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"Oh my god, Chloe,"
"What! It's the playlist's fault, not me!"
"If I have to listen to this song one more time I am going to duck and roll out of this car,"
"Oh my god, you're so dramatic, Beca,"
"Just skip the freaking song Chloe, my ears are crying,"
As Chloe reaches for her phone to skip some overplayed nonsensical pop song, two texts pop through from Emily.
Em: eta?
Em: i miss u guys :(
"Em wants to know what time we're gonna get there," Chloe says as she looks at Beca.
"Maybe in like two hours? Didn't we just enter Ohio? I don't know Chlo, you're holding the directions, you could check," Beca half-asks while she glances at Chloe, not wanting to take her eyes off the road for too long. She's already out of her comfort zone driving Chloe's Explorer, which is much taller than her dad's old Altima he gave her at the beginning of freshman year.
"Oh yeah duh. Google maps knows all! It's actually kinda weird how much our phones know about us right? They track us everywhere we go it's creepy like-"
"Dude chill, you're afraid of what, that your phones gonna track the multiple trips you take to Starbucks per week?" Beca cuts Chloe off before she starts spiraling into another big brother, the robots are gonna take over spiel.
"I should have never created a Bellas Life360 circle." Chloe rolls her eyes as she texts Emily back. "Yep, like two hours left, I can't wait!"
Sure, going on a road trip with her girlfriend sounded like a good idea to Beca at the time, but 35 hours later, she isn't so sure. Chloe is cute singing along to all the music in her road trip playlist, but by the eighth playthrough, Beca is getting sick of the songs, and maybe even Chloe's singing. She'd never tell her that though, she loves her too much. Beca just can't wait to get to Emily's. A Bellas barbecue at Emily's house will be nice, even if not all of them can make it. One more time to see some friends before they all split off into their own lives.
Finally, they are driving down Emily's street. The right one this time. There were a few wrong turns, but Beca blames those on Chloe's lack of direction-giving skills and inability to read street signs before they are already driving past them.
As they pull up to Emily's house they see Aubrey's dark grey Infiniti.
"How can Aubrey afford such a nice car? And why would she buy one if she lives in the forest?"
"Oh, it's a few years old, and you know Aubrey, she's good at haggling! Or whatever they do at those car places," Chloe replies to Beca. "And she doesn't 'live in the forest' Beca, she's not a bear."
“If you say so,” As Beca turns off the engine of Chloe's silver SUV, they both finally fully take in Emily's house.
"Dude, what do Emily's parents do for a living? This place is sick."
The house isn't crazy big or anything, but it's nicer than any place Beca will be living in for a long while. This is Ohio though, not L.A. so, property prices and shit, or whatever.
"You better not ask them that Beca, that's rude!" Chloe responds, lightly hitting Beca on the shoulder. As she looks up she notices a tall figure exit the front door of the house. "Oh hey there's Emily, she must have finally seen my 'we're here' text!"
"Hey! Oh my stars, you're finally here! I missed you guys," Emily speaks loudly from the doorway, quieting down as she walks closer to the couple removing themselves from their vehicle. She almost attempts a hug with Beca, but after seeing her 'I just spent 4 days in a car with only Chloe, spare me' expression, she turns to give Chloe a big hug instead.
"Em! It's only been a few weeks! But I'm so glad we finally made it," Chloe squeezes Emily in a tight hug.
"I missed you too Em, maybe you'll get a hug after I get a drink. Please tell me you have alcohol. No promises though, on that hug," Beca responds, both to Emily's words and obvious veer from her path towards her. She is exhausted and needs a beer. And possibly a nap too. Maybe Emily has a hammock she can lay in.
Actually, no hammock, Beca decides. She's already getting flashbacks to being hoisted into the air in a net at the lodge. The ground is fine for her, thanks.
"We do! My mom put out some drinks in the backyard. I made lemonade too," Emily says with a smile. Beca is pretty sure Emily is gonna be the only one drinking lemonade, given that her mom is here, so she can't have alcohol. But Beca laughs at Emily's enthusiasm. She may be trying some anyway. "Oh! We should get back there, Aubrey is already here, and Jessica and Ashley are close. Stacie had to cancel, so that's everyone. I tried to ask Lilly but she never responded to my text."
After a short tour of the first floor of her house, Emily has led Beca and Chloe into her backyard. Jessica and Ashley have arrived too, in Jessica's red Subaru Legacy, seemingly also having road-tripped together. Beca has a thought that either of them might be preferable to road trip with over Chlo, but she loves her girlfriend so she's gonna keep her mouth shut.
"Okay kids, food’s up!" Emily told her mom they could figure out how to work the barbecue on their own, but her mom insisted on account of not wanting the house to go up in flames if Emily gets too close to it. Beca supposes that's fair, but she thinks one of them could have used the grill instead.
After everyone gets their food, and more drinks, they settle back down to eat. The group separates, based on the somewhat limited seating options.
"Uh, so how was your drive? Did you come down from Wisconsin or New Jersey?" Beca asks Jessica as they sit down in two adirondack chairs positioned around an unlit fire pit. Even if Beca is pretty sure she knows which is which of the two girls that make up the duo of 'Jessley', as dubbed by Emily, she still reaaally doesn't know how to talk to them.
"Oh, we drove down from Wisconsin! We stayed at my house after Worlds and drove here together. It was a long day, but I guess we're lucky it was only one," Jessica seems surprised Beca could remember where she was from, but happy to converse nonetheless.
"Yeah, you're lucky it was a one day trip, and that you didn't have Chloe asking to pull over every time she saw a "World's Something-est" sign on the side of the road in the middle of nowhere," Beca responds, rolling her eyes, trying to seem exasperated. The smile creeping onto her face betrays her though, her love of Chloe's weirdness showing through. "But hey, cheers to one more stop down I guess! And to much-needed rest. And real food. And alcohol," Beca ends her rambling and slightly awkwardly clinks her beer bottle with Jessica's can of black cherry White Claw.
Over the music coming from the speakers scattered on the patio, Beca can hear Chloe and Aubrey talking. Mostly Chloe though, as if there was going to be one person speaking louder than already loud music, it would probably be her.
"How did you get more vacation time from the lodge? Seems like it keeps you pretty busy, how are they gonna survive without you?" Chloe asks Aubrey while they stand on the patio, not having moved more than a few feet from the barbecue before starting their conversation.
Aubrey looks relaxed, actually. She’s wearing shorts, a pink t-shirt, and a nice pair of Ray-Ban sunglasses. She only decided to come to the barbecue to have a few more days away from the lodge. Now that it’s summer again the lodge is going to be packed. Companies seem to prefer sending hoards of reckless employees there instead of paying for quality AC in more than just part of their buildings.
"I have a second in command Chlo, he can handle the lodge while I'm gone every once and a while. No more people got caught in net traps while we were at Worlds, so it should be fine. As long as we don't have any more Becas," Aubrey still seems slightly exasperated, but mostly amused at Beca's being strung up in the air. It wasn't the first time it had happened, but the karmic justice of Beca's is still sweet.
"I'm not sure the teasing for that will ever stop," Chloe laughs. "Beca may be afraid of heights now though, or at least Lilly, even more than we all were already. Do you guys really not have ladders there? How do you fix things?"
"Oh no, we have ladders. What kind of lodge doesn't have a ladder? I wanted you all to try to figure out if you could get her down yourselves. But I didn't expect Lilly to have that knife, that ruined you guys working together on it." Aubrey supposes that bringing a knife camping isn’t all that out of the ordinary, but that knife was pretty big and she has no idea where Lilly had kept it on her.
"Yeah that was kind of weird," Ashley says as she approaches the pair. She seems a bit lost, like part of her is missing and sitting over at the fire pit with Beca.
"Oh hey, Ashley! How was your guys’ road trip? Ours was great!” Chloe smiles brightly as she attempts to make conversation with one of the girls she now (really) does know the name of.
After a while, the sun starts to set. Aubrey helps set up a fire in the fire pit so the group can have some warmth as the temperature decreases. Emily brings out graham crackers and chocolate from her house, Chloe follows behind with a bag of marshmallows, one already in her mouth, and Mrs. Junk hands Jessica multiple sticks made for roasting the marshmallows.
"S'mores time baby! Woo!" Emily cheers, probably louder than acceptable at this time of the night.
"You guys just better not eat too many of those things. I have a zero-tolerance stomach ache complaining policy in the car tomorrow," Beca says to two of the girls who are definitely, absolutely, going to eat too many s'mores and whine about it tomorrow. Jessica, while Beca is sure is also going to eat too many, isn't her responsibility right now, so she is going to leave her to Ashley.
"Beca we're driving my car, I think I make the rules," Chloe laughs, setting down the ingredients for the campfire snack.
"Maybe, but when you made the rule that we have to stop and take pictures of every animal we see I stopped listening to you, so," Beca shrugs as she takes a marshmallow from the recently opened bag and pops it into her mouth. But she takes her girlfriend's hand as she sits in the chair beside Beca, and that's still apparently all it takes to appease Chloe, and distract her from Beca's remark.
Suddenly, there is a foreign poking feeling in Beca's shoulder. As she goes to smack at her arm, with the thought it may be some very weird Ohio bug or something, she feels cold metal.
"Dude, what the fuck," Beca turns to see Jessica holding out one of the marshmallow roasting rods.
"I've been asking you to hand this to Chloe. I really have to learn to speak louder, don't I," Jessica says, still somewhat quietly, over the crackling of the fire.
"Fine," Beca responds, taking the stick from Jessica and handing it to her girlfriend. "And yes, please."
“Oh, my stars, New York! I can’t believe you guys are moving there! I bet it's going to be so amazing,” Emily’s eyes light up after Beca and Chloe tell everyone their plans to move to New York together.
“Our apartment is about the size of this patio. I'm not sure amazing is the right word for it there Em,” Beca laughs once again at Emily’s enthusiasm. Chloe and Beca decided shortly after graduation that they were going to move to New York together. They found a tiny studio apartment in a not super unsafe part of town, and both have applied for pretty good jobs. It’ll be tight but they are just happy they will finally be able to live together without sharing a bedroom or bathroom with any of the other Bellas.
“Well, it’ll still be really cool! And I’ll still be at Barden all alone with all of the new Bellas. This is going to be so hard,” Emily’s face twists with concern as she thinks about leading the Barden Bellas all by herself. She knows Aubrey will still be just across the lake, and that she will be there to support her during auditions, but the prospect is still so scary. Three-time ICCA champions, who just won Worlds? She’s not sure she’ll be able to live up to those standards, even with all the help she can get.
As the girls talk about what their future holds, after and at Barden, the moon rises higher in the sky.
“So, where are you guys going tomorrow again?” Aubrey asks Chloe, Beca, and Emily, who are heading out tent camping in the morning.
“New York actually! Upstate. The Adirondack Mountains are so pretty and I wanted to try camping again! We may be more successful with less people,” Chloe replies. The three of them will be heading out to upstate New York to see some scenery before school starts for Emily and real life™ begins for Beca and Chloe.
Yawning is becoming more and more frequent in the group of Bellas and most of them are definitively tired enough to fall asleep right where they are. Aubrey notices this and stands.
“Okay you guys, I think I’m going to call it a night. I’m staying overnight at a hotel about a half an hour away and would prefer to be awake for the entire drive there,” Aubrey picks up a flashlight set out by Emily’s mom and begins to gather her belongings.
“Yeah, we should probably get some rest guys, we all have a lot of driving to do in the morning,” Beca rises from her chair as well grabbing what is left of the s’mores items.
Chloe and Beca make their way through the Junk's large house to the guest room they have graciously been given for the night. Both of them made arguments to Emily and her mom that they didn't need to stay there, that there were good enough places to stay nearby, that they could just drive back and pick Emily up in the morning. But neither were hearing any of it. Mrs. Junk even said it was the least she could do for them since they were bringing Emily on their road trip, but Beca would beg to differ. She literally set up a barbecue already. But she is grateful that they can get a good night's rest on something other than a shitty hotel bed.
"How is even their guest room so nice? There's literally an en suite," Beca comments as they look around the room. What the room looks like couldn't matter less to the two of them, as they are only staying one night, but Beca is just perpetually amazed by Emily's house.
"Who knows Beca, it shall remain one of the world's great mysteries," Chloe sounds quite tired as she says this, and Beca is instantly more grateful that they don't have to drive to another hotel tonight to sleep. She's afraid Chloe would fall asleep at the wheel, and she herself has had one too many beers to drive, even if she doesn't think she's drunk, or even tipsy. Better to be safe than dead, or something.
The two girls, and Emily, have another big day of driving tomorrow. Beca thinks they should probably tuck into bed now since they will be running on less sleep than the other days already. And while tent camping (again?) with just Chloe and Emily sounds a bit like Beca's personal little hell, she did miss Emily and is glad to see her again for a while, before they all part ways for who knows how long.
This is going to be interesting.