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Beca’s never been great at keeping her emotions under control when she’s angry.
A massive understatement, really, considering all the public meltdowns she’s had, a majority of them right in front of the Bellas — in her defense, though, those were usually caused by or in the vicinity of Aubrey, whose presence alone warrants those kinds of reactions. It’s ugly, the way her temper flares and explodes out like a solar flare, burning and destroying everything in its path.
The worst part is, there’s really nothing to get so upset about in regards to this stupid marriage nonsense with Emily. It was an accident to begin with, not some planned stunt that specifically targeted Beca and her fragile ego.
It’s not a big deal.
It’s just on paper.
It doesn’t mean anything.
But the image is branded in Beca’s brain. Emily and Jake. Jake and Emily. Drunk in love. No, acting drunk in love in front of the cameras. But then acting drunk in love off the set. Goofing off, joking around, all touchy and familiar despite only knowing each other for a few days. Married.
On paper , she insists to herself again. It doesn’t mean anything. It’s just on paper, done by accident, no actual feelings involved.
Stop thinking about them in love, that was for the video. But was it? They seemed awfully close. Yes, for the goddamn video. Even when they weren’t filming? They’re friends. She’s allowed to have friends. Is he just a friend, though?
Beca raises the volume on her laptop, trying and failing to drown out the vicious, nonsensical spat going on in her head. It’s stupid, so, so incredibly stupid, the way she’s blowing this way out of proportion. She had no right to overreact that way on the beach. She had no right to storm off on Emily and ditch the lunch they had planned.
She has no right to keep up this cold-shoulder-silent-treatment act.
They’ve barely spoken a word to each other since the shoot ended, not for the lack of trying on Emily’s part. But Beca can’t fucking stop doing it. Can’t stop being a humongous jerk.
It shouldn’t even matter whether or not there actually were feelings involved. Emily’s her own person and she’s allowed to be with whoever she wants. Anyone would be lucky to be with someone like her, even bland and recycled Jake Arlen and his overdone Nice Guy image.
Like, what, just because they’re roommates, just because they’ve been friends for 4 years, just because they connect so well over music, Beca has exclusive rights to Emily’s interest and attention?
Does she think she can monopolize someone that good and pure? Keep her to herself?
Beca slams down way harder than necessary on the spacebar to pause the music. God , what the hell is wrong with her? None of this would even be happening if she’d actually made these stupid-ass feelings clear from the get-go. She has only herself to blame.
With the music paused and only one ear covered by her headphones, Beca hears the tentative knock on the studio door.
“Hi,” Emily says timidly, only the top half of her body peeking around the door frame. “Um. It’s done. Me and J-…uh. We just got it approved. Annulled. They said they’ll mail over a copy of the certificate for our records.”
Which is good news, great news, really. Beca should be elated. It’s done. They can put this whole incident behind them. This is her chance to turn this awful tension between them around and maybe give Emily a long-overdue apology for freaking out.
But what actually comes out of Beca’s mouth is a bitingly sarcastic, “Happy for you two,” that she immediately wants to take back.
It’s reflex at this point, acting like an asshole. She’s always been good at it. She knows she’s good at it. And it really says something that she’s able to act like one even to someone like Emily, someone who she’d been absolutely and pathetically infatuated with just yesterday, someone who’s trying her hardest to amend an honest mistake she’d made.
Genuine hurt flashes across Emily’s face and she ducks back out of the doorway without another word, her footsteps heavy and dejected. Completely fed up with herself, Beca pinches the bridge of her nose and lets out a long, annoyed sigh.
She can’t fucking deal with this, this vulnerability, this ugly jealousy. It’s exactly why she hates opening herself up, letting herself have feelings, becoming emotionally invested in someone, in the idea of being with someone.
Halfway down the hallway, Emily’s footsteps abruptly come to a halt.
Beca freezes, her hand hovering over the spacebar to restart the music, unpleasant anticipation bubbling in her stomach as Emily marches back into view.
“Okay, no, what is it? What is your problem?” she snaps, barging into the studio. “I just went through the most stressful week of my life and then I made an honest mistake and you! You’re treating it like I…I-I…” She fumbles and stutters before visibly shifting gears. “You weren’t even there, so why does it matter? You weren’t there on the set, you weren’t there when we got the news, and you weren’t there today when we went and got it annulled! So why are you being such a dick about this?”
Caught off-guard by the crass insult for a second, Beca makes a show of pulling off her headphones like Emily interrupted something important.
“Well that’s the problem, isn’t it?” she fires back. “It’s like I take my eyes off of you for two seconds — let you do something on your own for two goddamn seconds — and you end up married to Jake fucking Arlen!”
Emily’s face crumples with hurt and confusion. “Okay, yeah. Yeah! I messed up; you’ve made that very clear multiple times. But at least he had the sense to stay calm and help me through it instead of making a scene and ditching me!”
“Well, there you go,” Beca snaps. “Now you’ve got your boyfriend to hold your hand through everything, don’t you?”
Jesus. She needs to chill. She needs to chill the fuck out. There’s no reason for her to be making these immature accusations based on a singular, out of context interaction she just so happened to witness. There’s no reason for her to keep acting this way.
Why can’t she stop acting this way?
Emily looks like she’s sharing the same thought. “Boyfr-…? What? Are you serious?” she asks.
Beca scoffs, tossing aside her headphones and shouldering her way past Emily out of the studio. She needs space. Air. Though neither of those things clear her head because her dumbass mouth is still going off on its own.
“What, you guys just dragged your little lovers’ act off the set so you could milk that angle for anyone who might be watching?” Her voice echoes and bounces in the cavernous living room, a startling contrast to how the studio seemed to absorb all of the venom in her words. She doesn’t know which is worse.
“We were just goofing off!” Emily says, following her out. “What, have we regressed so much as a society that I can’t be friends with a guy without you making such a middle-school assumption?”
“Because it’s not just an assumption!” Beca finally explodes. “This shit doesn’t end here, okay? There’s gonna be the music video itself and the reactions to it and all the tabloids and those trash gossip websites zeroing in on you two and the stupid-ass easter eggs they put in and your on-screen chemistry or some shit, and then the behind-the-scenes footage is gonna be published just confirming that speculation and the cycle starts all over again!”
Emily spreads her arms in a who cares? gesture. “Since when do you care about media speculation? And tabloids? Really? You’re the one who’s always telling me they don’t know shit! Why do their opinions suddenly matter so much to you?”
“Since that’s all we’re gonna be seeing for the foreseeable future! Since every time this video’s mentioned anywhere, people are going to be fixating on your lovey-dovey romance with — ”
“Oh, my god,” Emily cuts in. She sounds royally pissed off and completely unlike herself. “Beca, there was nothing going on! We were just…we…” She runs a frustrated hand through her hair. “Is this why you’re mad? This is why you’re mad, isn’t it?”
An unwelcome chill creeps down Beca’s spine. “The hell are you talking about?”
Emily looks about two seconds away from grabbing Beca by the shoulders to rattle some sense into her. “You know what I’m talking about!”
“I’m…okay, yeah, maybe! Maybe I am mad because it’s bullshit that your public image is now tied to the poster boy of plain white bread when there’re plenty of people better suited to fill that role!”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah!”
“Like who?” Emily shoots back.
Beca’s response gets lodged in her throat.
The fiery tension between them morphs into something completely different in a matter of seconds. Her entire mouth going dry, Beca struggles for a sarcastic retort. Anything but the response that had immediately popped into her head.
Now Emily’s looking at her with a mixture of impatience and hopeful expectancy and it’s right there on the tip of Beca’s tongue, every single feeling she’d been holding back, ready to burst free and make themselves known. It’d be so easy to change the course of this awful argument, to admit to everything and attach a reason to why she’d been acting like such an ass.
But this isn’t how she wants it all to come out. It shouldn’t be through bitterness. It shouldn’t be thrown at Emily like a weapon in a fight.
“Like who, Beca?” she asks again. Quieter. Softer. Prompting, like she knows exactly what Beca wants to say.
She looks exhausted. From the whole marriage/annulment debacle, sure, but also from this, this ridiculous dance they’ve been doing, this unspoken thing between them. This precarious, undefined relationship that leaves them vulnerable to the tiniest of threats.
Beca could end it all with just two words. Two, simple, easy, words and her feelings will be made clear.
But she can’t bring herself to say them.
And this is just classic Beca, isn’t it? So caught up in her head, so emotionally repressed, so scared of taking a risk — she can’t even navigate her own feelings even when the path is being laid out right in front of her. Fucking hopeless.
She huffs out a laugh even though nothing about this is funny. “You know what? I’m just…like. Yeah.” She snatches up her keys. “I just. I’m gonna…”
Not even bothering to finish the thought, Beca crams her feet into a pair of sneakers and heads straight out the door without a backwards glance. She thinks she hears Emily start to say something, maybe her name, maybe a plea to stay.
But there’s no way she can stay, not while she’s struggling so pathetically to climb out of the hole she’d dug herself into. Not with so many regrets piling on top of her.
So she does the one thing she does better than being an asshole: she leaves. Slamming the door behind her, the deafening sound as final as the closing of a book.