Chapter Text
**
The first time it happens, Chloe convinces herself it’s just an accident.
They’re both drunk (stumbling, laughing, almost incoherent), and they’ve barely known each other more than a few weeks. And yeah, sure, they’ve seen each other naked (Chloe isn’t ashamed of crashing Beca’s shower because she’s comfortable with her body and knows she’s hot, and anyway it brings Beca into the Bellas so what is there to be ashamed of?), but they barely know each other.
And yes, Chloe pushed to let Beca into the Bellas, it’s true. And yes, Aubrey gave her a weird look (that kept getting weirder the longer and longer she fought), but that doesn’t mean they know each other.
And sure, when Chloe saw Beca at the org fair on that very first day, headphones around her neck and wearing way more black than should have been strictly comfortable in the Atlanta heat, she was mesmerized. And sure, when Beca walked into the Bellas audition with no song prepared, grabbed the cup of pens from Chloe’s desk and sat cross-legged on the stage and sang like she was still in summer camp, Chloe couldn’t tear her eyes away.
Sure, all of that was true.
But they don’t know each other.
(Earlier in the night Chloe stumbled over to Beca on swaying feet, grabbed her hands, and proclaimed that they were going to be “fast friends,” and Beca laughed and winked at her and made some joke about being naked and Chloe felt her stomach bottom out so suddenly that she wondered if she was tipping over backwards.)
They don’t know each other, but there’s still something about Beca that draws Chloe to her, that makes her want to know her. There’s something about her that’s so interesting, so confusing, and it isn’t just that Beca is moody and wears a bunch of earrings and has a great voice and can effortlessly match pitch (all of those things are interesting too, don’t get her wrong). But there’s something else. Something Chloe can’t quite put a finger on.
The first time it happens, Chloe is so drunk that her eyes can’t focus on anything in front of her. All she knows is that Beca is warm under her arm, that Beca is leaning into her, laughing as she helps Chloe navigate her way back to the apartment she shares with Aubrey, while Chloe continues to sing that Andy Grammer song under her breath, out of key and off-tempo.
(The next morning she vaguely recalls at some point in the night making out with… some guy. Sam? Tom? She isn’t totally sure of his name, and since he’s a white guy of average build with short brown hair, she’s pretty sure she’ll never see him again.)
(It won’t exactly be a tragedy.)
The first time it happens, it happens because Beca is good, because Beca is worried about her friend getting home safely. The first time it happens, it happens because Chloe is so drunk she can’t see straight; too drunk to totally comprehend the consequences of her actions; too drunk to remember that she and Beca are technically teammates now; too hopped up on the atmosphere of the party and the excitement of being back to school to recall that maybe she shouldn’t be doing this.
(Now that she thinks about it she’s not sure if Beca was drunk or not. She can’t remember seeing her drink anything, but she also can’t really remember many of the details of the party in general. She was distracted by Aubrey and the flurry of all the acapella people and the music and Sam/Tom and making sure the rest of the Bellas were having a good time, so maybe Beca was drunk after all.)
(Chloe’s not sure if it matters.)
(It definitely matters.)
Beca leaves Chloe leaning against the wall outside of her apartment, eyes closed and humming along to some tune only she can hear while Beca fishes around in Chloe’s pockets for her apartment key.
“If you wanted to feel me up, Becs, all you had to do was ask,” Chloe says, eyes closed, her voice dreamy and far away.
She isn’t slurring her words but she’s equal parts intoxicated and sleepy so she doesn’t exactly have excellent control over her brain-to-mouth filter. She isn’t slurring her words but she isn’t exactly sure of what she’s saying.
She remembers Beca laughing next to her. “I’ll remember that for next time,” she says as she finally frees Chloe’s key from the confines of her jeans.
“Why wait until next time?” Chloe asks, blinking heavy eyes open and winking exaggeratedly.
Beca just rolls her eyes, pushing the door open and moving again to support Chloe and lead her inside. Her arm slips around Chloe’s waist.
Beca exhales a heavy breath once they reach the main room, again slipping out from underneath Chloe’s extended arm. Chloe wobbles a little where she stands, confused as to her sudden lack of balance, confused as to where her support has gone, confused as to why she suddenly feels so cold and lonely standing inside of her dark apartment.
“Please don’t fall while I lock your door,” Beca implores, shooting Chloe a look that clearly says ‘I can’t believe I have to look after this drunk idiot.’
At least, Chloe’s pretty sure that’s what the look is saying. (She’s kind of drunk; she can’t really be sure of anything.)
Beca continues to talk as she turns her back on Chloe. “You’re kinda heavy and I’m kinda small and I don’t think I could haul your ass all the way to your bed, so do me a favor and stay upright.”
Truth be told, Chloe is a little insulted.
She might be drunk but she is not an idiot, and certainly not a drunk idiot. Besides, like she can’t manage standing still for ten seconds while Beca closes her front door? Like she needs someone watching her constantly and taking care of her? Like she’s some toddler learning how to walk for the first time, instead of a 21-almost-22-year-old woman?
She huffs and stares at Beca’s back, suddenly feeling a desperate need to prove herself.
(If she ever thinks about it, those moments leading up to that first time — which she does; the first few weeks after that first time she practically obsesses over those preliminary moments — Chloe will recognize that it’s this thought that is ultimately her downfall; it’s this moment of stubborn pride and a vindictive desire to show off that leads to every mistake that is to come.)
She steps forward, her legs a little more stable now that she’s moving.
Beca backs up, one two three steps, until her back is flush with Chloe’s apartment door, until Chloe is hovering, just inches in front of her, eyes thick and slow but incredibly intense. Beca’s hands are pressed flat against the door (Chloe remembers how she almost looked scared, in the moment), a flush high on her cheeks as she eyes Chloe carefully.
Beca clears her throat. “And what’s with you, just now?”
Chloe doesn’t answer her, just takes two steps forward until she can feel the heat of Beca’s hips underneath her hands.
Beca sucks in a breath of air and bites her lip. “Chloe,” she practically whispers, voice low and eyes hooded. (Chloe isn’t sure if it’s her own dizzy, blurry vision, but she’s pretty sure she remembers that Beca’s eyes were glued to her lips during the entire exchange.)
Beca gulps. “What are you—?”
“I’m not a drunk idiot,” Chloe says, moving ever so slightly closer. Their noses are almost brushing now, and Chloe goes nearly cross-eyed trying to keep her gaze on Beca’s face.
Beca shakes her head. “I never said—”
“Besides,” Chloe interrupts, “I don’t want to wait until next time.”
“Chloe, I—”
She kisses her. Like an idiot, she just surges forward and kisses her.
Beca, who had already been pressed against the front door, seems to almost jerk away. Her head smacks against the door and she whimpers into Chloe’s mouth (at least, Chloe’s pretty sure that’s why she whimpers).
But despite the fact that she tries to jerk away (does she try to pull back, or is it just the pressure of Chloe’s body against hers that makes her fall against the door?) Beca kisses her back instantly, arching up into Chloe’s embrace, forced to stand on her toes in order to put them at equitable heights. Chloe’s arms wrap around Beca’s waist and Beca’s hands wind into her hair and then they’re moving, stumbling, falling over each other as they make their way through the apartment and into Chloe’s bedroom.
She doesn’t really remember a whole lot, after that. She thinks she remembers Beca’s breath, hot in her ear; thinks she remembers Beca’s thighs, clenching and trembling around her head as she rocks into orgasm against Chloe’s mouth; thinks she remembers the way it felt to have Beca’s teeth nipping at her collarbone as Beca’s fingers piston in and out of her.
(Then again, she isn’t really sure she remembers any of that at all.)
When she wakes up the next morning to an empty bed, brain pounding in her skull and weak, queasy stomach punishing her for the previous night’s alcoholic indulgence, Chloe is able to half-convince herself that she imagined all of it.
And look, even if she hadn’t imagined it, it definitely didn’t happen on purpose. They fell into bed together because of a lack of foresight and an abundance of alcohol, not because of anything else. It was a one-time thing; a fluke; a drunken hook up. It had to be. What is Chloe supposed to do, start dating a teammate; a freshman, just because they maybe hooked up once? No way.
And either way, it definitely wasn’t going to happen again.
Either way, Chloe figures, it’s fine. It either hadn’t happened at all, or it had been completely accidental. It didn’t matter either way, because either way it didn’t mean anything, it was an accident, and it was never going to happen again.
Either way, they never talk about it.
**
It doesn’t happen again for months.
They just do what they always do. They rehearse, Chloe goes to class, Beca starts work at the radio station on campus, they rehearse some more, they go to mixers with the other groups, they do homework, Aubrey forces them to do ‘Bellas team bonding activities,’ they rehearse some more (and they definitely never talk about that one night in September when they fell into bed together).
They do what they always do, killing time in a weird purgatory that Chloe isn’t even entirely sure she’s stuck in.
She doesn’t know what to do, but she takes her cues from Beca. And if Beca doesn’t want to talk about it — if Beca wants to ignore it and pretend like it never happened, like it was just some silly drunken hookup, then Chloe can do that, too.
She wonders, sometimes, if Beca remembers. Wonders if Beca thinks about it as often as she does. Wonders if Beca wakes up from dreams, hot and wet and aching; wonders if Beca bites her lip when she masturbates to stop herself from moaning Chloe’s name; wonders if she’s the only one whose stomach swoops when they make eye contact across crowded rooms; wonders if she’s the only one who can’t stop staring at lips and hands and the curve of a smooth neck.
She thinks she must be.
She thinks Beca wouldn’t look at her — smiling and happy, rolling her eyes and throwing around teasing elbows, head tipped back with laughter at one of Chloe’s terrible jokes — if she thought about their night together the way Chloe did.
At least, until it happens again.
The second time it happens, they’re drunk. Again.
(Chloe really thinks she should maybe stop drinking around Beca.)
They don’t talk about the fact that Beca has spent every night this past week hanging out with Jesse, watching movies and munching on popcorn and laughing and joking and eating too much pizza. They don’t talk about the fact that Aubrey has started to truly despise the Trebles to a frightening degree, don’t talk about the way Aubrey’s nostrils flare whenever she sees Beca and Jesse exchange smiles and wave across the quad, don’t talk about the way Beca’s eyes jump to Chloe’s sometimes (only sometimes) with something close to guilt whenever Chloe, Beca, and Jesse happen to all be in the same room.
(Chloe tries to avoid being in the same room as them.)
The second time it happens, they’re in the middle of a frat party — dragged along, somewhat unwittingly, by an overeager Fat Amy.
(Fat Amy, confusingly, seems to have quickly and easily established herself as Barden University’s ‘It Girl’; a party just isn’t a party if Fat Amy isn’t invited. She has more friends than the rest of them combined. Chloe doesn’t really get it, but it means that she hears about literally every single party happening on campus on any given day. So, she can’t exactly complain.)
Chloe is wearing a light green dress with a skirt that bounces around above her knees, more ‘summertime church gathering’ than ‘college frat party,’ but she’s cute and bright and the sweet girl-next-door look has never steered her wrong before. They’ve been drinking, because they’re at a frat so of course they’ve been drinking, and she can feel Beca’s eyes on her legs, on her ass, tracing the curve of her neck, lingering on her chest.
(They haven’t been drunk together since that first night, with the aca-initiation party and their possibly-regrettable sexcapades, and Chloe thinks that if she had known this would be Beca’s response to her after only a few drinks, she would have suggested a party a lot sooner.)
The second time it happens, Chloe can feel the heat of Beca’s eyes burning into her skin, and so she dances a little harder, flips her hair with a little more direction, moves her hips a little more surely against the nameless, faceless man whose hands rest on her hips, body pressed tightly to her back. She looks up with hooded eyes, catches Beca’s scorching gaze, and (she’ll never know where she gets the courage) smirks at her as she grinds into the guy behind her.
Beca can tell what she’s doing. Chloe can see it written plainly on her face. She may be dancing with what’s-his-name, but she isn't showing off for him.
Chloe bites her lip and cranes her neck and rolls her hips again. What’s-his-face grips her hips harder — she can feel his erection pressing into her ass but she literally couldn’t care less. Her hips circle and he bends his head to mouth at her neck and it seems to be the last straw.
Beca puts her drink down on a nearby table and stalks towards her. “Chloe,” she says as she gets closer, and Chloe can smell the alcohol on her breath (or maybe it’s just the odor of spilled beer seeping into the carpet), “I need you. Aubrey's sick and she needs help.”
Chloe nods and pulls away from whoever-the-man without even glancing behind her to see if he’s disappointed to lose her company. She couldn’t care less.
Aubrey, coincidentally, did not come to this party. If she needs any help, it’s help studying for the Chem midterm she has Monday morning. She’s certainly not throwing up in the bushes of some crowded, dirty frat. Chloe and Beca both know this. Chloe follows her anyway.
Beca drags her up the stairs, trying doorknob after doorknob until one finally turns under her fingers. Chloe, for her part, follows after her like a puppy. But she’s a little drunk and a little warm and it’s easier to let Beca lead her around than to have to make her own decisions.
When she finds an open room, Beca half-cheers in triumph.
Chloe would almost call it cute, if Beca didn’t immediately turn to her, eyes bright and smile predatory, and yank her inside the bathroom without another word. Before she’s even sure what’s happening, Beca has her pressed up against the door. She fumbles for the lock as she claims Chloe’s mouth in a messy, sloppy kiss that’s more about tongues and teeth than it is about lips.
(It isn’t the best kiss Chloe’s ever had, it isn’t the sweetest, it isn’t the most skilled, but it makes arousal pool between her thighs and her heart stutter all the same.)
Beca pushes her skirt up and shoves her underwear aside, her fingers immediately slipping over the wetness she finds at the apex of Chloe’s thighs. Chloe spreads her legs, Beca’s fingers find her clit, and they both groan at the sensation.
“God, I’ve been thinking about doing this for like a month,” Beca whispers, mouth somewhere between Chloe’s lips, neck, and ear. Chloe thinks she should stop Beca, thinks that maybe they should talk about this some more, thinks that maybe she should pull Beca’s hand out from under her dress so that they can address the fact that apparently Beca has been thinking about this too.
But then Beca’s mouth is on her neck, hot and biting; Beca’s fingers slip inside of her and Chloe gasps and arcs into her, tilts her head back as her breath is ripped from her throat. She can feel Beca’s smirk against her neck, can feel the floor unsteady beneath her feet, can feel her head spinning, can feel her body sinking into the bathroom door and fuck she’s drunk.
She moans again and Beca laughs, low in her throat, and adds a third finger, stretching Chloe almost to the point of pain. She loves it.
“I’ve wanted to fuck you for like, weeks, dude.”
And Chloe could say something, could chastise Beca for the way she calls her ‘dude’ while she’s literally buried to the knuckle inside of her, could pull away and demand answers. But she doesn’t. She doesn’t say anything.
She lifts her leg higher to wrap it around Beca’s waist, lets her head fall heavy against the door and screws her eyes shut, allowing Beca (perhaps foolishly — again without foresight) to bite and suck at her neck and the edge of her jaw.
The sounds of the party seep in from under the door, the bass thumping and shaking the wood, reverberating through Chloe’s chest and making it even more difficult to breathe. The sounds of the party are loud, but it doesn’t stop Chloe from hearing Beca’s palm slapping against her cunt as she fucks her with ruthless, reckless abandon. Chloe chokes down a scream as Beca pounds her, arm shaking from the effort. She scrambles for purchase, hands grasping at Beca’s hair, Beca’s shoulders, her own dress. Her toes curl inside her shoes as every muscle in her body seems to clench at once.
She cums just like that, pressed against the bathroom door of a random frat house, desperate and shaking and wobbly and drunk.
Beca coaxes her down slowly, allowing Chloe’s clenching, shaking body to relax before she removes her fingers (Chloe gasps at the sensation, at the pull of them, even though she’s absolutely drenched). Beca sucks her fingers into her mouth, licking them clean, and Chloe thinks that she might just pass out then and there.
“D’you—” Chloe stops herself when her voice comes out raw and hoarse, dry and shaky from trying to silence her screams. She clears her throat and tries again. “Do you want me to—?”
But Beca just grins and shakes her head, shooting Chloe a wink. “No sweat. We should get back to the party.”
“The… party. Right.”
Beca laughs and stands on her toes, flattening Chloe’s mussed hair so that she looks more presentable (and not like she just got fucked, fully clothed, in a grimy bathroom in the middle of a crowded event). “Don’t worry about it,” she says with another wink, reaching around to unlock the door. As she walks out of the hot room, she throws over her shoulder, “You can pay me back next time!”
Chloe walks straight into the doorframe.
**
The third time it happens it’s rough, and angry. They can’t blame it on alcohol, but they can blame it on frustration and fury with each other (and maybe a little worry, on Chloe’s part, and maybe a little vengeance, on Beca’s).
The third time it happens, Beca has just been released from jail. She’s just gotten into a fight with her father and she’s just yelled at Jesse for interfering in her life. Her father’s just told her that she can’t go to LA, and Aubrey’s just told her that, no matter what talent she might have with mixing music and creating mashups, there’s no way they’re deviating from the standard Bellas program.
The third time it happens, Chloe lies and tells herself that she’s just as frustrated with Beca as Beca is with her; lies and tells herself that it doesn’t bother her that she’s clearly an outlet for Beca’s pent up frustration and rage and fury.
The third time it happens, Chloe pretends like it isn’t about Beca getting back at Jesse, pretends like it isn’t about Beca proving to everyone else (but mostly herself) that Jesse isn’t her boyfriend and that she doesn’t need him and that she’s perfectly fine without him. They don’t talk about the fact that they can almost feel Aubrey’s disapproval hanging in Beca’s empty dorm, don’t mention that they can still hear the way Aubrey had so swiftly shut down Beca’s suggestions to modernize their set.
They ignore all of that.
(Well, Chloe does, at least. She’s not sure how much of it Beca is choosing to ignore, or how much of it Beca is even aware of.)
Chloe just sinks back into Beca’s bed and lets Beca fuck her into the mattress, hard and fast and dirty. She doesn’t even get her clothes all the way off. She’s naked from the waist down but her shirt is still on. Her bra digs into her back under the fabric and Chloe hates to admit that she doesn’t really hate the way it makes her feel. Apparently she sort of likes being so desperately wanted; getting fucked in a dirty way; being used.
(She tries not to think about it.)
She lets Beca bite at her neck, hard enough to leave bruises and red marks that Chloe is forced to carefully cover with makeup and turtlenecks and scarves for a week and a half.
(When Aubrey laughs at her and winks and makes some crack about Tom, Chloe smiles and lets her think whatever she likes. It’s easier than the truth.)
The third time it happens, Beca goes down on her for the first time. After she’s already fucked her practically through the mattress, after Chloe’s already cum once, after her legs are already shaking and her clit is already throbbing, Beca slides down her body and starts fucking her with her tongue, and Chloe screams.
Thank God Beca’s roommate decided to clear out when the Bellas invaded her room earlier in the night.
(Beca’s neighbors will probably hate her tomorrow, though.)
She’ll never understand what it is about Beca that makes her do this, act and react like this. She’ll never understand how the girl who can barely speak in front of a room full of her closest friends can eat Chloe out like a fucking pro; never understand where she learned to fuck girls like it's her job (nothing about Beca should really surprise her anymore, and yet it always does); never understand just how Beca can have this hold over her.
She’ll never know, but as Beca tongues at her clit, she decides she really doesn’t care.
The third time it happens, Beca lets Chloe touch her. She hasn’t, not really, not since that first night (and even then, Chloe’s not entirely sure what happened between them, can’t be totally sure that Beca did let her touch her, fuck her, taste her. But she remembers thighs around her ears, and hopes). Since she isn’t drunk, Chloe is a little nervous. Which is confusing, because if there’s one thing Chloe Beale never is, it’s nervous. She doesn’t do nervous; she doesn’t get embarrassed. Especially not during sex.
She’s good at sex. She knows she’s good at sex. She has nothing to worry about.
But she’s nervous. Her hand, when it slides down Beca’s stomach, wavers a little. When her mouth follows its path, nipping and licking at exposed skin all the way down Beca’s body, she has to pause and remind herself to breathe because she thinks she might be hyperventilating.
(She doesn’t understand. She doesn’t do nervous.)
For all the buildup, for all the ways in which her heart pounds inside her chest, for all of her shaking hands and shot nerves, when she finally gets her mouth on Beca for the first time, she sinks into the familiarity of it like she’s been eating Beca out all her life.
She wants to go slow, to really take a few moments to revel in the sensations and to enjoy what she’s doing, to maybe tease Beca and build her up slowly and sweetly, but that isn’t what Beca wants. Beca clutches at her hair and yanks her closer, thrusts her hips up and grinds them against Chloe’s mouth, gasps and clenches when Chloe adds one and then two fingers. And Chloe hadn’t realized that Beca was vocal in bed, hadn’t realized she was the kind to make noise or talk or moan, but fuck she never shuts up. “Yes, Chlo, God… fuck. Fuck just like that. Jesus fuck please, please…”
And, well, who is Chloe to deny her?
**
The fourth time it happens, they’re drunk and they’ve just won Nationals.
(They’re drunk again, because of course they are. They have to be, it seems.)
The fourth time it happens, Chloe has just watched Beca run out into the audience after their set and kiss Jesse square on the mouth, arms thrown around his shoulders while she smiles against his lips and calls him a loser.
The fourth time it happens, they’re both drunk, and Beca and Jesse are… whatever it is Beca and Jesse are. They’re new. They’re new and happy and giggly, and Jesse can’t stop smiling, even though the Trebles have just lost to their ‘nemeses’ and he really should be a little more downtrodden because the Bellas stomped them (thanks to Beca), and the Trebles hate losing. They're supposed to hate losing. Not... whatever this is, this giddy thing where they're tucked back into a corner together, hands all over each other.
Chloe’s glaring. She knows she’s glaring. She knows she’s glaring because she can’t stop looking at them and her stomach is heavy and her heart pounds and her face is flushed angry red and she knows she’s glaring and she knows she has to stop but she just can’t.
(Apparently she’s a bit of a masochist.)
Aubrey catches her looking. “Ugh, I know,” she says as she sidles up to Chloe’s right side. Chloe turns to her, a bright shock of panic setting in momentarily. (Does she know?) Aubrey sighs and takes a long sip of her drink. “Can’t believe it. A Treble,” she says the word like a curse, like she’s just stepped in something foul, her nose turned up in a sneer that Chloe relates to on a deep, vindictive level.
Chloe laughs uncomfortably. “Right. A Treble.”
“The enemy,” Aubrey stresses with a glower.
Chloe nods. “The enemy,” she parrots.
Aubrey watches them for a few more seconds. “Well, we’ve done all we can, I guess,” she finally concedes, and boy she must be riding some kind of extraordinary high after their win for her to say what she does next. “And, you know… at least he’s pretty cute. For a Treble. It’s not like… he isn’t Bumper.”
Chloe’s throat feels thick. She looks again toward where Beca and Jesse stand, heads bent together and laughing at something, whispering under the loud music, and just nods.
Jesse leaves the after party just before 1, laughs and tells Beca to enjoy the festivities with her teammates without him there as a distraction. He kisses her cheek shyly, leaving both of them blushing and Chloe seeing red.
The fourth time it happens, they’re both drunk, and Chloe thinks this might be her last chance. She pulls Beca away from the party with a desperation she doesn't acknowledge. She grabs Beca’s hand and drags her off and away from a raucous Fat Amy, who is attempting to beat box (terribly) underneath Cynthia Rose’s rapping.
Everyone is caught in the throes of the celebration. Cheering and singing and hoisting their trophy high and they keep throwing up their cups to toast each other, their pronouncements getting more and more ridiculous as the night wears on.
The point is, no one is going to miss them.
Chloe grabs Beca’s hand and pulls her into a bathroom in the back of the hotel suite. (Another bathroom, another drunken night.) Beca laughs as they kiss. Chloe pretends it doesn’t cut her like a knife. She unbuttons Beca’s high-waist pants and slips her hand down the front.
It’s a little uncomfortable, and Chloe’s wrist burns with the strain and aches at the odd angle, and she fumbles and she’s a little uncoordinated, but Beca must be really worked up because she’s already wet and she comes undone in five minutes of haphazard ministrations, her fist clenched tightly between her teeth to stop from making any noise.
When Chloe pulls her hand out from Beca’s underwear, the shorter girl moves to return the favor — gets her fingers to the button of Chloe’s pants, even — but Chloe just shakes her head, puts her hand on Beca’s, and tries to smile. “I’m good. We should get back to the party.”
Beca smiles at her, and Chloe can tell she’s a little confused, but she shrugs nonetheless. “Thanks, Chlo,” she says, with a swift little kiss to Chloe’s mouth. Chloe smiles and nods and bites her tongue to keep from screaming as Beca slips from the room without another word.
She isn’t sure if Beca knows what she does to her, isn’t sure if Beca knows exactly what she’s done with those two little words, but when Chloe goes home that night she cries in the shower.
She tells Aubrey she and Tom just broke up, even though she hasn’t even seen him — let alone spoken to him, kissed him, or slept with him — in nearly a full semester. Aubrey runs her fingers through her hair and coos softly, brings her ice cream and puts on 10 Things I Hate About You and gushes about Health Ledger to try and distract her, and Chloe feels sick. Because of everything with Beca, sick because she’s lying to her best friend, sick because if Aubrey knew the truth there’s no way she would still be talking to her.
She closes her eyes and tries to ignore it, but she feels queasy for a week.
**