Beca's hand hovers over her flasks, slowly filling the two shiny vessels with Speyburn. It takes a couple of minutes because the openings on her flasks are not really large enough to accommodate the mouth of the Speyburn bottle.
When she's finished, she slips one into her back pocket of her slacks and one into the inside jacket pocket of her blazer hanging on the back of the hotel desk chair. She gets up from her kneeling position on the ground and shakes out her pants.
Flipping her collar up, she walks over to the full length mirror, picking her black tie off the bed as she goes. She does the top button up on her dress shirt and drapes the tie around her neck.
It's not uncommon for Beca to wear a tie, so as her fingers play with it, knotting it into place, she can zone out and morosely think about what lies ahead for her today.
She can never come back to this town. The thought hits her squarely in the face as she pulls her tie through the final loop. She can't come back here to where she's forced to acknowledge that Chloe's happier now. She straightens the knot, adjusting the dimple in the middle.
And yeah, okay, maybe giving that song to Ed Sheeran was a mistake, but she couldn't perform it herself. She'd break down on stage and her rep would never recover. Her fingers shake a little as she slides her tie clip into place.
Stacie's off getting ready with Aubrey or at a salon or something. Beca wasn't really paying attention. But they'd already agreed that Stacie would pick Beca up from the diner a couple of blocks away. She flicks the thoughts away as she flips her collar back down.
Beca shrugs on her suit jacket, takes a couple of swigs straight from the bottle of scotch, adjusts the flask against her breast, and grabs the gift she'd wrapped a week ago from the bed.
Tucking the gift under her arm, Beca leaves the hotel room and takes the stairs instead of waiting for the elevator at the other end of the hall. There aren't many hotels in town and almost all the wedding guests are staying here. She wants to avoid any possibility of running into someone where she has to be happy for and comment on how cute the happy couple is.
The flights of stairs pass quickly beneath her feet, thanks to a personal trainer Beca had never wanted to hire, who takes cardio even more seriously than Aubrey did. Like, it's nice not to have to wheeze for small things, but is it really worth it?
Beca's still undecided.
Despite her small legs, it doesn't take long to traverse the couple of blocks to the old diner. When she walks in and sits down at the booth she and Chloe used to share, a wry smile is all she can muster.
"Well look who it is!"
Beca turns to see Mary, who's as loud and cheerful as ever.
"You don't call, you don't write. You too famous for us back here now?" Mary asks, hip cocked, but even under the act Beca can see that Mary, for whatever reason, is happy to see her.
"Sorry, Mary. I had to come back to see Chloe get married though," Beca says. Any apology would sound fake because she honestly hadn't thought about this town except for those memories with Chloe.
Mary snorts. "That announcement took us all by surprise," she comments, leaning against the booth.
Beca just raises an eyebrow.
"Well, honey, we all figured she'd end up marrying you!"
It's a hard jab, right to Beca's gut.
"You and me both," she mutters.
Having seemingly realized she may have hit a nerve, Mary backtracks a bit. "So strawberry shake and fries?"
The unasked question hovers between them. Is Chloe coming?
Just as Mary's about to walk away, taking Beca's silence as confirmation of the order, Beca says, "Wait. Can you guys still do the chocolate and vanilla swirl shake?"
"You bet we can, Beca," Mary says, and Beca tries to ignore how it sounds softer now.
"Thanks."
Her heart beats quickly in her chest. She's never been to this diner alone, never ordered a milkshake that wasn't strawberry. If this wrenching feeling in her chest is what moving on feels like, Beca hates it.
It would probably be in poor taste to pull out a flask in the middle of the diner, but Beca is sorely tempted nevertheless.
So because the day is gonna hurt anyway, Beca thinks back to high school. She has some of her favourite memories in this diner, from study sessions with Chloe, to after-game munchies with Chloe, to 2 a.m. hangouts with Chloe.
You'd think after eating as many strawberry milkshakes as Beca has in her lifetime, she might actually have grown to like them. Unfortunately for her, it only made her want literally any other flavour.
When Mary drops back with the swirled shake and the fries, it takes Beca a few minutes before she can really eat. It's closing a chapter of her life, the longest chapter of her life. She's no longer allowed to be in love with Chloe Beale.
She swipes a fry through her shake.
Potatoes and salt taste way better with chocolate and vanilla than they do with strawberry.
Beca only barely keeps from crying.
Even the fries are telling her she was never meant to be with Chloe.
She eats them quickly to shut them up, sucking back the best milkshake she's ever had between bites and trying not to read too much into it.
Fucking diner food, ruining her life one calorie at a time.
When Stacie walks in just as Beca's pulling out a tenner to leave behind, Beca views it as the only thing that will go right for her that day. She scrambles to follow Stacie out to the car and drops heavily into the passenger seat.
Stacie looks at her quizzically. "Aren't you going to drive?"
Beca pulls out a flask and takes a sip.