"Well, that's all she wrote. I'm gonna go see a man about a horse cock."

"I don't think that's how the saying goes-"

"Mmm, pretty sure it is."

Beca laughed, tacking on a quick, "I'll see you at home" to her roommate as Amy pushed back from the bar. Beca knew that Amy was no where near her drunkest - that title was reserved for a special August night, senior year - but her hand shot out reflexively when Amy almost fell over as she leaned off her stool.

"I'm fine!" Amy protested, shaking off her guiding hand. "Red, it was good to see you. Don't be a stranger."

Beca cast her eyes down to the polished wood in front of her as Amy hugged the only other remaining Bella in the bar. She heard Chloe and Amy make their hushed goodbyes - she was sure that Chloe was the only person in the whole world that could get Amy to speak below a shout - but she didn't eavesdrop.

It'd been a long night.

She really should be leaving too.

She looked up and Amy was gone, and Chloe was appraising her, just like before, just like always- that familiar dropped brow and those familiar narrowed eyes.

"You never said why you're still living with her," Chloe said. "Couldn't make it without another Bella?"

"She's still living with me," Beca insisted, and Chloe's expression broke into a wide smile.

At the brilliant sight, Beca had to stop herself from looking away.

How does she do that?

How does she make me feel like the center of the universe with just a smile?

"It helps, too, to have someone around. Like with the tours. That way I don't have to hire someone to come check on the place," she rambled, then stopped. "I mean, she eats all my food and doesn't pay rent even though she's a literal millionaire and I'm pretty sure she caused structural damage to the foundation last time I flew out to LA, but-"

It was timed perfectly; Chloe had been taking a sip of her nearly empty tequila soda, and, when Beca admitted that Amy was more liability than relief, Chloe started, dribbling her watered-down beverage back into her glass.

She wiped her chin and grinned back up at Beca, gaze dancing with mischief.

"But you love her," Chloe insisted.

Beca felt her eyes roll before she refocused on the decimated label of her beer.

"Yeah," she said quietly. "I do."

The moment stayed suspended between them, reminding Beca of the awkwardness that hadn't been there all night but was suddenly here now that they were alone, and Beca thought about leaving again. She should. She still had to record some backing vocals for that new single, and it was already late. If she left now, she'd probably have to-

A hand touched her arm, and she broke her concentration to look up.

To see Chloe watching her, with bright, shiny eyes.

"It was really good to see you," she whispered, and Beca flushed. "Thanks for coming."

Beca swallowed, brows drawing together.

"Yeah, dude, thanks for having it here," she said, choking out the words around a sudden lump in her throat. "I know the city's kinda cramped-"

Beca felt Chloe lift her hand off her arm with an errant wave.

"No, it was good," she asserted. "I needed an excuse to get the girls to Aubrey's place, especially now that they're engaged and Matt's moved in. Can you believe I haven't brought them here before?"

"Sure can't," Beca sighed. She dragged her thumb through the leftover condensation and waterlogged paper until the label tore in a new spot.

"Plus, I knew it'd be our best chance at getting you to come by," Chloe went on, leaning shoulder-first to bump into Beca. "Miss World-Famous-Singer-Slash-Producer-Extraordinaire."

Beca rolled her lips together to hide her grimace.

"Maybe five years ago," she replied, wincing anyway.

"Nope, I don't believe that," Chloe shot back just as quickly. "You're being modest. I still hear your songs on the radio, like, all the time."

"Yeah, because you live in Kansas," Beca grumbled before she could stop herself.

With that Ken from the military, her brain silently added.

Chloe gasped, affronted, with all the fervor and indignation of a WASP woman being told the world was out of white wine, and Beca tried to bite down her knee-jerk smile.

"Excuse me, I'm on the Missouri side," Chloe said faux-haughtily, brushing her hair off her shoulder. It was a move so un-Chloe that Beca actually heard herself giggle.

And then she shifted her gaze across the nearly empty bar, bringing her decidedly empty beer bottle back up to her lips in a futile attempt at distracting herself.

There was just no way in hell that she was going to be able talk to her and look at her.

Wimp, her brain kindly reminded her.

"Should we get one more?"

Beca glanced back at Chloe to see that her former best friend was holding up her glass with a hopeful expression - not unlike the one that got Beca to audition for the stupid Bellas in the first place.

Those smiling blue eyes that could make her do anything.

Lips, curved into a hesitant lift in the corners.

She sucked in a deep breath and sighed with a shake of her head.

"I should be headin-"

"Are we okay?"

The rest of Beca's gentle goodbye fell to ash on her tongue as her eyes widened.

Now?

We're going to do this now?

After all this fucking time?

"It's just, it's the first time that I've actually seen you in, like, ten years, Becs. I miss you," Chloe rushed to say. Beca looked away, because those eyes were wet, and god-fucking-damnit if Chloe crying wasn't going to absolutely break her. "I want you to meet the girls. Frankie loves your music - we even came to your concert, when you came through KC, when you were opening for Chance. I texted you, but I thought-"

Chloe cut herself off.

Beca couldn't believe what she was hearing.

"I miss you," Chloe repeated, and she grabbed Beca again. Beca let her eyes bore into the back of Chloe's hand, clasped over her own.

Why now?

"I know I'm a boring mom now or whatever, but-"

That broke her - Beca couldn't stop her sardonic laugh from escaping. She felt Chloe's grip tighten across the back of hers.

"It wasn't that, I'm sure I was, uh…" she started, but then she trailed off.

Too in love with you to see you happy with somebody else?

Too scared to see how wonderful of a mom you were, because I might wish that we had that together?

Too worried that everything would feel just as good as it did fourteen years ago?

That it might hurt just as much as ten years ago?

"-busy," she said aloud, glancing up to make eye contact. "I was probably busy. Sorry I didn't see your text."

"So not the point," Chloe huffed, the ghost of her hopeful smile still clinging to her cheeks, the crinkle of her eyes.

And it was starting to upset Beca: that hopeful expression.

Because she wasn't the one who ruined this.

They finished the tour, they hugged, they were friendly.

Beca even went to the wedding.

But the whole time, she stayed far enough away, because the one question in her mind just wouldn't let her be.

And if they were going to do this now.

After all this time.

She was finally going to get her answer.

"Why'd you kiss me?"

The hand on hers got tighter, and Beca tried to ignore it as she plowed through, holding Chloe's surprised gaze.

"If you knew you were going to end up with him, at the end of the tour," Beca gritted out, the words coming out choppy and harsh. "Why'd you kiss me?"

Those were definitely tears now, but Beca didn't let herself take the question back. She pulled her hand away.

She'd finally voiced the question that had been gnawing at her for a better part of the decade - something she'd obsessed over and written about and gone to therapy for.

Something she couldn't forget.

That dark hotel room, when Chloe climbed into her bed. How she could barely sleep as Chloe wrapped herself around her, breathing deep. She'd been drinking, sure, but that moment - just after sunrise, with the light streaming in through the curtains that she'd forgotten to close, when she woke to the feeling of her hair being pushed off her forehead.

Chloe's eyes, fixed on her.

Chloe's smile, making her feel like the luckiest person, at the center of her world.

"It wasn't- I didn't-" Chloe started and stopped twice, like she wanted to say something honest but she couldn't find the words.

Beca watched as the tears spilled down her cheeks, but she didn't let her search any further.

"You knew how I felt," Beca said. It wasn't a question, and yet she wanted Chloe to answer anyway.

After a moment, she did.

"Yeah," Chloe breathed out. "And I knew how I felt."

Another hard laugh came up from Beca's chest, and she stifled it with a cough as she picked up her beer again.

But it was empty, so she just put it back down with a thunk.

"And how was that?" she sighed.

"Confused," Chloe admitted, quieter than before. She sucked in a deep breath before continuing.

"Scared. Like you were just starting something so awesome - Theo was all over you, and I'd already watched you with Jesse for years and I- I couldn't go through that alone again. Chicago was there, and I-"

Beca shook her head ruefully.

"You knew how I felt about you," she pleaded - she didn't mean to. It pissed her off, so when she spoke again, she forced a harsher tone as she looked away. "I'm not the reason you have a perfect family and a perfect husband and perfect, adorable daughters. Why would you-"

"We're getting a divorce."

Beca paused, waiting for the words to straighten themselves out in her mind.

They broke up.

Chloe's single.

Chloe's a single mom.

"The girls and I, we've been staying with my parents," Chloe went on, and Beca chanced a look over at her.

Gone was the hopeful Chloe, or the happy, animated Chloe that Beca had been watching for the last three and a half hours. This Chloe had a haunted look behind her eyes, and Beca finally saw past the glitz and excitement to see deep, dark eye-bags and shadows in her dimples, taking her smile in the opposite direction.

"Most of our stuff is back in KC," she tacked on with a heavy sigh. "And the girls start back up at school in a couple weeks. Jane's starting kindergarten. I didn't- I couldn't just move them right before school. God, I don't know what I'm going to do."

She dropped her head into her hands.

Beca knew she should say something.

But even if she knew what she wanted to say, she wasn't sure she'd be able to say it, because Chloe started talking again, this time from inside her hands.

"I thought if I could just get here- back to my girls, to my family, to- to the last thing that made sense, I would know what to do," she pushed out, shaky and unsure, as she moved her hands to her cheeks.

She drew up a desperate breath before putting on a rueful smile of her own.

"Chicago already has somewhere to go," she finally said. "Someone to go to. After I lost you- you guys- not just you, but not not you, because you were…"

Beca watched that watery smile turn brighter, then sad again, then disappear completely as Chloe blew out a controlled breath.

Then, she sniffed forcefully, pushing back from the bar.

"I'm going to get another drink. I'm not driving," she said resolutely, with the cadence of a joke. She wiped her makeup from under her eyes before standing up and grabbing her purse. "After the bathroom. I'll be- yeah, gimme two secs."

She was gone before Beca could say anything.

But what would she have said anyway?

Chloe was single - because Chicago is and was and always will be a dick, sounded like - and she was completely lost, struggling to make decisions for kids on her own.

Does that make up for how she treated me on the USO tour?

Hell no.

But they'd gotten pregnant so fast, and though Beca wasn't really talking to Chloe anymore at the time, there were some whispers regarding the whole timeline of it all.

Bree never said anything untoward afterward - and she never liked Chicago, so she figured if anyone would say anything, it'd be her - and Beca was so caught up in her own feelings around the situation that she didn't ask.

What Beca had pictured as the perfect life - one pointedly without her… maybe that was just a trick of the IG filters.

She tried to replay that morning memory - the moment after, when they'd giggled together, lips still close.

"You have morning breath."

"Yeah, well, so do you."

And then they'd rolled away, and then a meeting with Theo, and then there was the kidnapping and the rescue and the final show and…

And she kissed Chicago.

What a fucking clusterfuck. There wasn't any rhyme or reason to any of it, and Beca had just wanted to make sense of it somehow. For, like, years. She'd had too many sleepless nights in hotel rooms or on private jets, flying to their next stop.

And for what?

To be here, more than ten years after that tour, feeling just as confused as before.

And knowing that Chloe felt just as lost.

From her vantage point, Beca could see when Chloe re-entered the bar, walking the long way around to confront the bartender at a different spot. Even from across the room, Beca could see that Chloe's smile was diminished.

I've spent ten years trying to find my way without her, she thought. And things still don't feel as good as they did when she was in my life.

Maybe that was a sentiment that Chloe shared too.

She expected Chloe to grab another drink, so when her old friend actually got the bill and started completing the tab, Beca jumped up and ran to the other side of the bar.

Leave it to Chloe to play the "I'm paying for this round" game, even now.

"Hey, let me get that," she said hurriedly as she approached, reaching for their tab, but Chloe pulled it away.

"I took up too much of your time," Chloe insisted as she scribbled her name at the bottom. "It's the least I can do."

And Beca looked at her - really looked at her, in person and not through social media - for the first time in ten years.

She was older. Wrinklier. More weathered, not as tan.

A bit heavier, but still strong.

Still hot, her unhelpful brain supplied.

"There's a diner around the corner," Beca blurted out suddenly. Chloe looked up quickly, blinking at the sudden outburst.

"I go there, sometimes, when I can't write," she went on. "They have apple turnovers that taste just like the ones we used to get in the cafeteria in Foster."

Beca watched Chloe blink again before she added, "It's open all night, and they have beer and stuff too."

Chloe's mouth dropped open, then closed, then open again.

"Matt won't babysit forever, even though Bree's there now," she said slowly.

"Oh, right," Beca replied, suddenly sheepish.

Of course, Chloe had to get back to her kids.

It was stupid to think-

"… but I'll text them, make sure they're in bed," Chloe went on. "-because there's no way there's apple turnovers out there as good as Foster's."

Beca felt the grin coming before Chloe even finished talking, and she watched as Chloe flipped the bill sleeve closed and set the pen on top.

"I'm telling you! I didn't expect it either," Beca said quickly. She didn't know where this was coming from, only that she didn't want Chloe to leave it - to leave them - like that again.

"But one time, I went in there, just crazy hungover, like-"

"Wait," Chloe cut in. "Like, after Worlds hungover, or after The Jungle Juice Debacle of Sophomore Year hungover?"

Beca grinned even wider somehow.

"Like Stacie-And-Amy-Back-To-School-Senior-Summer-Birthday-Bash hungover."

"Oh em aca gee."

Beca laughed, turning on her heel to lead the way out of the bar but still looking over her shoulder at the woman behind her.

Maybe everything wasn't perfect.

Maybe ten years was too long, and they were too different as people now.

But, whatever.

Tonight… tonight, I have my Chloe back.