After their emotional morning over breakfast, Aubrey and Stacie fell into a quiet and generally unremarkable Saturday, careful not to completely derail what was Stacie's first trip visiting Aubrey in her home city. At the moment, they had retreated to their figurative separate corners, with Stacie finishing her assigned reading while Aubrey read a report on her tablet.

Or, apparently, was trying to, as Stacie espied Aubrey glance in her direction for the nth time in so many minutes, only to look away when Stacie noticed. Stacie waited, and when Aubrey looked over again, only to quickly look away when she saw Stacie looking back, Stacie asked, "Babe, you're creeping me out."

Aubrey's cheeks flamed as she returned her gaze towards Stacie. "Sorry."

"Don't be sorry, what's up?"

Aubrey admitted, "This isn't how I imagined your first visit would be like."

Stacie arched an eyebrow, and smiled slyly. "I kinda imagined there'd be less clothes."

"Funny."

"I'm serious."

Aubrey frowned. "I feel like I'm depriving you of the full New York City experience."

Stacie tilted her head slightly to the side. "Maybe a little, but it raises questions on what your weekends are usually like."

Aubrey smiled wryly. "Mostly like this. But with gym time, laundry and groceries."

"What an exciting Saturday." Stacie said drolly.

Aubrey conceded to the sarcasm. "My job demands me to be on standby all the time. I'll take the quiet weekend."

Stacie shrugged, unapologetically. "I guess I thought this was the city that never sleeps."

"And I don't from Monday to Friday." Aubrey replied flatly, making Stacie make a face at her.

"Fine, but from now on if you're going to keep me holed up in an apartment for the weekend, I will require less clothes." Stacie informed her.

Aubrey laughed. "I'll keep that in mind."

Stacie rolled her eyes. "That was supposed to have been an invitation for us to get on that."

Aubrey's rejoinder was cut off by her tablet informing her of an incoming email. She read the message, paused, and then looked up at Stacie.

"Do you like art exhibits?"

Stacie wasn't sure, not having gone to enough art shows to really have an opinion; which would be the simple explanation for how they ended up attending an art show opening that evening, featuring one of Dan's friends who apparently had Aubrey as part of her email list, and included Aubrey among her invitees.

"So do you attend these things often?" Stacie asked curiously as she and Aubrey walked towards the gallery, the gallery sign still a long way ahead of them.

"Not often. Dan's friends are mostly artists – some musicians or actors – and he'll drag me to something if he thinks I'll like it. Or if he wants me to hang out with him."

Stacie furrowed her brow. "What's the deal with you and Dan?"

"What do you mean?" Aubrey asked, confused on the nature of the question.

"Is he like your best friend, does he have a crush on you?" Stacie pressed. "Are you close on an emotional level that others can't compare to?"

"I used to work with him."

Okay, Stacie did not see that coming. She immediately stopped walking, and by tightening the hold she had on Aubrey's hand, she brought Aubrey to a full stop, as well. "Excuse me?"

"Dan used to be in Oversight." Aubrey elaborated, as if Stacie didn't know which department Aubrey reported to.

"He's a chauffeur."

"He drives for a service, yeah." Aubrey nodded. Going off on a tangent, she mused, "You'd think that would go out of style with Uber, but I guess there are still people who believe in town cars and professional services."

"I don't—" Stacie shook her head, ignoring the rest of Aubrey's statement. "How did he end up driving a car for a living?"

"Stress." Aubrey shrugged. "The atherosclerosis might have been a contributing factor."

Stacie balked. "He had a heart attack?"

"His routine medical check indicated he was a viable candidate for one." Aubrey shared, clearly unbothered at sharing a friend's medical history the same way she had been unnaturally casual about the results of her medical tests. "And he shrugged it off for a bit, but it bothered him that they were going to up his insurance premium for traveling because of it."

Stacie stared at her.

"Which led to a whole crisis of faith, which led to some personal reflection." Aubrey continued. "Long story short, he quit to drive a car."

"Wow."

"It's not that impressive."

"He quit to save himself."

"Sure. I mean, I guess you can look it that way." Aubrey allowed.

Stacie eyed her skeptically. "Would you quit to drive a car?"

Aubrey frowned.

Stacie looked on expectantly.

"I don't know." Aubrey finally admitted. "I want to say I would, especially if it was a health thing, but," she exhaled heavily, and glanced away from Stacie, as if aware of the judgment her next statement would earn. "Posens don't quit. And it bears a lot of the same markers as failure."

Because nothing scared Aubrey more than the prospect of total failure. And Stacie realized that for all intents and purposes, for all that Aubrey had disclosed earlier about the state of her apartment, Stacie suddenly had some insight that despite all appearances to the contrary, that even though she had job security and what Stacie could only guess was a decent savings account, Aubrey was still the girl who had so easily shared her father's words of wisdom that the first course of action in being unable to succeed was to pack one's bags.

Stacie regarded Aubrey for a moment, waiting her out, waiting for Aubrey to turn back and face her. When she finally did, Stacie told her, "For the record? I subscribe to the try-and-try-until-you-succeed school of thought."

Aubrey smiled wryly, but she also nodded, acknowledging what Stacie was implicitly telling her. Maybe she wasn't the same girl who went after the ICCAs with blinders on, but she knew she sometimes still focused on the small details instead of the bigger picture. And maybe shortcomings weren't the colossal disasters her younger self might have once viewed them, but Aubrey had not yet mastered being someone who could shrug it off and keep moving forward. "I'll try."

"That's all I ask." Stacie said, and smiled as they continued walking towards the gallery.

As they passed by a small café with its outdoor seating fully occupied, drawing Stacie's attention to its clientele, and she realized she had no idea about Aubrey's relationship with the artist, or who the other guests would likely be. She glanced over at Aubrey.

"We're not going to run into any of your exes, right?"

"God, I hope not." Aubrey intoned.

"And who's the artist?"

"Lena. Dan's friend. The people there will mostly be Dan's friends, but this gallery's like one of the more casual, kind of cool places to go to just to hang out and be seen, so I can't be sure."

"So we might." Stacie clarified.

Aubrey glanced at her in confusion.

"Running into your exes. We might."

"I guess." Aubrey conceded. "Will that be a problem?"

"That you hang out in the same social circles with your hookups?"

Aubrey winced. "People I've dated. I'm friends with the people I actually used to date."

Stacie frowned at her, and at Aubrey's obvious distaste for the idea of Stacie just lumping together every one she's ever been with.

"And if I had a choice you'll never have to be in the same room with some of the people I've just hooked up with." Aubrey continued.

"We've literally spent a whole day with Jill."

"She's a friend I slept with. That's different."

Stacie blinked at Aubrey, at the various levels of intimacy her girlfriend ascribed to her past dalliances, and ultimately decided she didn't want to know. So instead she went with levity. "You say that, but don't you want them to meet the girl behind the metronome?"

Aubrey glanced at her. "They don't know about the metronome."

Stacie furrowed her brow. "Kind of hard to miss if they've been on your bed, babe."

"That there's a story." Aubrey clarified. "People don't know that."

"They should." At Aubrey's doubtful expression, Stacie winked at her. "You got the girl."

Aubrey pursed her lips, briefly weighed out her options, before she noted with just a hint of amusement in her voice, "Is this a bad time to tell you that the whole thing with the metronome wasn't just about the hot girl I banged on graduation?"

Stacie immediately frowned. "But it's more romantic that way."

True, but Aubrey explained, "It's more of the whole context and stuff."

"Because you don't want to be so strongly identified with the pining?"

"Please. You find the pining romantic."

"You were pining for me, that's like a given." Stacie pointed out. She hooked her arm with Aubrey's to bring them closer together. Dropping her teasing tone but keeping it light, she asked, "So if it's not just about this really, really hot girl, what was the story with the metronome?"

Aubrey smiled. "That for one small moment in time I was exactly where I wanted to be."

"Banging this really hot girl?" Stacie asked, grinning.

Aubrey laughed. "Maybe a little."

"Only a little?" Stacie couldn't help but tease.

Aubrey shrugged. "I finished college. The Bellas won the ICCAs." She smiled as she turned to look at Stacie. "I had a job waiting."

Stacie's pace slowed to a stop, and she turned to meet Aubrey's gaze.

"How did this really hot girl put it?" Aubrey mused, pretending to give the question serious thought. "Newly graduated, with a whole life ahead of me, goals and ambitions within reach."

Stacie smiled back, having words she'd once spoken to Aubrey being echoed back to her. "It was your moment."

Aubrey's smile softened, and she nodded. The corner of her lips quirked upward. "And I had the girl."

Stacie chuckled. "Oh yeah. You had the girl."

Aubrey grinned. "Repeatedly."

"You're welcome for that, by the way."

"And I think I've already thanked you."

Stacie stuck her tongue out at her.

Aubrey snickered. "Repeatedly."

Stacie shook her head in amusement, because after a year of looking back on that night with a strong feeling of melancholy, now that she and Aubrey had remedied their memory of how it had ended, it was nice to finally be able to think on it with fondness and not a small amount of amusement. She turned back to Aubrey and regarded her thoughtfully, because while they were being light-hearted about the subject, she felt the need to clarify: "So the metronome's been a good thing?"

Aubrey nodded. "A very good thing."

Stacie considered pursuing the train of thought, but she felt they had trod the subject matter of the time between Aubrey's departure from Barden to their first meeting in an elevator in Philadelphia before, and she didn't particularly feel inclined in bringing it up at that moment. So instead she asked, a knowing smile starting to pull on the corner of her lips, "So you like owe the girl who gave it to you a thing or two, right?"

Aubrey laughed, and pulled on Stacie's arm to lead her back towards the gallery. "Don't push it."

"I'm just saying—"

"And I'm going to say maybe it really is about that time I banged this hot girl."

"The pining!" Stacie protested.

"Or I use it to avoid panic attacks."

Stacie gasped in affront. "You take that back!"

Aubrey grinned at her. "I told you not to push it."

Stacie rolled her eyes, grumbling, "You say all that, but you live out of a suitcase and the only thing you have on your bedside that's personal is something I gave you."

"Well, I did say part of the story was about the girl." Aubrey reminded.

Stacie glanced at her, and wondered if the day would ever come when her heart would stop doing silly things in her chest when she heard Aubrey refer to her from the time they hadn't been a couple not as "a girl" but as "the girl".

She doubted it.

When they reached the front of the gallery, Stacie noticed the tight hold Aubrey had on their entwined hands. She looked down to confirm, and then looked up at Aubrey. "Hey."

Aubrey glanced at her.

"You already know they're happy that you're happy." Stacie reminded. "And I'm the girl who makes you happy. We're already ahead of the game."

At the reminder, Aubrey slightly relaxed, letting out a long exhale. "Okay."

Stacie nodded. "Better?"

Aubrey nodded back. "If you hate it, just give me the word and we'll go."

Stacie arched an eyebrow. "We're dealing in safe words now?"

Aubrey rolled her eyes in faux exasperation. "Yes, we're delving into bondage fun. What's your safe word?"

Stacie grinned at her. "Tell me more about this bondage fun."

"Or we can examine your reaction to orgasm denial, what's the safe word?"

Stacie's jaw dropped – in offense and surprise (and turn-on) that was discovering Aubrey was even familiar with the term orgasm denial – before she decided, "Scat singing."

Aubrey didn't look so sure – people were bound to ask the member of a 2-time ICCA champion (and en route to a third) about a cappella – but she shrugged. "Okay."

"Okay." Stacie echoed, before she paused and asked, "Do they know how we started?"

"Yes."

Stacie arched an eyebrow. "Really?"

Aubrey's cheeks tinged red. "Yes."

"You're blushing! You're so cute." Stacie laughed. "But why do they know about the start of our relationship when we can't even begin to explain it to the girls?"

"Because my friends know how screwed up my dating history's been and us hooking up at odd cities in the southeastern region is actually the best relationship I've been in these past two years?" Aubrey surmised.

Stacie preened. "I am pretty awesome, aren't I?"

Aubrey rolled her eyes, even as she allowed, "You are."

Just as Aubrey turned to open the door, the door opened and Dan stepped out to greet them, leveling a frown upon Aubrey. "Which part of 4PM didn't you understand?"

"The part where they're opening a show at 4PM," Aubrey retorted. "Who even opens something on a Saturday afternoon?"

Dan frowned at her. "Because Javi's band is performing tonight. I sent you an invite."

"Why did they set it up on the same night?" Aubrey complained.

"Because it's like a tour of what the lower-income art world of New York has to offer. Check your email." Dan reminded, ignoring the obvious fact that half of Aubrey's life – a life which his own used to be very similar to – was checking an email inbox. And then, having clearly decided he was done talking to Aubrey, smiled at Stacie. "Hi, Stacie. Great to see you again."

Stacie smiled at him, and now having been told of his past life as Aubrey's coworker, could now detect traces of what he must have been like once, and why Aubrey trusted him so much. "Hi, Dan."

"You don't mind taking in an art show and a concert on the same night, right?" Dan asked. He indicated Aubrey with a nod of his head, "unlike grandma over here."

Aubrey rolled her eyes. "You're older than me."

He shrugged. "And yet."

Aubrey shook her head, and brushed past him, pulling Stacie along with her. "Ignore him and maybe he'll go away."

Stacie shrugged at Dan as she passed him, before falling back into step with Aubrey once they entered the gallery. "Are we going to the concert?"

Aubrey frowned. "It's not so much a 'concert' as it is a bunch of guys who can play instruments being allowed to perform on a stage."

"Difference?"

"I wouldn't pay money to see Javi's band perform."

Stacie pursed her lips. "What if it's free?"

Aubrey turned, and her gaze met Stacie's, seeing the barely-hidden excitement shining in them, and sighed in resignation. "You want to go."

"Yeah, I want to go." Stacie replied, the 'duh' obvious in her tone.

Aubrey's lips pursed, and sighed again. "Fine. But if you get carded, we're leaving."

Stacie smiled at her in triumph. "I won't get carded."

Aubrey shrugged. "We'll see."

Stacie laughed, and kissed Aubrey's cheek. "Loosen up, babe. Tonight can be awesome."