommate agreement - would react to the pictures. She took a deep breath, and decided her first order of business had to be damage control. "Where's Stacie?"
"I think she crashed in her old room." Denise said. "I heard a noise there this morning."
Beca frowned, puzzled, as she had no idea what Stacie could have used in lieu of a bed considering Stacie's old room contained nothing but racks and boxes of their costumes. But still, she grabbed a bottle of water and made her way back up the stairs to their costume closet.
And, true enough, Stacie lay there, apparently having found a sleeping bag from somewhere and using it for the night.
Beca sighed heavily, especially when she saw the cellphone that was mere inches from Stacie's right hand, and the crumpled piece of paper in her left.
This wasn't going to be pretty.
Beca turned quickly when she heard the door to Chloe and Stacie's room open.
Chloe looked troubled, and her features only grew more concerned when she sighted Beca. "Have you seen Stacie?"
Beca nodded, and indicated the room she was standing in front of.
When Chloe peeked in, she breathed a sigh of relief. "Thank the aca-gods." And then frowned, realizing what she was looking at. "Why didn't she stay in our room?"
"I think she was too drunk to remember this wasn't her room anymore." Beca admitted. "Did you know we had a sleeping bag in here?"
"Yeah, Penny used to haze us by making us camp out in the middle of nowhere with just a sleeping bag and a utility knife."
"What?"
"Did you know Aubrey knows how to make fire without matches? It's pretty aca-awesome."
Beca looked at her, confused, but shook her head before motioning to the sleeping brunette on the floor. "Do you think she's okay?"
Chloe sighed. "The pictures don't look good."
Beca turned to her in alarm.
"It's weird how everybody's suddenly asking me if she's available again." Chloe noted. "It's like people take dancing with a bunch of other people as a sign."
Beca groaned, covered her eyes with her hand. "Damn."
"Yeah."
"Has Aubrey—"
"I don't know." Chloe admitted.
"Okay." Beca sighed, and glanced back into the room at the girl sleeping on the floor. "What are we doing about this?"
Chloe glanced at the still-sleeping Stacie, and sighed. "Let's get her to her bed? I'll try looking for Aubrey."
While they struggled to bring Stacie to her current room to lie down on a proper bed, she insisted to Beca that she was "totally undrunk anymore" and had only danced with "like two, maybe three" other people. And, she maintained, it was "totally just" dancing, not like she was "off liaising" with total strangers.
Beca had no idea what exactly was happening, but she could take a few guesses. Especially when Chloe finally got through Aubrey's phone.
"Hello?"
Chloe's brow furrowed at the unfamiliar voice, and glanced quickly at Beca, the closed door, and finally at the half-asleep Stacie. "Hi, I'm looking for Aubrey Posen?"
"What? Oh." There was a scuffle, and an audible, "My bad. It's your phone."
After a few seconds, Aubrey's tired voice came through the line. "Chloe, I know, I'm sorry, but—"
"Who was that?" Chloe blurted out. "And why is she answering your phone?"
"Kathryn thought it was her phone. Company-issued. They all look the same."
Chloe didn't care. "Who the hell is Kathryn?"
"Kathryn?" Beca echoed.
"She's with Kathryn?" Stacie asked, sitting up on her bed.
"Where are you?" Chloe demanded.
"At work." Aubrey answered.
"Aubrey…"
"Aubrey, let's go." Came through loud and clear from Aubrey's side of the call.
Aubrey sighed. "I'll call you back, Chloe."
"You should call your girlfriend."
"Chloe, don't start."
"Aubrey!"
"I'll call back." Aubrey said abruptly, before hanging up.
Chloe pulled the phone away from her ear, staring at it in betrayal. Did Aubrey just-?
Beca looked at Chloe, then to Stacie, and back. "Who's Kathryn?"
Chloe shook her head to indicate she didn't know, but Stacie muttered, "The liaison to the southeastern region."
Oh. Beca now understood what Stacie meant by someone liaising with— wait. She turned to Chloe. "What's going on?"
"I know as much as you do." Chloe answered.
"You're not stupid, either of you." Stacie told them. "I know you like Aubrey, we all do, but let's face facts."
"Stacie…" Chloe began hesitantly.
"Don't even, Chloe." Stacie glared at her. "You can't avoid me and my relationship when you want to and suddenly decide you get to have a say in it. And she's your best friend, of course you're on her side."
"We don't know what her side is," Chloe reminded.
"Stacie, you're hungover, maybe you shouldn't—" Beca began, but Chloe apparently wasn't finished.
"It doesn't look good, I know, but you're not exactly guilt-free, here." Chloe reminded.
"We were dancing!" Stacie argued.
"Are you sure you were just dancing?" Chloe shot back. "Because I was at that party late, and I didn't see you when I left."
Beca's head shot to the side, looking at Stacie, who only kept glaring at Chloe. "What are you implying, Chloe?"
"Yeah, Chloe," Stacie snarked, "what are you implying?"
"I don't know, Stacie. But I know you left your flowers in the van and proceeded to get drunk and dance with a bunch of people to the point that we lost track of you." Chloe accused.
"I don't need you to look after me." Stacie retorted.
"Aubrey isn't here. Somebody obviously has to." Chloe told her.
"Yes! Aubrey isn't here." Stacie snapped. "She's in New York, or Florida, or Seattle, Nevada, who knows where. And sometimes when she isn't here she's in North Carolina with a family I didn't even know lived there, with some stupid liaison who gets to talk and see her more than I do." She threw one hand up in frustration. "The same stupid liaison Aubrey's with this early when she should have been at semis watching us win. Watching me. Like she said she would."
That seemed to make Chloe falter in her outrage, but Beca was the one who attempted to plea on Aubrey's behalf. "Maybe it's not as bad as you think."
"What else is it?" Stacie demanded.
Beca hesitated. "Aubrey's pretty dedicated to her job, maybe—" She stopped speaking when Stacie leveled her glare at the smaller brunette.
Whether or not it was a good thing, the ringing of Chloe's phone interrupted them, and the trio of women glanced at each other hesitantly before Chloe answered. "Bree?"
"I can't get through Stacie's phone." Aubrey's voice was much more subdued this time, and Chloe could pick up on the too-familiar thread of exhaustion in her friend's voice.
"It died last night." Chloe told her. "Are you okay?"
"I've been better." Aubrey admitted, sighing. "Congratulations on winning."
"You should have been there."
"I know." Aubrey exhaled. "Is she angry?"
"Now is not the time to understate things." Chloe hedged.
"Very angry." Aubrey concluded. "Will she talk to me?"
Chloe hesitated, and asked first: "Why didn't you call?"
"I had to stay on the line with my boss." Aubrey sighed.
"You couldn't call?" Chloe pressed.
"I don't know which part of my answer is lacking."
"You should have called."
"I know. But I couldn't."
"You swear?"
"On my Bella scarf."
"Fine." Chloe said definitively, and turned to Stacie. "She wants to talk to you."
Stacie glanced at Beca, who gave her an encouraging smile. "Will you stay?"
Beca frowned at that, because she believed relationships were private things, but she nodded anyway.
Stacie looked at Chloe. "You too?"
Chloe looked even more unsure than Beca had, but she also nodded her assent as she handed her phone over to Stacie.
Stacie took the phone, and then took a deep breath. Doing away with salutations, she asked, "Where are you?"
"Work."
"You said—"
"I know. And I tried." Aubrey told her. "But—"
"Aubrey…"
"But my boss called me and told me to help the team here negotiate a deal that was going south." Aubrey continued.
"The whole night?" Stacie asked skeptically.
"Yes. They only formally agreed to terms just minutes ago." Aubrey said. "I know it's no excuse, but I really tried to be there, Stacie."
Stacie resisted the urge to laugh bitterly, considering the irony, given how just a week ago they had been on opposite sides of the same argument. "Not hard enough, obviously."
Aubrey sighed, exhausted. "What do you want me to say, Stacie? I'm sorry."
"You promised."
"I know! I know, and I'm sorry, but these things are beyond my control."
"It probably didn't hurt that Kathryn was there to liaise with you and the client, did it?" Stacie retorted.
Aubrey's confusion was evident in her tone. "What does Kathryn's job have to do with anything?"
"I don't know, Aubrey!" Stacie snapped. "All I know is that you promised to be there last night and you weren't. You didn't show, you didn't call, you didn't come by last night. Instead, Chloe had to call you in the morning to even know where you are. And you're telling me you spent the night in the office with this floozy you just met?"
"Please don't call her a floozy, she's not—"
"Don't defend her." Stacie cut in. "Aubrey, do you care how our semis went?"
"Of course I care." Aubrey said defensively.
"And we won, did you even know that?"
On her own bed, Chloe frowned at the seemingly innocuous question, which Beca noticed. "What?"
Chloe's eyes widened when she realized her cause for concern, and she stared at Beca in alarm.
"Going by the fact that you had a victory party, I could guess." Aubrey answered.
"A victory party you weren't there for." Stacie accused.
"Stacie." Chloe tried to get her roommate's attention, but Stacie was too angry.
So angry, in fact, that she missed the opening she had just given Aubrey.
"I saw." Aubrey said frankly.
Stacie furrowed her brow. "You 'saw'?"
Beca suddenly understood Chloe's alarm, and made cutting gestures across her neck at Stacie.
"Wait, what did you see? What are you talking about?" Stacie asked, now confused at the abrupt turn of the conversation.
"My social media accounts may be locked, Stacie, but I still track people." Aubrey said flatly. "And you obviously had fun last night."
Stacie shot a questioning look at Beca and Chloe, Beca producing her own phone and after opening the app she wanted, showed it to Stacie. Stacie looked at her, puzzled, and then down at the phone Beca had handed her. She flipped through the pictures, dread increasing with each new picture she saw, until she finally found herself croaking out, "It's not what you think."
"You honestly believe I can form a thought right now?" Aubrey returned. "I know what you're thinking, about me and Kathryn. I thought if I ignored it and proved you wrong, you'd eventually believe me and it would go away, but I guess that's not happening soon. But this? Why is it that your natural inclination when you're pissed off seems to be to just grind up to the first set of people you could find?"
"Don't you dare."
"Stacie, don't." Chloe tried to interrupt once more, because even if she couldn't hear a lot of Aubrey's side of the conversation, she knew Aubrey well enough to recognize the difference in her voice. The pitch, rhythm and intonation were all wrong, and she didn't want either Aubrey or Stacie to walk into a trap Aubrey had learned from her father.
Stacie didn't heed Chloe's warning. "That's not fair, Aubrey. I'm just dancing with them, nothing happened."
"Dancing really closely with a lot of people there, Stacie."
"It's a party." Stacie reminded. "It's not my fault that some people – maybe not you, but other people – would rather do the bump and grind on me than fucking liaising with someone she works with."
Stacie ignored the way Chloe buried her face in her hands and Beca let out an uncharacteristic gasp.
"For the last time, nothing is happening with me and Kathryn." Aubrey maintained her innocence, which only served to increase Stacie's ire. "But thanks for proving us both right, Stacie."
That… was not an expected response, and Stacie felt a twinge of worry about it. "What do you—"
"We knew long-distance wasn't going to be easy." Aubrey's voice was quiet, less combative, and that only made things worse. "And this? The pictures, what we're both feeling right now?"
Stacie closed her eyes in defeat, and tried to control the emotion from showing too much in her voice. "I miss you, Bree. But it's nice to feel wanted with people who are here than being made promises to and you not showing."
"I tried, Stacie." Aubrey repeated, even though she recognized the futility in the repetition. "You know it's not that easy, and I'm trying my best to be good to you."
"So why isn't that good enough?"
Stacie knew instantly, from the moment the words came out of her mouth, that the question was the worst possible thing she could have said, even without the icy silence that followed from Aubrey's end of the line or Chloe's gasp from across the room.
She knew.
"Okay." Aubrey's voice was devoid of any emotion following the frozen silence that rose in wake of Stacie's questioned outburst. "I'm sorry you feel that way."
"No, Aubrey, wait—"
"I love you, Stacie, and I'm sorry this has been such a disappointment to you."
"No, Bree, I—" Stacie didn't know where to start. "That's not what I meant."
"It's what you said." Aubrey reminded. "Nothing's changed: this job, my schedule, how hard it would be for us to spend time together? You knew all of this going in." she sighed. "So figure out what you want, and don't call me until you do."