Given a split-second of reprieve from the attentions of Aubrey's mother and grandmother, Stacie took the opportunity to scan the kitchen for her girlfriend, and found Aubrey standing by the stove, preparing two plates of food. Stacie allowed herself a moment to regard Aubrey, who had one plate in her hand and the other balancing on her arm, her stance relaxed, as if she did this all the time.

Aubrey and her grandfather were talking, both pointedly ignoring the dog near their feet, trying to get either one's attention, and it should have been an endearing sight.

Instead, all Stacie could think was the fact that Aubrey was loitering by the kitchen counter with her grandfather, leaving Stacie to her own devices in dealing with the close scrutiny of Aubrey's mother and the amused queries of her grandmother.

When Stacie noticed Aubrey finally – finally – turn towards the dining table, plates in hand, she jumped out of her seat and rushed to Aubrey, under the guise of helping the older girl. When she got close, she hissed at Aubrey, "What the fu—hell took you so long?"

"I miss you too?" Aubrey said slowly, bemused, wondering if Stacie was aware she'd basically just traded in a curse word for a different, albeit less harsh, one.

"You left me alone with them!"

Aubrey paused, confused at the vehemence in Stacie's tone, and hazarded: "Are they not being nice to you?"

"They are being nice!" Stacie hissed. "It's weird!"

Aubrey gave her another confused glance, and handed her a plate, "You're weird."

"Aubrey!"

"Stacie, relax. They already like you."

"They don't know me!"

Aubrey gave her a serious look. "Do you trust me?"

"Not so much right now, no."

Aubrey shook her head, and taking hold of Stacie's free hand, pulled her back towards the table.

"Aubrey," her mother started, drawing Aubrey's attention as soon as they returned to the table, and much to Stacie's relief, "Your company's still in the news today."

Aubrey hummed noncommittally.

"I think you weren't being very forthcoming about the extent of the job in Nashville," she continued.

Aubrey glanced at her mother. "I have a whole file just on my non-disclosure contracts, mom. You know I can't talk about it, even to my mother."

"Well, your mother worries."

"And your grandmother," the oldest woman at the table piped in, giving Aubrey a pointed look.

Aubrey's mother glanced at Stacie. "Has she told you anything?"

Stacie briefly glanced at Aubrey, because Aubrey had, and she didn't know how much of it she'd already told her family. She turned back to answer Aubrey's mom. "Not much?"

"There's nothing more to tell," Aubrey interrupted. "I told you: the team and I were told to lay low after the takeover; I have to be in the area next week, so I decided to skip on going to New York."

"And her girlfriend's here," her grandfather added from his place by the sink.

Stacie could feel her cheeks flame, and she kept her head down, as if the waffles, eggs and bacon on her plate were the most fascinating things she'd ever come across.

And, okay, maybe Aubrey's grandmother's homemade waffles were pretty awesome; totally the reason why she was shoveling forkfuls into her mouth, and not because she didn't want to be part of the conversation. If Aubrey wanted to play down the situation to her family, well, Stacie wasn't going to say differently.

"Ah, yes," Aubrey's grandmother noted, glancing at the lone brunette at the table. "You didn't tell us she was coming, Aubrey. I would have prepared something special."

Stacie almost choked, realizing that Aubrey's grandmother was implying the best homemade waffles she'd ever encountered wasn't considered 'special'. And the fact that Aubrey's grandmother was apparently pretty good at questioning Aubrey. She glanced at Aubrey, who glanced briefly at her as she handed her a glass of water.

"It was a spur of the moment thing," Aubrey said hastily, ignoring Stacie's leg nudging hers under the table. She paused, and glanced curiously at Stacie. "She's supposed to be in class."

"We're doing library work before finals."

"And in rehearsals."

"I wanted to see you." Stacie replied, holding Aubrey's gaze evenly.

Something in Aubrey's gaze gentled, and her lips curled slightly into a smile as she acknowledged Stacie's statement and the underlying sentiment that lined her words. Aubrey nodded slightly, and turned back to her family. "I wasn't sure she could make the trip."

Aubrey's mother nodded in understanding, but Stacie noticed that her grandmother wasn't as easily convinced, but nodded along anyway.

In fact, as the morning went on, Stacie noticed that Aubrey and her mother, while unquestionably fond and familiar, held a modicum of cordiality in their interaction; it wasn't quite formal, but Stacie could sense that both women were careful and measured in how they spoke with each other. Aubrey's mother obviously wanted to know more, and she was undeniably warm and receptive towards Stacie, but she was careful not to prod too much, not to ask too many questions. In return, Aubrey willingly answered any questions her mother might have, but she was also careful not to provide more than the necessary information, not to disclose anything beyond the question asked.

It wasn't a rare relationship between parents and their children, and Stacie had seen similar interactions among her friends and their parents, and it shouldn't have been something she would have paid particular attention to except for the fact that it contrasted sharply with Aubrey's interactions with her grandparents.

She still wasn't any more forthcoming with information, but she seemed to be genuinely apologetic with her grandparents when she refused to share details or information about her job or the reason why she was in North Carolina.

But she tried a little harder to be as informative as she could when the questions revolved around Stacie.

It probably helped that nobody asked the question of how their relationship started.

When they were finally released from the inquisition, Aubrey led Stacie out to the backyard, with George in tow, and headed to a shaded part of the garden where they could sit down on a garden bench. Once they were seated, George sniffed Aubrey's hand, as if looking for snacks, and finding none, huffed off to another part of the garden, jumping onto another bench and lying down.

Smiling her amusement, Aubrey glanced at Stacie, who instead of witnessing how awesome her dog was, eyed the door to the house worriedly. "They're not going to follow us out here."

"You don't know that."

"They just released us from their round of questioning. They're not going to try anything again so soon." Aubrey noted.

Stacie glanced at her, then at the house, and finally seemed to relent, leaning back on the bench and rolling her head to the side to study Aubrey. "So… your family's nice."

"I told you."

"But why?"

Aubrey glanced at her, confused by the question.

"I mean," Stacie laughed softly, "I would've thought your grandparents wouldn't like their granddaughter being gay, or whatever."

"My grandparents just want me to be happy." Aubrey replied simply, shrugging.

The implication was that Stacie made Aubrey happy, and Stacie was momentarily distracted, reveling in the internal fluttering that the thought caused, while also wondering if this was the kind of feeling that people considered corny, maybe cheesy.

Still, though, she insisted on her line of questioning. "I didn't show up the last time I was supposed to meet them." Stacie asserted.

"And you're the only one I've ever asked to come over to meet them." Aubrey explained. "That kind of overrules anything else."

"And your mom?"

"My mom?"

"Doesn't she mind the whole dating-a-girl thing?" Stacie questioned.

"My mom and I…" Aubrey paused, searching for the right words for what she wanted to say. "We have an agreement."

Stacie quirked an eyebrow.

"We've never been very close, at least not the way you and your mom are." Aubrey shared. "We can talk and be in the same room, but we don't, like, talk about the STD test I had to take recently."

Stacie let out a short laugh, because she doubted a lot of parents ever wanted to hear about their children needing to take an STD test – her mom just worked in healthcare and as a consequence knew other people in healthcare in their home district – but this was about Aubrey and her relationship with her living parent, so she guessed, "Because of your dad?"

"And we're too alike and too different in conflicting ways," Aubrey nodded in confirmation. "I guess we both always thought he'd always be around, so we never really tried to fix that. And then he died, and we both had to figure out what that meant for us." She glanced at the house briefly, before turning back to Stacie. "We're both out of our depth, being this new two-person family unit, so it's easier when my grandparents are around."

"She doesn't like your job." Stacie surmised.

"No," Aubrey laughed, shaking her head. "She really doesn't."

"Why?"

"Because it caters too much to the part of me that's my dad." Aubrey admitted.

"The competition?"

"That. And the fact that it's easy to disappear into the workload." Aubrey replied. "She doesn't like that the non-disclosures keep me from talking to her about it, so there's so much she doesn't know."

"And the dating-a-girl thing?" Stacie prodded.

Aubrey smiled weakly, because that was the heart of the matter, wasn't it? "Let's put it this way: before my dad died? Her reaction would have been a lot more mixed than welcoming you to the dining table."

It wasn't a direct answer, but still understanding dawned on Stacie. "She doesn't want to rock the boat."

"I've already proven I can choose to leave if I wanted to." Aubrey nodded. "So she tries harder."

"She seemed to like me, though." Stacie admitted. "Was that an act?"

"No," Aubrey shook her head. "She's had time to think about it, she's dealt with whatever misgivings she may have. And she was raised right: she would have ignored you if she didn't like you."

"Is that how it is?"

"Yeah."

Stacie tilted her head to the side, and queried, "When did you tell her about me?"

"When I told her why I wouldn't be spending Christmas with her here." Aubrey provided a simple answer, shrugging.

"You skipped Christmas to be with me, and you seriously think she likes me?" Stacie asked sharply.

"She knew it was important to me."

Stacie paused, because she was seriously going to mount Aubrey then and there if she kept on saying such simple things that went straight to her heart, and she doubted Aubrey's family was going to appreciate it. So she kept her mouth shut, even as a small smile played upon her lips.

There was a momentary lull in conversation as Stacie let Aubrey's answers sink in. While she was definitely glad that Aubrey's family had reasonably welcomed her with open arms, there was still the matter of how their meeting came to be. Stacie glanced at Aubrey. "Kathryn called me."

"Ah." Aubrey nodded, not minding the shift in conversation, but also finally enlightened as to how Stacie had found her way to her grandparents' front door. "I figured she might." At Stacie's arched eyebrow, she expounded, "She said she would."

Stacie frowned. "Why didn't it come from you? Why did it take for her to tell me where you were?"

Aubrey quirked her lips. "You're supposed to be in school."

"Aubrey."

Aubrey sighed, and leaned back on the bench. She looked up at the tree above them, as if answers could be found there. Finally, she turned back to Stacie. "I was going to drop by tomorrow."

Stacie arched an eyebrow.

"I just needed these two days off, because I didn't want to talk about Nashville, and this is the place where nobody was going to push." Aubrey explained. "Because I love you, and the Bellas, but I would have wanted to tell you everything the night it went down, and the Bellas treat everything like it's their business."

"But Kathryn knew where you were."

"She was the extraction team." Aubrey reminded. "She's nobody to B&L, she was never at the table for any of the discussions. She's the only one who knows where everyone who was on the team in Nashville are."

"So why did it take her calling me for me to find out where you are?" Stacie asked.

"Because she was in Chicago."

For the second time in so many minutes, Aubrey's answer confounded Stacie. "What does that mean?"

Aubrey hesitated, unsure if she could explain what she needed to without bringing up old wounds to Stacie, but there was no way around it. "She was there. Last time. When my career took a turn."

Stacie furrowed her brow, still confused. "In Chicago?"

Aubrey sighed. "When I was dating that girl."

Oh.

"Oh." Stacie's response was short, but expressed her reticence to continue her line of questioning.

But needs must.

"Why would that matter?" Stacie queried.

"Because this is one of the reasons why we broke up." Aubrey explained. She let out a breath, glancing at Stacie, before continuing. "We weren't friends in Chicago. But they were. So she knows how badly I can screw up a relationship, even without meaning to. And she knows how I get when I'm dealing with work."

Stacie was momentarily distracted by the thought of: "I thought you weren't friends?"

"What?"

"You and Kathryn. You said you're not friends."

"We're not."

"Okay, but intervening like this isn't something people who aren't friends do." Stacie pointed out.

Aubrey looked down before she looked back up at Stacie, chuckling softly. "I guess I'm gonna have to change that, huh?"

"Or you can keep her hanging, it's fine." Stacie said quickly.

Aubrey shook her head. "Because you won't stop giving her a hard time even after this good deed?"

Stacie gave her a dry look, slightly affronted. "Would I do that?"

Aubrey returned her look with a wry one. "You really want me to answer that?"

Stacie faltered, knowing full well Aubrey was referring to her previous – and likely to be continued – insinuations regarding Aubrey and liaising, and pouted. "Shut up."

Aubrey smiled, amused.

Stacie settled in her seat, and glanced out at the garden. She felt Aubrey gazing at her, but kept her own gaze away from Aubrey. Summer was yet to start, but she'd heard about summer in the South, and despite their place in the shade she could feel the heat and humidity already starting to make itself known. Still, though, there was a tranquility in their surroundings that she could really appreciate. Stacie smiled softly as her gaze fell upon the dozing George, and glancing down briefly so she could twine her fingers with Aubrey's, she admitted, "I like it here."

"Good."

Stacie glanced up at her, and Aubrey smiled, adding: "I like you here."