Beca wakes up at about eleven the next day after eight hours of fitful sleep. Her apartment is relatively quiet, with most of its inhabitants up and out – at work, school, brunch, running errands – and it suits her just fine. Her job has turned her somewhat nocturnal, trading breakfast for supper and drinks at eleven p.m.; it's not particularly healthy but well, Beca has never really cared about her health. As far as she is concerned, she is young and her body can tolerate many more years of abuse.

Washed up and semi-alert, she's about to stumble into the kitchen for her ritualistic cup of morning coffee when her phone rings. Fat Amy's name flashes merrily on the screen.

Amy's the only Barden Bella she has kept in constant contact with even though they now live hundreds of miles apart. Amy decided to follow Bumper back to his hometown in Minneapolis after college. They lived together, held full-time jobs and appear to be grown-up, semi-mature adults – until they randomly decide to belt out song lyrics at the top of their lungs in the middle of a grocery store or street or shopping mall.

Smiling at the memory, Beca swipes across the screen and presses the phone to her ear. "I heard from Bumper who heard from Benji who heard from Jesse that you two just called it quits," Fat Amy said, in lieu of a hello. Her voice softened slightly. "You alright, darling?"

Beca shakes her head. Four years in and she still marveled at how quickly things got round to this woman. "Yeah, I'm alright," Beca said. There was a long pause. "I guess he was always more of a good friend than anyone else."

"I know," Amy said.

"You did?" Beca had never admitted that to anyone before – heck, she'd just barely got round to admitting it to herself. And Jesse. In fact, her parents are probably under the impression that Beca is already married to Jesse and that they just didn't get an invite to the ceremony because she hates them. But then again, her parents have always been rather clueless.

Amy had known about her internship long before she'd told anyone about it; and she'd also been the one who'd whispered a sage, "you were always better at mash-ups," two days before Beca announced her decision to quit her job at a recording studio in L.A. and move to New York. But this was different. This was her private life, and she'd always thought that she was rather good at keeping that part of herself well, private.

Fat Amy finally breaks the silence with a simple, "You should call her."

Beca's heart twists. She knows exactly whom Amy is referring to, and before she can ask what the heck Amy means by that and what she could possibly know about the whole situation, the insufferable woman has already changed the subject. To her constipation issue, no less.

When they hang up forty minutes later, Beca's head is still reeling. She'd tuned out everything Amy said from right after the innocuous Chloe reference (or maybe not so innocuous – when it came to Fat Amy, nobody really knew). Why did Fat Amy think that calling Chloe would be an appropriate and natural follow-up step to dumping her boyfriend...?

Beca grits her teeth and shook her head. She really doesn't want to think about it.

...

After three grueling, sleepless days of trying – and failing – to distract herself through a medley of exercise, food, music, and late-night drinking, Beca caves and reaches for her phone. She still has a couple of hours to burn before work anyway. Her fingers tremble slightly as she dials the number that she still, for some inexplicable reason, knows by heart even after six fucking months of trying desperately to forget everything about this woman.

"Beca?" Chloe sounds breathless. Hearing her voice again after so long made Beca ache with longing. There is a long moment of silence before Beca realizes that the other woman was waiting for an explanation. For the call. For not calling. For...well, everything. She forced her mouth open. The only sound that came out was a pitiful little squeak. There is a short pause, and then laughter from the other end of the line. "It's nice to hear from you," Chloe says. "You've been quite a bitch at keeping in touch."

"I'm sorry," Beca says pathetically, knowing that it was nowhere near enough to make up for the way she'd flat out fled from Chloe after the World Championships, missing calls, ignoring texts, burying herself in work and not even telling anyone but Fat Amy that she'd moved out to New York. And that was only after three hours worth of threatening to murder her if she ever let it slip.

I'm so glad I met you, Chloe's had said, breath hot on Beca's face, leaning so close that her smell, her presence was enough to drive Beca crazy – the memory of it was still so vivid and painful even though four whole years had passed since then. We're going to be such fast friends...

Beca closes her eyes and tries to keep her breathing even, but it doesn't fool Chloe. Nothing ever has. "Hey, don't – Beca, it's alright. I'm alright. What's wrong?" The concern in Chloe's voice crackles urgently through the receiver as though Chloe herself is trying to claw through the phone to get to her.

Beca sniffles and swipes angrily at the tears clouding her vision. Why was she being so dumb? It takes her a while, but soon she has her emotions under control. "Sad movie," She explains, sounding as casual and offhand as she could.

Chloe laughs. "Mitchell, you never cry at movies."

"That's not true," Beca protests. "Am I interrupting anything? Should I hang up?"

"Not really. I mean, technically yes, because I'm still in the office. But I hardly do anything except answer calls anyway."

Beca rubs her forehead and tries to regain a semblance of nonchalance. "So. Lemme guess. Seven years of Russian lit... Answering calls... You're a telephone operator in Moscow."

Chloe laughs. "No, I um, I'm working for this fashion designer – Jules Anderson, if you're into that stuff – I'm his assistant."

Jules Anderson. That name rang a bell, vaguely. Beca wasn't into fashion, but living in New York had made her slightly more... New York – "He's based in New York, isn't he?" She blurts, feeling a strange flutter of hope.

"Yeah!" Chloe says, sounding pleasantly surprised that the name meant something to Beca. "I'm in New York."

Beca breathes in and out, then lets out a slow, wry chuckle. They'd been living in the same damn city, maybe even within miles of each other – without even knowing. "I'm in New York too, working at Pulse. We should meet up sometime," She says slowly, intentionally leaving everything open and vague because she has no idea where she wants this conversation to lead. She hates 'open and vague'. She is never open and vague when it comes to anything else. But it seems like it's the best she can do whenever it comes to Chloe. The damn girl had managed to persuade her to audition for an A cappella group, and she'd ended up stuck in limbo between yes and no and what the heck is going on?! for four years.

"I'd like that," Chloe says, equally hesitant. They hang up a few minutes later, because phone calls are flooding in and Chloe's boss is giving her dirty looks. Beca settles back into her chair and rests her phone back on the table, feeling strangely alive for the first time in months.