It took Beca a few carefully-aimed pebbles before the second-story window opened.
"It's me," she shouted, her voice echoing in the silent street. The window closed and she climbed the walk-up, trying not to vomit. It wasn't long before the metal grate in front of her was sliding open.
She must have looked really fucked, because Stacie's first instinct was to hug her. Beca gripped her back, breathing in the scent of her skin.
She released Stacie and let herself be pulled inside. The hallway in Stacie's apartment building was lit in harsh tungsten, forcing Beca to avert her eyes. Stacie was barefoot and already in pajamas as they climbed the stairs; something about it made Beca's heart ache.
It only became worse as they reached Stacie's studio. She left the door wide open.
"You could've been robbed."
"I brought everything valuable with me," Stacie yawned, throwing her a half-hearted wink. "Welcome. Mi casa es su casa or whatever."
It was mercifully dim here, save for a faint sliver of light from a doorway ahead. Stacie pulled her towards it. Inside were an unmade bed, piles of clothing, and a white noise machine. Beca picked it up: it played canned sounds of waves lapping at an invisible shore.
"Come here," Stacie called, taking the side of the bed closer to the desk lamp. Immediately Beca felt her eyes sting. She took off her boots and joined in, hoping Stacie didn't notice.
"What's up?"
Beca shook her head. Stacie only scoffed and placed an arm around her, sticking her nose in Beca's shoulder.
She didn't realize they have fallen asleep until her arm started to cramp. Trying not to wake Stacie, she reached for the light. Stacie stirred anyway and groped blindly at her hand.
"I don't sleep in the dark."
"I screwed up," Beca breathed out.
"Mm?"
"She was being such a cunt."
A pause. "What did you do?"
"Left her." The telltale stinging was back and in the complete darkness she didn't bother trying to stop the tears anymore. Her voice was waterlogged as she continued, "She was just there. Just fucking crying. I should've said something…but I couldn't…so I left."
Stacie rubbed circles in her back, trying to soothe her.
"You're drunk," she said gently. "It's okay, babe. You'll see."
"Then why do I feel like I'm the worst person in all of Manhattan?"
Stacie interrupted by covering her mouth. "You are so dramatic. Go to sleep."
When she woke up, she was alone. The surroundings bewildered her for a moment – the last thing she could remember was leaving her apartment – until she spotted the white noise machine at the bedside table. She was still wearing her watch. It was eight in the morning.
Beca had dropped Stacie off in her car so many times, but today was actually the first time she had stepped foot inside her place. In broad daylight it was relentlessly bare: the living room had a couch, a laptop, and tall speakers – all on the hardwood floor. A full-height mirror ran the length of one wall. The kitchen counter had nothing but an absurd amount of cereal boxes and the little fridge Stacie owned since college.
She finished washing her face on the kitchen sink just as Stacie arrived.
"Morning!" Stacie kissed her wet cheek and pushed a hot paper cup in her hands. "Hope you like bagels and lox. You don't have a choice."
They ate breakfast on the couch, Stacie tearing into the paper-wrapped sandwiches with gusto. Beca ate her food in silence. Halfway through her coffee, Stacie turned on her laptop.
"Wanna watch GLOW?"
Beca shrugged.
"GLOW is good." Stacie cued up the show. Beca didn't care much for the plot, but the soundtrack reminded her of the bootleg concert DVDs she used to watch with her mom. Stacie hummed lazily to Head Over Heels and stretched her feet over Beca's lap.
"Your apartment is empty."
"I've lived in worse." Stacie spent most of her childhood at an orphanage in Atlanta, a detail she let slip during an acid trip at Burning Man. Beca wasn't sure if Stacie knew she knew, so she kept silent. "Plus, I rehearse here. Don't wanna knock over a vase or something."
"How's work?"
"My legs are killing me. They closed off a section of the Met for our shoot, it was nice." Stacie wiggled her toes and Beca took the hint, massaging her calves. "Oh, that's good. Keep going, babe, I'm so close…"
"I'm gonna stop."
"Ugh, you take the fun out of everything. Who took my ticket to the Jacobs show?"
"Luke brought a date."
"At a place crawling with models?" Stacie shook her head. "Amateur move! What else?"
Beca kept her head down. Stacie had phrased the question lightly, but she could feel Stacie's eyes boring into her face.
"Went to WANGFEST. Hung out with Zoe K. We drank everything." She didn't have the foggiest idea what she told Stacie last night, so she tried to sound as offhand as possible.
"So you came over 'cause I'm a better booty call than Lenny Kravitz's fucking spawn?"
"Pretty much, yeah."
"Mm-hmm." Stacie stared at the ceiling, like she was deep in thought. And then she jabbed her foot hard into Beca's rib.
"OW! What the fuck?!"
"Don't bullshit me, babe. You were pretty upset last night."
Beca gingerly rubbed her side. "Yeah?"
"Yeah."
"I hate you so much," Beca muttered in resignation, slumping back on the couch. She hated lying, particularly to Stacie.
"You wish."
Beca resumed rubbing her legs, trying to make sense of what exactly happened last night.
"I met someone."
"Nice."
"Not really. She cried."
"Yikes," Stacie said immediately, making a face. "In bed?"
Beca nodded.
"You raped her or something?"
"Christ, that's your first thought?"
"…nah. She anyone I know?"
"No."
"You sure you haven't done anything?"
"Yeah." Beca stared at the moving images of women arguing onscreen, not really seeing them. "But she cried, so…I must have."
Stacie leapt off the couch in one lithe movement, landing beside Beca with practiced ease. Beca always envied that about her.
"You know what I miss most about coke?" Beca mused. "I never had to think about these things."
"You miss going around high as a kite, fucking up people's lives?"
"…no."
"Good. I don't miss it either." Stacie twisted to fit her legs again onto Beca's lap. Onscreen, people are talking. Something about being the Cezanne of bullshit artists. "You remember that Malibu party?"
"Dude, we've been to over a hundred."
"The one where you played with St. Vincent for the first time?"
"…someone puked in the pool."
"Yeah. You were huffing so much blow even Miley was getting nervous. Then you thought Alex Riley was raping me and you could've politely left us alone, but you felt the best thing to do was pinch his fucking nipple." Stacie chuckled, the sound turning into a full-on laugh when Beca smiled at the memory. "I mean, he's a wrestler!"
"What was I supposed to think? You were making those really messed-up sounds."
"Moaning?"
"That wasn't moaning, that was someone trapped in the bottom of a well."
"He was teaching me acting! Like the keyfob thing they do in the matches –"
"Kayfabe."
"Whatever. You were trying to save me, which was hilarious." Stacie put an arm around her. "Don't get me wrong, you are not your best self on coke. But you never found it hard to be decent to me while on it either…which is how Luke and I rationalized your drug habit for so long, I guess."
"So?"
"So if you're such a white knight when you're coked off your tits, it shouldn't be that hard for you sober, right?"
Beca hardly found that helpful, but she tried to understand the logic. "Right."
Stacie released her and turned the laptop volume back up. "Did I ever tell you you're the reason I missed out on screwing Alex Riley?"
She couldn't find her phone. Stacie stood with her as they waited outside for a cab. Beca spent the ride home nauseous; she could hardly stand when the car slowed to a stop outside The Palazzo. She stumbled through the rotating doors after her second try and approached the concierge.
"Did anyone drop off something for me?"
The porter on duty spoke in a lackadaisical voice from behind his marble column: "Housekeeping found your phone and coat, man. They should be on your kitchen counter."
Beca shook her head and started to walk away.
"You lose anything else?"
She turned around. "Did anyone leave my apartment?"
There was a brief shuffling of papers. "Yeah…Eduardo called her a town car."
"Okay."
"She refused to take it."
Of course she did, Beca thought, as the elevator doors opened to her foyer. The staircase was spotless as she climbed up. In her bedroom she stretched out on crisp white sheets and breathed in the smell of fresh laundry.
It was like it never happened at all.
Bob Boilen, host, NPR Music: How do you feel about the fact that it's been six years and you can already perform a 'greatest hits' set?
Beca: It's a bit much. You know the feeling when you're standing in a crowded room and someone starts waving at you, but it could also be someone else behind you? That's what I do. I look over my back when people call my songs 'hits'. It means they're things people collectively remembered. Meanwhile, I'd hear my songs in a restaurant, or even backstage, and I'd still get some sort of imposter syndrome over them. It's all too fucking surreal.
Bob: But you do have a very real way of rendering your idle thoughts into complex, memorable tracks. I mean, very few artists can make cheating and lying sound like a fun way of life.
Beca: (Chuckles.) I try.
Bob: You also loathe the term 'songwriter'.
Beca: I never wanted to be one. I write my own lyrics thinking that everyone has had the same experience – I'm sure the way I put it feels nothing new or groundbreaking. Midnight Comedown talks about the fine line between acceptance and harassment in the LGBTQ community. And Marilyn was my take on disenchantment – a shoutout to LA and its cesspool of frustrated aspirations. But the message sometimes gets lost in the details. I've been called a total pig over the lyrics of Marilyn. Midnight Comedown is largely misinterpreted as a demand to clarify masculine and feminine roles in gay identity, which is honestly fucking far-fetched.
Bob: Yeah, that's a stretch.
Beca: But that's the thing. People didn't get it and I'm lonelier than when I first started.
Bob: You mentioned imposter syndrome. Now that I think about it, you often take a self-deprecating view of your music in most of your interviews. Have you ever made a song that you actually like?
Beca: (Pauses.) There's Save Me From Me. And Just Like That must be good, if it made your top ten tracks last year.
Bob: All collaborations.
Beca: Right.
Bob: What about something that's all your own? (Dead air for five seconds.) What about Pillow Talk? You always say you're glad for bands like The XX. That song is literally Angels.
Beca: That's my favorite XX song, so, uh, thanks.
Bob: Don't get me wrong, we enjoyed the glamour and glitter of your last album Fleeting Pleasures – but ask anyone here at NPR about that time Are You Sure About This? came out, and the first thing they'll tell you is they loved Pillow Talk. It was so – guileless, so disarming, it made Lars cry.
Lars Gotrich, NPR producer, offscreen: It did. I have no shame. (Bob and Beca laugh.)
Bob: What is stopping you from making a song like that again?
Beca: I've never felt that way about anyone else again.
Bob: That's heavy. (Clears throat.) Pillow Talk was in your first album. It's 2018.
Beca: Yeah.
Bob: Do you feel any pressure to create something just as pure?
Beca: I'm a narcissist, Bob, of course I do.
Bob: (Chuckles.)
Beca: How about you announce my next song?
Bob: (Clears throat.) Live from Brooklyn for today's edition of Tiny Desk Concert: STOKR.
"How does NPR have way better coffee than Starbucks?" Beca gratefully accepted the latte Luke brought her. NPR's Tiny Desk Concert tapings were ridiculously early; three songs in and she was ready to crawl under the desk and sleep. "Thanks."
Luke unplugged her keyboard, deftly rolling up the wires around it. "Why'd you sing More Than This?"
"The third song had to be a cover."
"You sounded like a total ass."
"…what?"
"And take off those shite shades, they're not fooling anybody."
Beca swiped off Luke's hand, dangerously close to grabbing the Native Sons sunglasses off her face. "Dude, what's your problem?" Luke glowered at her long enough to make her feel self-conscious; when she next spoke, it was with a healthy dose of apprehension. "What?"
Luke took out his phone. Only when he pushed the screen under her nose did she understand why he was being such a bitch.
He had a photo of her with Aubrey at the Marc Jacobs party.
"You're a fucking tosser, you know?"
Beca didn't miss the jaded way Luke said it – he had repeatedly said it to her after all – but this time she felt particularly guilty. "Where'd you get this?"
"I'm your publicist, give me some credit. Princess Elisabeth von Thurn und Taxis with mystery brunette? What the hell are you playing at?"
"Must have been a very confusing press alert," Beca murmured, idly fascinated by the electronic image. From now on she'd never be able to associate houndstooth coats with anyone else.
"What did you do to her?"
"Hey," Beca warned, brought back to earth by Luke's accusatory tone.
"You slept with her!"
The nearest intern raised her head towards the pair of them, before promptly scurrying away under Beca's glare.
"I didn't."
"Yeah, right! You were tagged in a photo together at Pasquale Jonses, yeah? I got more photos at WANGFEST, you wanna keep lying?"
"I wasn't lying!" Beca breathed deeply. If Luke pulled this crap before New York she probably would have fought back. But she was supposed to be all about the business now, and she wasn't going to have some NPR intern Snapchat this and blow it out of proportion. "Can we not do this right now?"
Luke regarded her angrily, clenching and unclenching one fist. Beca braced herself in case he decided to throw a punch. Slowly, his exasperated look gave way to resignation.
"You suck."
For the first time in a week, she let herself think of Aubrey. She thought of the illuminated face when she lit Aubrey's cigarette, the luminous green eyes. The fake German accent that sounded laughably Russian. The expensive-smelling perfume, oozing stealthily into Beca's head.
"Anything else?"
Luke only shook his head.
"You gonna call her?" Luke asked, his tone brisk. It was the first time he spoke on the entire drive from Brooklyn to Broadway.
"No."
"Oh, come on."
"Don't tell Stacie." And then, more quietly, "I could lose her."
It lingered in Beca's mouth like a bad taste: feeling like she'd been played, and loathing herself for the way she got even.
She should probably call. It would be too easy to find out Aubrey's number: she only had to pick up the phone. But she couldn't imagine Aubrey waiting for a call from an unknown number, much more listening to an unfamiliar voice making half-assed apologies in her ear. Beca may know very little about Aubrey, but the blonde did not seem the type to suffer fools.
"Why are you still here?" Kommissar asked in her usual formal manner, startling Beca. She had been listening to a particularly ominous remix of Lorde's Supercut. It filled the room as she lay on the office couch: in my head I played a supercut of us, all the magic we gave off, all the love we had and lost –
"What's up?"
"Ray is collecting you outside in five minutes." To Beca's uncomprehending stare, "You're flying to Austin."
"…what?"
"South by Southwest?" American English was clearly growing on Kommissar; her statements were becoming questions, after Luke's sarcastic way of speaking. "You are speaking on Sexual Misconduct in the Music Industry?"
"Fuck." She had been so distracted lately. "You told me last night…"
Kommissar waited expectantly, her face smooth.
"…but I haven't done any packing. Shit."
Kommissar began collecting things around her office, stuffing them neatly in Beca's satchel. "There is no need to apologize," she said, when she finally handed Beca her bag.
"I wasn't going to."
"Good. You are famous." Kommissar dialed someone on her smartphone. "I will have your stylist pull out clothes at the local mall. If you do not mind using the hotel toiletries, you should be fine…Hello, James, this is Kommissar – ja, the dry cleaner promised they can restore the Gucci jacket. I am always warning Beca not to drink in formal wear..."
"Bye," Beca announced in her most sarcastic tone. She hated it when Luke and Kommissar talked about her like a child.
"Do not forget, Stacie and Emily are picking you up on the twenty-ninth," Kommissar called out, completely missing her disdain. "Should I have your luggage loaded on The Bebop, or have them forwarded to Satellite Island?"
Beca stared at her.
"…like, Australia?"
Aubrey
"I hate Negronis," Martin remarked, watching her take a sip of her cocktail. "The taste is so foul."
Aubrey set her glass down. "The first time I tried it I thought so too. The second time it was ordered for me, and to my surprise I've missed the bittersweet flavor. The third time it was given to me with a pinch of salt. That's how it made sense."
"Or you're just trying to be cool."
Aubrey didn't quite know what to say to that, but she felt something rise in her, bitter and mean. This was the third time he had tried to make her feel like an idiot.
She knew this was going nowhere the moment Chloe signed her up on Tinder. But over messages Martin was quick-witted and urbane, and he couldn't be too bad if he was the regional head of marketing for Montblanc. She eventually agreed to meet him for drinks in East Village. In person he looked and spoke like Jean Dujardin; unfortunately those were the only palatable things about him.
She composed herself and smiled.
"I'd be suspicious of anyone who finds me interesting just because I like Negronis."
Later he asked if she would like to try his collection of Japanese whiskies. "Each sip costs five hundred dollars," he said, with a smirk that suggested she wouldn't get to say no again if she came. She refused and said she had to work tomorrow.
She was exhausted enough to throw money at her problems, so she took an Uber home. The driver was fresh out of college and seemed intent on wearing her out further with The Chainsmokers' entire discography. The music was so intellectually bland it gave rise to intrusive thoughts she normally was too busy to ignore: her student loans practically ensured she was living paycheck to paycheck for two more years. She just spent sixty dollars trying to impress a man she didn't even like. She was turning thirty in six months.
"Can we change the music?" she snapped, curt and polite. We feigned camaraderie, a card she pulled with clients whenever she sensed reluctance or mistrust.
The driver showed no reaction from her request; still staring ahead, he twiddled a knob until the station changed.
It was fun for a while, there was no way of knowing / Like a dream in the night, who can say where we're going –
It sounded like a woman, her voice smoky and soulful. Aubrey was genuinely lulled by its slow burn. She found she could mouth along the words, which was impossible: she had never heard this song before. She had never heard this particular contralto warped through what sounded like a turntable and an electric guitar, coming out melancholic and almost unrecognizable.
More than this, you know there's nothing / More than this, tell me one thing…
Interesting choice of cover, the radio announcer commented as the last hazy beats faded away, considering the only similarities you share with Roxy Music are radio-friendly records that reward deep-diving listeners.
I guess eighties music are just catchy as hell, the singer replied. It's the kind of cheesy synth pop you play decades later to mentally take you to another place. I mean, play me Roxy Music anytime and I'd instantly remember that time my mom drove us home through Phoenix. It was muggy, it was dusk, I was sure it was about to rain...it was the first time I felt lonely about nothing in particular. I'm always aspiring for that kind of imagery.
There you have it. STOKR with More Than This –
"Turn it off," Aubrey commanded.
Back home she poured herself a drink and sank into bed. She should probably stop drinking wine. She should probably stop drinking, period.
Corporate stooges, artists, men, women: hopeless, all of them. Martin wasn't the first person to ask her out in the past month alone. Try as she might to look at them with a little bit of romance, all nights ended with her casting off any possible futures with them on the sidewalk. None of them knew what to do with her. Her previous attempts to fix that only ended up in humiliation.
She recalled the last one and felt her face grow hot instantly.
Beca. What an asshole. Glib and interesting right up to the point when Aubrey was seriously considering asking her home, only to disappear once they got to the club. The last time Aubrey looked Zoe Kravitz had her ear; Aubrey chalked it up as a loss and let herself be reeled in by the nearest guy.
Dancing felt amazing – it always had been. She couldn't remember when she stopped. It had to be sometime in law school. Whoever was dancing with her couldn't match the rhythm of the music and she found it jarring, but before she could move away, someone was grabbing her. Beca. Beca, who had been innocuously touching Aubrey all evening, first for that photograph at Marc Jacobs' afterparty and now when Aubrey was finally truly enjoying herself, playing the concerned friend too well as she literally manhandled Aubrey off the dance floor.
Aubrey must have made the first move – she couldn't quite recall – but then she and Beca were dancing and it made something hot and desperate expand inside of her. It was that same desperation that made her take Beca's hand and place it inside her thigh. Beca had rough hands. Aubrey had never had anything like it before. It was curious, and it should have been unattractive, but she decided she liked it even before Beca's fingers sank into her. It felt like a loose thread being pulled inside her, unwinding her. It felt good.
It felt stupidly good.
God, she really should drink less. Aubrey slipped into the sheets, unnnerved by the sudden dryness in her mouth. It was the closest she was willing to name that sensation in her head. She unbuttoned her pajama top and let her fingers graze her skin.
"You don't date people on Tinder."
"So what is it for?" Chloe's response was a knowing grin, which only grew wider until Aubrey understood: "For sex?"
"Yes, Bree, for sex," Chloe sighed, like this was the most obvious thing in the world. "Guys who want something serious spell it out on their profile. Otherwise it's Hunger Games for your filthiest fantasies."
"…eww."
"Let me see Martin's profile."
"Absolutely not."
"I won't laugh! Let me see."
"Of course you would sign me up to a sexual delivery system."
"No, I swear it's good! It's where I met Andy."
Aubrey plucked her phone off the coffee table before Chloe could make a move for it. "You said you met him at work!"
"Um, I swiped right on him at work?"
"That is a completely different – no. You know what? I am uninstalling –" Chloe clambered over the couch, the movement not unlike a dog trying to get into her lap. "No!"
"Come on, Bree," Chloe said, triumphantly wresting the phone away. "You're single and in your thirties, live a little!"
"I am not yet thirty, and for your information, I am doing plenty of living –"
"You never do bad things."
"I do bad things."
"Like what? Using Laurence's Netflix account?" Chloe snickered, and for a moment Aubrey was tempted to tell her everything – the man who gave her Dunhills, the Marc Jacobs party, Beca, Beca and her impossibly-glossy inner circle, Beca and the way she looked at Aubrey like she could perfectly imagine them together and alone. "Oh my god, you swiped right on this? Why?"
"He seemed very established in his field…"
"He's, like, a total daddy!"
Aubrey glared at her.
"Oops, you have actual daddy issues. Sorry." Chloe began swiping right. "Never swipe right on dudes with airpods, Bree. Never. Also, Martin has way too many gym selfies for a forty-year-old…"
In the short space of March Aubrey learned: the last train to Bed-Stuy was always full of drunks. Paying for her own Netflix account gave her a strange satisfaction. Her Tinder profile mostly seemed to attract Asians. Receiving a Bergdorf Goodman voucher from some pop star's butler was the cheapest she'd ever been made to feel.
A week before Amy's wedding she was rifling through her desk for the invite when she came upon Laurence's Rolex. She found that when she thought of him it was no longer with longing. Her memories of him didn't feel like things that had happened to someone else – something Chloe promised her would happen eventually – but she felt as detached from them as if she was watching herself through a screen, plunging headlong into a plot where everyone else except her character had predicted the bitter ending.
Something went very wrong along the way, she thought, as she went to mail the watch to Beekman Place. She filled out the order form and found she couldn't remember what Laurence's face looked like. She could only remember that time they slept together and he left quickly afterwards: he was running late for a manicure at Gio's.
The flight from New York to Tasmania took twenty-seven hours. By the first layover from JFK to LAX Aubrey had finished reading Portnoy's Complaint. Halfway on the flight time from LA to Melbourne she had gone over an entire season of Westworld.
"Wanna share my show?" Chloe asked. She tilted her phone towards Aubrey: Grey's Anatomy.
"Cute, but no."
"Xanax?"
"…you waited twelve hours to tell me you have Xanax?"
"Such a Meredith," Chloe grumbled, reaching for her bag. "I can't go around offering it unless necessary, the surgeon general wouldn't like that…you know the side effects, right? Lightheadedness, memory loss, impaired – eh, I'm sure you know. I have a billion bags tucked over there the moment you feel pukey –"
Aubrey rolled her eyes. She had puked exactly once on Xanax, and only because Chloe convinced her to go on a ferry boat ride to Halong Bay during typhoon season of 2013.
"God, how far away is Melbourne?" Chloe groused, handing her a pill.
"Anywhere from twenty to twenty-five hours."
"Ugh. Why couldn't Amy marry an American?"
She woke up with a jolt. For a moment she was disoriented by movement around her; then she realized people were busy retrieving their respective overhead luggage. The plane had come to a full stop.
"We're here," she whispered urgently, shaking Chloe awake. The redhead looked around blearily.
"Land down undah!" Chloe slurred, in a faux-British accent both cheeky and groggy at the same time. "Hey, maybe we'll find you a nice chap you can split pints with –"
"Wrong country, Chlo."
"A surfing koala, then." Chloe rolled her eyes. "Now what?"
Aubrey fired off a quick text to Amy, who promised to pick them up at the airport as soon as they landed. "Now we wait."
"– and my future baby-daddy has about a hundred relatives, so I'm shacking you up at Satellite Island, if you gals don't mind," Amy finished matter-of-factly, skidding to a stop centimeters away from the Volvo in front of them. "You don't mind, yeah?"
"No," Aubrey lied, nervously eyeing the traffic. She hadn't really heard a word Amy said – she'd been riding shotgun through Melbourne for only twenty minutes, but in that short time she'd done her best to make peace with her maker, not that she followed religion or anything. She envied Chloe, curled up in the back seat of Amy's car. The redhead was still blissfully enjoying Xanax and nothing else in the past hour. "I'm sorry, but where are we going? I was under the impression Hobart is another hour and a half from Melbourne by plane. But we are on a sedan, which means it takes thirteen hours –"
"No worries," Amy waved off, accentuating the gesture with a hard stomp on the accelerator. Aubrey clutched the nearest grab handle with a death grip. "You're the last of the Bellas to arrive – you missed my jet, but you get a fair go at Short Stack's. If that isn't sweet as, then what else is, amirite?"
Aubrey glanced at Chloe in dismay. "I'm sorry, did you say –"
"Give it a burl, Aubrey, come on," Amy added, flashing an oblivious grin. "The island's for twelve people. We'll find out the lesbos once and for all."
"…what?"
Amy was headed to a deserted airstrip on the edge of town. From a good distance away Aubrey spotted a small black-and-gold plane parked by the runway, two figures standing next to it; even from afar she could already tell the smaller one was Beca.
"Whose house is that?" Chloe mumbled as they made their way across the tarmac. "Like, wow. The garden is so…concrete."
"Please be normal," Aubrey begged in an undertone, at the same time holding up her normally-gracious friend by the scruff. Chloe's timing could not be worse. "God, Chlo, I need you to be normal."
"You are suuuuper bossy."
The taller of the two figures ahead turned around and waved: Stacie, her brown hair whipping in the wind. Aubrey couldn't remember the last time she saw her. Chloe returned the wave with a wide grin; before Aubrey could stop her, she bolted straight into Stacie's arms.
"Oof! Easy, girl, are you – Chlo, you're literally trying to climb me."
"How are you so fit?" Chloe wailed, squeezing Stacie so hard they almost fell over. Stacie regained her footing, Chloe kissed Stacie's cheeks with great exaggeration, and next to them Beca stepped back and surveyed the scene, cigarette in mouth, expression unreadable behind oversized sunglasses.
"Oh my god!" Chloe squealed, noticing Beca for the first time. "Beca's here! Beca flew twenty-seven hours too! Bree, are you seeing this?"
"Is she being unusually jumpy, or is it just me?" Stacie whispered to Aubrey, as Chloe reached for Beca with the same unbridled enthusiasm.
"She took a Xanax on the way here."
"Ah." Stacie's concerned expression turned into a smirk. "How you livin', Cap?"
"I have not been Cap for six years," Aubrey retorted, accepting Stacie's perfunctory hug with more relief than necessary. Anything felt better than just standing four feet away from the loathsome douchebag she tried to have sex with a month ago. "I saw that music video of you dancing in roller skates –"
"Really?"
"Yes, I believe it went viral. You showed excellent form."
"Damn, Cap, it makes me hard hearing that from you."
Aubrey found Stacie endlessly amusing in college; it was nice to find that the brunette had not changed at all. "Good to see you too."
"Is anybody else coming?" Beca asked, in a brusque tone that made all of them look up.
Amy put an arm around Beca and steered her towards the plane. Stacie gave Aubrey a wink and ran after them. Aubrey watched the three women climbing aboard, her trepidation rising by the second.
"We're staying on an island," Chloe said.
Aubrey crossed her arms. She was well aware of the awkwardness that was sure to follow over their next three days in Tasmania; in the span of five minutes Beca hadn't looked at her at all.
"Aww, Bree, don't be mad. I'm in good terms with Beca."
"That's not what I'm worried about."
"Look, Bree," Chloe began seriously, "you know how you have this list of people who 'got away', and then you see them again and somehow they've managed to stay super-hot? I think that's what happened the last time we –"
"I need another Xanax," Aubrey groaned.
Songs used in this chapter:
Lorde, Run The Jewels - Supercut
Roxy Music - More Than This
