Chapter Text
Beca
She slips through the back door of the classroom. Late again, but nobody notices. It takes another ten minutes for even the teacher to catch her eye. He sighs quietly, then picks up where he left off in the textbook like she’s a fly dipped into his coffee. Everyone else is either scrolling through their phone in their lap or dozing off. Beca doesn’t pull her earbuds out; doesn’t even unzip her backpack—there’s no point. She drums her fingers on the bench to the mellow beat of her latest creation and wonders why anyone would give two fucks about chemistry to begin with. More importantly, her eyes slide toward Chloe Beale—back straight, a fluffy pink pen in hand and her tongue poking ever so slightly between her lips as her eyes flicker purposefully between the teacher and the textbook—she wonders why somebody like her bothers trying at all when she can have the whole world and then some. Two weeks ago, Beca begrudgingly dragged herself to school when her father threatened to drag her himself by the scruff of her neck. On that day, she learned that perfect princess Chloe Beale has been sharing her bench since the beginning of the semester. It’s a situation she’s sure isn’t ideal as the best and worst of the class—she almost pities Chloe. A week and a half ago, the teacher may have foolishly hoped that Chloe would inspired Beca to be…well, better. A week and a half ago, Chloe might have even tried a couple of times if her scowling didn’t put her off. Beca rests her chin in her hand and shifts her gaze out the window when she catches a glance of blue cast her way. After all, Chloe Beale is an ideal wrapped in beauty and honey, but even she can recognize a lost cause when she sees one. Beca wants to laugh at the same time as she wants to cry at the way her heart races at the sight of Chloe every morning—if only she knew that a lost cause is the only reason Beca comes to class at all.
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Chloe
Her breath catches in her throat when Beca ambles in as it always does. Her hair is wild, freshly out of bed, and she wants to run her hands through it so badly that her fist clenches beneath the table. She notices her watching the room, and she wonders what she sees. The teacher’s words, the world around her—everything bounces off her like raindrops on an umbrella whenever Beca enters a room. Their eyes meet, but she sees right past her and out the window behind her. Chloe’s heart drops. Two weeks ago, it felt like a dream to learn that the empty seat beside her belonged to Beca Mitchell this entire time. Beca—the girl who has haunted her imagination ever since she transferred in last year—sophomore year—with her earrings and her ripped jeans. She is a mystery, an elusive creature who manages to stay hidden from the world yet fill the entirety of Chloe’s at the same time. Chloe’s friends respond with an inevitable, “Who?” whenever she brings her up, and it baffles her how nobody seems to notice someone as beautiful as Beca. She doesn’t mind—she holds Beca in her heart instead like a heaven-sent secret just for her. The morning sun filters through the window and casts a golden glow onto Beca’s blue eyes at just the right light, and she can’t look away. She means to say hello—means to flash her a smile and find the nerve to say anything at all. She grips her pen tight, palm sweaty against the pink fabric wrapped around her pen. By the time she finds the words, the moment is gone. Beca turns to her, as if sensing her panic, and she drops her gaze to her textbook, the tiny black and white letters swimming before her eyes as her heart rattles against her chest. They say proximity goes hand-in-hand with fondness, but Chloe has only ever known how to admire Beca from afar. From the corner of her eye, she sees Beca’s fingers tap to an invisible rhythm in her ears, enshrouded in her own world. There’s a hint of a smile as she closes her eyes, and god she isn’t going to survive.
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Beca
It’s the last day of the semester and all she can think about is the Launchpad she finally scrounged up enough money from her part-time job at the record store to buy. She’d seriously contemplated ditching school and sneaking past her step-monster to return to the sanctuary of her bedroom, but one selfish thought persisted. Her last morning with Chloe Beale. It doesn’t matter in the long run—she knows how social hierarchies work—but she’d miraculously passed the course, and if she could thank her without being the creepiest weirdo who never spoke to her, she probably would. She doesn’t believe that proximity to Chloe alone makes her better. No, she has two feet planted firmly in reality and a traitorous heart to prove she doesn’t need anyone to hold power over her. Especially a girl like Chloe Beale. So, she isn’t prepared for what happens when reality takes the form of a scrap of pink paper sliding across the bench in front of her, and Chloe’s perfect, looping handwriting asking her to meet her after school.
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Chloe
On the last day of the semester, Beca sits down next to Chloe in a red leather jacket that short-circuits her brain. That’s the only explanation she can think of for the impulsive decision to rip a page from an old syllabus and write the first full sentence either of them has ever spoken to one another. Panic fills her as soon as Beca looks back at her with her incredible eyes, her brow raised in a way that is so utterly, unfairly attractive, bordering on cruel—Chloe doesn’t think her heart will ever beat normally ever again. But she agrees, and hours later, they’re in the library. Chloe pulls her behind a dusty shelf of old encyclopedias without a plan. All she has is pent-up courage, and it’s a surprise to them both when she presses Beca against the shelf and kisses her like she was put on this earth to do nothing else.
Beca
The rest of junior year flies in between those shelves. For four glorious months, it’s an unspoken agreement that they keep each other a secret, a secret neither has the courage to define. All Beca knows is the pure elation of seeing Chloe smile, knowing she’d put it there by simply existing. It’s addictive, this affection she doesn’t deserve. She lets it be, because even when they’re sitting on the floor tethered only by Beca’s earphones split between them, Chloe sets her soul on fire. And because she’s known all along that it isn’t meant to last. Her father is getting transferred, and she, on their last day together in that library, plays her a final song and says goodbye.
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Chloe
She is a marionette all through senior year, pulled by the strings of expectation. She dates local boys voraciously, manufacturing joy for anybody willing to see her choke it down. Deep down, she is angry—Beca didn’t have to say goodbye. Not so completely. She’s only eight time zones away in Cambridge, likely surrounded by beautiful British girls with their beautiful English accents, and it makes no sense that she’s hurting herself to hurt a girl eight hours in the future—always eight hours out of reach. A girl who has probably moved on. Chloe lays in her bed like she does on more nights than she’d like to admit and pulls her headphones over her ears. She sinks into Beca’s parting gift, a melancholic remix of “Just a Dream,” and lets it break her heart and put it back together over and over again.
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Beca
Beca hates England. Nothing reminds her of Chloe. Inevitably, everything reminds her of Chloe. She ditches her father and step-monster at the first opportunity for her mother, who welcomes her home with open arms and a free college education courtesy of her recent tenure at Barden University. She tells her stubborn heart to move on—she was never going to make Chloe happy for long. Her mother tells her to follow her heart as she’s perusing through her program options. All her heart wants is to go back to Chloe and give her a different song, as if it could rewrite their future. She tells her mother she wants to pursue music in LA. Her mother chuckles, shakes her head and emphasizes the free university education. She suggests literature instead: “Sometimes, all you need is perspective,” she tells her, patting on her knee like it has been decided. Beca sighs. At least she has an internship to look forward to. Still, she wonders where Chloe is now. She wonders what she’s doing, what she’s feeling. She wonders what she thinks of her now, and whether she’ll ever stop regretting the way she left. Beca runs her eyes across the Barden University logo across the glossy pages. Perhaps this was always the way the universe intended. Here, she hopes, she’ll find it in herself to embrace this new beginning.
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Chloe
When she steps onto the quad for the first time, she takes in the buzz of activity all around her. A girl to her left balances on a taut rope between two trees while a guy to her right hurls a football at a friend in the distance. There are friends laughing and lounging on the grass and lovers whispering in each other’s ear. She grins all the way to her first class as if she could feel the joy and excitement of all these strangers pulsing in her heart. She squares her shoulders as she walks into her first lecture hall and scans the room for her new beginning. Dauntingly, the massive room has hundreds of faces, and her heart still skips every time she passes by a specific shade of brunette. She settles next to a green-eyes blonde who seems, with her notebook and two pens set out neatly in front of her and her hands folded as she eagerly waits for the lecture to start, the opposite of Beca in every way. Chloe smiles and introduces herself, holding out a hand. Aubrey, the girl replies with professional polish, as if she’d rehearsed all her life for this moment. She takes her hand and edges into Chloe’s world with a smile. Excitement blossoms at the potential in Aubrey’s warm hand, but soon dwindles over the next few weeks when Chloe very quickly realizes with dismay that Aubrey is making herself at home in an entirely different compartment in her heart. Somewhere adjacent to the void Beca left behind. She’s thankful nonetheless when Aubrey is there to hold her hair back whenever she recklessly attempts to fill that hole with almost anyone else. The first year passes in a haze of alcohol, boys, and Russian literature, and every time she climbs onto the lap of a half-naked stranger, every time she wraps herself around them and kisses lips that don’t fit hers the way she wants them to, the void seems to grow and grow. She’s put on academic probation by the end of the year and it devastates her. Her parents call to let her feel the immense weight of their disappointment, and as she later cries into Aubrey’s shoulder, she begs her not to let Beca keep hurting her. She regrets the words as soon as she says them, but Aubrey is combing through her hair with her fingers so soothingly and shame keeps her mouth silent so bitterly. What difference does it make, she foolishly thinks, when the scapegoat is millions of miles away, never to return.
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Beca
Beca feels a rush of air sweep out from under her, then a flash of a banner overhead. The campus radio station’s white letters blur in her vision and her heart flies up through her throat as she anticipates the hard ground below. A voice calls out and catches her, suspending her for a moment when all she sees is the sky and the flash of red in her memory. She turns stiffly to Stacie, who tips her chair back upright. “You look like you’ve seen a ghost,” she tells her. Beca shakes her head. She’s grateful Stacie volunteered her charms to draw in new interns for the station—she’s grateful to Stacie for a lot of things, especially single-handedly pulling her by the hair through the last two years of school, but she isn’t ready to open that particular door to her past. Beca looks out at the shuffling crowd beyond her booth—gone. Perhaps she did see a ghost. A ghost who so rudely barged through Beca’s locked door with just an illusion of a glance. Beca turns to Stacie with a grin and reassures her that she’s okay. Stacie ruffles her hair and opens her mouth, but whatever she is about to say falls to the wind when Beca hears her name in that painfully familiar cadence. Every hair stands on end when she sees Chloe again. Her auburn hair is longer, curled beautifully against the curve of her shoulder. She’s a little older, her make-up a little finer, and her eyes—even on this gorgeous, sunny day, still puts the sky to shame. She isn’t smiling—she hasn’t seen her smile since they were on the cusp of seventeen, hundreds upon hundreds of days ago in that dusty library. Fear bobs in Beca’s throat when Chloe’s name drops from her lips like a prayer. For long seconds, they simply stare. A blond woman beside her glares—she sees Stacie rise from her seat in her peripheral. Chloe shifts uncomfortably, like she doesn’t know whether to stay or go. It’s been so long, and she’s put her through so much. There are a million things Beca could say to keep her at a distance—keep her safe from the destruction in her wake. There are a million and one reasons why Beca doesn’t deserve any more of her time, but when Chloe casts a wary glance at Stacie and turns to go, her heart reminds her of the years she’s dreamt of this moment and propels her out of her chair and to her feet. Before her brain can catch up and reign back both courage and reason, she leaps over the table, sending a tower of flyers fluttering around her. She reaches for her hand and every inch of her sings when they touch. Selfishly, she holds onto Chloe’s wide, bewildered eyes when she whispers: “I’m sorry, Chloe.”
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Chloe
Before that day at the Activities Fair, the only thing on Chloe’s mind was her study abroad application waiting for approval. She’d worked harder than she ever had to get back into her parents’ blessings, pulling out of probation and into the Honours program. Before that day at the Activities Fair, the only thing she thought she wanted was to study abroad in Saint Petersburg where she could bask in the world through Dostoyevsky’s eyes. As much as she loved Shakespeare and Austen and the Brontë sisters, England is a bruise that was never going to fade—or so she thought. This entire time, they’ve been orbiting the same spheres, passing each other by in a supercut of the last two years, spanning across the time and space. Over the first cup of coffee Beca buys for her, Chloe learns there must’ve been at least several parties where Beca DJ’d part-time and Chloe was too drunk to remember more than flashing lights, missing each other by that much. They’ve even taken the same classes with the same professors, albeit on alternating days of the week. For a time, Beca studied literature—her first year filled with the same books. Now, she learns over their second cup of coffee that same week, she is in philosophy, preferring the directness of nihilistic texts to the broad metaphors of Conrad and Kafka. “But music will always be my first love,” Beca says, smiling shyly over the rim of her mug. “And you never forget your first love.” Her eyes bore into Chloe’s, and her heart takes flight.
Beca
Beca never expected one invitation to coffee to turn into her happiest year at Barden University. She never expected to fit herself back into Chloe’s life so freely—so easily—under the open air of the campus, but Chloe pulls her in and for once, the current isn’t against them. They float along blissfully, the void in her heart shrinking a little every day to accommodate Chloe’s growing home. Coffee dates evolve into lunch, dinner, late-night cramming, and frequent sleepovers, punctuated by little touches and secret kisses, and moments they don’t dare name. By Halloween, they give each other everything. By Christmas, Beca impulsively pours an entire paycheque into an alexandrite ring that, in a certain light, shines the colour of Chloe’s eyes—she keeps it in her pocket everywhere she goes, but never quite finds the courage or the occasion to give it to her. By Easter, they are as much a part of each other as anything else. But come September, Chloe will be eight hours away in St. Petersburg, and perhaps she deserves that. So, she strokes the velvet case with the pad of her thumb and tucks it away.
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Chloe
Chloe loves Saint Petersburg. She makes a group of wonderful friends from all over the world. Her classes are challenging—fulfilling, and the city is beautiful. She misses Beca greatly. For the first two months, they talk almost every night, but slowly, their schedules slip and slide all around each other. Slowly, let’s talk tonight turn into maybe tomorrows. Invitations to parties, concerts, and adventures pile up alongside Beca’s growing responsibilities at her internship with a local label. Night and day melds, and the distance feels insurmountably immense.
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Beca
Beca has never been one for grand gestures, but she hates the way they’ve become, hates the time and distance burrowing between them. To overcome their past just to be defeated by eight future hours—she can’t stand it. She gets on a plane, and surprises Chloe in Saint Petersburg in her dorm. She meets her friends, sees her life, loves her entirely behind closed doors. They’re on a boat, gliding along the the canals of Saint Petersburg against the backdrop of the glittering city lights at night time when Beca says “I love you” for the first time. Chloe kisses her deeply, and they make love all through the night. It’s an orchestra of sweetness, passion, and fear, and Beca is brought through heaven’s gates over and over. But even when her name falls onto Chloe’s lips in the throes of passion, all she hears are the gaps where whispered love should be. Chloe never says it back. As Beca stares blankly out the window on her flight home, she rolls the velvet box absently in her hand. When she finds the courage to open the box, she stares into the alexandrite like it’s a mirrored portal into Chloe’s eyes. A dull, familiar ache gnaws at her chest, and a tear falls, disappearing into the fabric of the cushion before she realizes she’s crying. This ring, she realizes then, is an expectation built on quicksand, and she is going to ruin them both if it ever sees the light of day. So, she does the only thing she knows to be right and closes the box for the very last time.
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Chloe
Things feel different when she comes home for her final year. She doesn’t notice it at first, but perhaps she’s always known that the night on the canal, the happiest night in her life and the one night she will later spend years regretting, would change things. No, there are more immediate things as graduation year starts to loom. She starts seeing less and less of Aubrey, who is on the fast track to Harvard Law. She starts seeing less and less of Beca, who is burning herself out at both ends to get her name out across the country. She realizes first that she’s been dragging behind her friends for years, lost in the ambition of others while she hovered in place. She doesn’t know what she’s doing, or why she’s doing any of this at all. One doubt leads to another: she misses Beca more often than she sees her, and though she knows how she feels, has known for a long time how she feels, the words fill her mouth like a broken cork. The fear of coming up short, of losing Beca, of being left behind, of falling back into old habits—it has always been too great. She tells herself that if she doesn’t say the words, it won’t hurt as much, and yet here she is, watching Beca silently dress before her, so close and so far away. She turns to her with that restrained, little smile that slowly chips away at her heart, and leans over to kiss her on the cheek. She’ll see her in a few days, but every goodbye sinks into her, growing more final each time. When Beca’s last footstep echoes away, Chloe curls into herself, closes her eyes, and lets her fears feast.
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Beca
Los Angeles calls early to whisk her away. It’s the opportunity of a lifetime, and with Stacie already miles away at MIT, she has no reason to stay. She does—of course she does—that dull ache returns every time she thinks of Chloe. Beca has never considered herself a romantic, but she never thought loving someone so completely could be so hard. She’s heard enough songs to understand the emotional journey of love, but the reality of it is a mountain she’s too weak to climb—the reality of never hearing those words echoed back and to feeling them burrow and fester deep inside her. She meets Chloe one last time in the quad—one look in her eyes, and she knows. She dredges her final goodbye from deep within, and she doesn’t cry. It feels like cutting off her own arm and still she holds back her tears. As they walk away from each other that day, Beca forces her eyes forward. Forward into a new place, a new life. A shiny future with her name in the lights. Inside, everything breaks.
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Chloe
Chloe is alone at graduation. Aubrey calls from her new dorm in Harvard to congratulate her, having left weeks ago to settle in and get a head-start on her new life. Her parents are there, older than she remembers them being. She watches the pride on their faces as she crosses the stage—this too looks different than what she remembers. She wants to laugh—they don’t even know what they’re proud of.
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Beca
Beca is a star. She’s been a star for a while, realizing only when she finally accepts that the catharsis she’s been waiting for isn’t coming.
She’s been working non-stop for almost a decade, establishing herself in the industry and wearing her body and soul down to nothing. She feels like Atlas, the weight of it all only amplified by the eyes tracking her climb. After Chloe, there was Jesse. After Jesse, followed a string of nameless faces, vultures who pulled at her name and status and money in exchange for their bodies. She let them—for so long, she let them—but now she’s tired. As her plane descends in Boston, she stares out the window, remembering the time she sat in this spot with a velvet box in her hand. She remembers the blue-green gem, and how much it reminded her of Chloe’s eyes when the light caught the blue just right.
Chloe.
Fifteen years, and it’s still Chloe. It has been and always will be—she’s come to terms with it over the years. Even if, against all odds, she falls in love again, she will never love anyone the way she loves her.
She hugs Stacie at the airport, and she can’t believe she’s getting married. They meet once a year, talk a little more often, and still the news hits her like a ton of bricks. The only thing that hits harder is a picture of her fiancée: blonde hair and familiar green eyes—she’s more than familiar with the way it glares every time she sees them.
Her heart has been racing since she received Stacie’s invitation in the mail. Those green eyes mean only one thing to Beca.
“Hungry?” Stacie asks as she throws Beca’s suitcase into the back seat of her shiny new Wrangler.
“Starving.”
“Good, because we’re getting brunch—my treat, of course. For my maid of honour.”
They sit down at brunch, in wicker chairs on a sunny patio. They fall into rhythm quickly and with ease, and it’s as if no time has passed at all. Beca breathes, light as a feather as she peruses the menu, chuckling at Stacie’s endless supply of insane stories. For the first time in years, she feels herself again.
“Excuse me,” a timid voice asks. Beca turns and smiles at a girl holding out napkin and a pen with shaking hands. She says hello, signs her name, and thanks her for listening. It isn’t often that she is recognized under the shadow of far bigger names she collaborates with, but often enough that she’s learned how to not scare people away.
Stacie watches, bemused and impressed. “As I live and breathe, Beca Mitchell, where is that scowling lone wolf I fell in love with all those years ago?” she teases.
“Sorry, we’re late.”
Beca looks up once more and her heart stops entirely. If 16-year-old Beca Mitchell found Chloe Beale to be the most beautiful human being to ever walk this earth, she would not be prepared for 31-year-old Chloe Beale stepping out from behind Aubrey in a pair of sapphire pumps and a flowing white shirt-dress, belted at the waist. She takes off her sunglasses and fixes those crystal blue eyes onto Beca. Pink lips part—they were expecting each other, but it’s still a surprise when the attraction hits like an ice-cold deluge. As if no time has passed at all.
“It’s been a while,” Chloe says as she sits down beside her. She leans toward Beca and smiles. She smells just as wonderful as she remembered. “You look good.”
Beca swallows her nerves and forces a smile like the old friends they are. “You too.”
There’s a sparkling sapphire ring on her index finger—Beca doesn’t know what it means, but she can’t stop looking at it out of the corner of her eye. Can’t stop remembering her alexandrite, and she wonders now, sitting so close to her once more, where they would be if she just had the courage to give it to her.
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Chloe
The wedding reception is massive, and Chloe finds sanctuary in a small, secret garden, far away from the noise. She sits now on a stone bench with her heels beside her, only slightly guilty for leaving Aubrey behind to fend off her and Stacie’s extended family, friends, and important so-and-sos affiliated with her firm. She gazes on at the fountain before her, dry and cracked and flaked with moss—beautiful in its own way—and sighs.
The engagement had been a shock—she wasn’t even aware they knew one another back at Barden—but the more she saw them together, the more it made sense. Stacie is charming and free-spirited, with enough savvy to win over even Aubrey’s conservative Southern family. They push through their differences—bask in them even—far beyond the threshold of fiery passion. They colour each other’s world, nurture each other’s growth, and most importantly, they let love lead the way.
Love. Not fear.
Chloe sighs once more as she twists the sapphire ring around her finger. Once upon a time, she’d read that the index finger represents individual strength. She’d spent years afraid to stand on her own, dragging herself through one bad relationship after another in the hopes of latching on and growing something out of it. She believed, over time, that it could even be possible to love again, even if she spent years looking for it in all the wrong people.
Ever since she began her veterinary training, she’s been thinking of adopting a dog to fill in the precious little space her heart still offered.
That was, of course, until she laid eyes on Beca again.
God, Beca is so beautiful tonight in navy, and so alive when she performed for the ecstatic crowd. Chloe envied the easy half-smile she gave her fans when they asked her for pictures—a smile that, one upon a time, had belonged to her alone.
Years now, after they so quietly broke each other’s heart, she isn’t entitled to any of it. She knows, even if it doesn’t make her want it less. She looks up at the starry skies now and thinks back to Saint Petersburg.
So young, so fearful, and so naïve.
So weak and so unwilling to trust in the strength Beca gave her.
She should’ve said it.
Goddammit, she should’ve said it. There were a million opportunities at least.
“Room for one more?”
Chloe turns in surprise. “Beca.”
Beca sits down next to Chloe’s heels and drops her own on the ground. She looks every inch as exhausted as Chloe feels, and still she wants to run her fingers across the muted moonlight across her porcelain skin. Instead, she fiddles with her ring and drops her eyes.
She doesn’t know what to say, or how to hold herself after years apart. She doesn’t know what she is allowed to hope for.
“Your ring,” Beca says into the silence, “it’s beautiful.”
Chloe blushes. A part of her wonders if this is Beca’s way of asking if she’s single—this part is delighted. A bigger part of her, however, is embarrassed at the truth—this part is twenty years old again, the vapours of fear descending like circling vultures.
Then again, she’s already lost Beca twice.
She lets the butterflies out alongside the first half of the truth: “I bought this for myself a few years ago,” she tells Beca. She tucks a lock of hair behind her ear and wistfully stares ahead at a yellow flower growing out of a crack in the abandoned fountain. “I broke up with a girl around Christmas. We’d been living together back in Portland, and she cheated on me, so I cheated on our rent, bought this ring, and left the city altogether.” She sucks up the courage to give Beca a smile. “Best decision I’ve ever made.”
“Badass,” Beca says with a small smile.
“It was, wasn’t it?”
“It goes well with your eyes.”
“That’s funny.” Chloe meets Beca’s gaze. She swallows the nerves and sinks into the rhythm of her heartbeat in her ears. “I bought this because it reminded me of yours.”
Beca tilts her head, a rosy pink dusting her cheeks. “Mine?”
“Sorry,” Chloe chuckles nervously, “I know it’s been…I just…I guess a lot of who I am today is because of you and what we had. I don’t know if that’s exactly what I mean—I mean I see you all over magazine covers and—and I want to be—I try to be—you’re—oh god,” she groans and buries her face in her hands. “I don’t know what I’m trying to say. You’ve always given me strength, Beca. That’s all I meant.”
Beca doesn’t speak for a while. Her eyes turn up to the sky, as if in prayer, and when Chloe looks up, she is captivated by her beauty once more.
Finally, her voice sweeps across the breeze, soft but heavy with meaning when she drops the words into Chloe’s heart. “I missed you, Chloe.”
Chloe softens. “I missed you too.”
“Sometimes I regret how it ended,” Beca continues quietly. “I feel like maybe…maybe we could’ve done more—maybe I could’ve done more. We could've...made it work. Maybe."
“Don’t,” Chloe says, shaking her head. “I regret a lot of things I did, but I don’t regret letting you go to LA. We were twenty-one, Beca, we…weren’t ready for all of this. At least, I wasn’t.”
A pause.
A rustle in the hedges around them.
“What about now?”
Their eyes meet once more. The question surprises them both. But Beca relaxes, a resigned smile on her face when she runs a hand through her hair. “I’ve been in love with you for fifteen years, Chloe. And I thought…even all those years ago in Saint Petersburg I thought…” she drops her gaze to her bare feet in the grass. “It’s only ever been you.”
“Beca, I—”
“I’m sorry,” Beca blurts, letting out a frustrated breath, “we don't see each other for ten years and this is what my dumbass brain—”
Chloe knocks her heels to the floor when she lunges toward Beca and wraps her arms up in a hug. Bare arms brush her bare back, and Beca sighs against her as if they’ve both come home after a long journey. “I love you, Beca. I’ve always loved you—you weren’t wrong, I was just so, so, so scared. I regret not saying it in Saint Petersburg every day.” She pulls away, her thumb brushing away a silent trail of tears on Beca’s face. “I can’t promise you I’m ready to jump in—I can’t promise I can be the person you need, Beca. The last ten years…we’ve both changed a lot…but I knew the moment I saw you again that the love—everything I feel about you—nothing has changed. All I can promise you is that I want to try. Would that…be okay?”
Beca nods, her blue eyes alight with the reflection of her own when she leans in and kisses her once more. Chloe sighs, shrugging off the weight of the last ten years in Beca’s arms.
Beca
A year later, Beca finds the velvet box among her old things.
She takes the next flight back to Boston from her mother’s house in Georgia, a quick visit after a quicker trip to LA to complete a contract. In less than five hours, she’s racing up the steps of her and Chloe’s shared townhouse.
Chloe is still at work, and she paces anxiously across her living room floor, the ring burning in her pocket while she waited.
When the front door opens, Chloe drops her bag with a yelp when Beca stands breathless before her.
Standing in the doorway of their home, love and adrenaline course through Beca’s veins when she whispers Chloe’s name.
Every part of her thrums when she hears Chloe gasp, hears her breathe yes before the question is asked.
Sixteen years of love pour over, lingering in every space between when she drops down to one knee and opens the velvet box for one last time.