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Stacie: Keep your dating options open
Benji is definitely into her.
Emily has never had a boyfriend before. Not ever. Not even Brendan McNiesh, in the first grade. He swore he liked her but still gave away his Ring Pop to Alex LaPorte.
First grade was a tough year.
But the fact remains that Emily has never had a real-deal boyfriend. She’s never had someone who likes to hold her hand or take her to the movies or kiss her goodnight on her front porch. She’s never had a first kiss with a boy who wants to call her his girlfriend. She’s never had a boyfriend.
According to Stacie, she should keep that no-boyfriend streak going.
“Dating is overrated. It’s so much…easier to keep your options open.”
Emily stares at Stacie with wide eyes.
“You know what I mean, Legacy?”
Chloe comes up behind Emily and peers over her shoulder. “Gross, Stace. Cut your toenails somewhere else.”
Stacie sticks her tongue out at Chloe. “I paid for this half of the kitchen. Beca said so.”
“Beca is wrong.”
“Beca is always right,” Beca says, stealing the glass of orange juice Chloe just poured. “What am I right about?”
“That I paid for this half of the kitchen. And that Legacy should keep her dating card on full rotation,” Stacie adds.
Beca gulps down half the glass before she answers. “Don’t listen to her.”
Emily tucks her hair behind her ears nervously. “It’s just that I think Benji really likes me…”
“He does.” Chloe smacks Beca on the shoulder, but Beca shrugs it off. “What? Jesse told me.”
Emily watches the way Chloe takes a half a step away from Beca. Stacie pinches Chloe’s hip gently. Beca finishes the rest of the orange juice with a satisfied ah.
“I might let him ask me out,” Emily manages to admit in a rush of air.
Chloe squeals excitedly. “Let me help you pick out a date outfit!”
Beca rolls her eyes. “No way, dude. If Chloe could, she’d go on dates naked.”
Emily laughs at the way that Chloe pouts, her whole body sagging. “Hey, you complimented my nakedness once.”
Beca’s ears flush red. “You assaulted me in the shower. Freshman year.” She turns to Emily. “I was not a willing participant.”
Stacie steps into Emily’s bubble, pushing the Beca-and-Chloe squabble out of her view. “Let me set you up on a date with a guy in my Women’s Studies class. I promise he doesn’t even wear a fedora. We don’t let those guys in.”
Emily has never had a boyfriend before, but she’s never had any girl friends, either, and the whole situation is so overwhelming that she hears herself agree to Stacie’s plan to go out with Wren, the Women’s Studies guy. And then Dan, the doorman Stacie knows.
It ends up being an entire list: Brody from the bookstore, a guy named Sully from an accounting class Stacie sometimes goes to, Hank the baseball player in the frat two houses down, Wesly, a film studies major. It’s a long list of people Emily would have never picked out for herself.
Benji isn’t on it.
He pulls away a little bit; stops preforming magic tricks for her or showing her the newest comic he’s created. They see each other a lot, at aca-parties, but Stacie usually has a list of guys for her to meet at each one, and Benji bows out to give them space.
He gets further and further away. Emily can’t help but think that the more options, the worse it feels.
Cynthia Rose: Experiment
Cynthia Rose makes so many off-hand comments about what it’s like to date girls that Emily stops counting. She used to, if only to catalogue her college experience in startling detail, for her memoirs. But now the number is so high that Emily doesn’t even react anymore.
(The first time Cynthia Rose said something, Emily bit down on the hot slice of pizza she was blowing on and burned the roof of her tongue.)
Stacie’s advice was disastrous. Sure, Wren and Hank were great guys and Brody taught her how to read bar codes, but Benji won’t talk to her anymore and that’s how she knows she messed up.
Emily’s dad has always said that her mom has a way of making a bad situation worse. Emily never understood that until now. Because instead of dumping guys like Wesly and Sully and telling Benji that she would love to go out on a date, Emily is sitting at a coffee shop with Rachel, a cute blond with about a hundred ear piercings.
“So many piercings,” Emily says for the fifth time in five minutes. More than Beca. “Like, did they hurt?”
Rachel twists a few of them around her lobe. “No, not really. I mean, this one did,” she says, tugging at the one inside her ear. “But Cynthia held my hand the whole time.”
“Cynthia… Rose?”
Rachel nods. “Yeah. I couldn’t have done it without her. She said you’ve never been out with a girl before?”
“I mean, I’ve been out with girls. Recreationally. Like, in a group. When I was in high school. Which was last year. Well, a few months ago. But we didn’t like, go out, you know? It was a group thing. Which I already said.” Emily licks her chapped lips nervously. “But I’m totally cool. Definitely open. Not that open. I’m not, like, open, you know? But I’m open to possibilities of… being… open.”
Rachel smiles warily. “Right,” she drawls. “Cynthia said you were…”
“Overanxious?”
“New,” Rachel supplies. “New to the concept. And to life, apparently,” she mutters under her breath.
Emily sips her drink restlessly. “So how do you know Cynthia Rose?”
“Oh,” Rachel says, surprised. “I thought she told you we dated?”
Emily gulps down more air than drink. “Uh, no?”
“Yeah. Really recently, actually.”
“How… how recently.”
Rachel blushes just a little, her cheeks pink. “We took a break about a week ago.”
“A week ago?” Emily’s voice is tight and strangled. “7 days ago?”
Rachel chews on her bottom lip as she thinks. “Well, I guess 5 days ago, really.”
“5 days? You… you just broke up with her.”
“Took a break,” Rachel corrects. “Is that a problem?”
Emily tugs at the collar of her t-shirt. Chloe dressed her casually today; something about taking it slow and not giving away the U-Haul on the first date. The room feels hot and overwhelming. “Oh my god.”
“Emily, I think you should breathe…”
“Oh my god. Oh my god,” Emily repeats over Rachel’s suggestion. “Oh my god. I’m breaking girl code.”
It is all Emily can think the entire walk back across campus. She broke girl code. She went out with a sister’s girlfriend. A sister. A Bellas’ girlfriend. She broke ever rule there is. She’ll never be forgiven.
Cynthia Rose cuts her off at the door, leaning against the frame casually. “Rachel said she broke you,” she comments.
“I broke girl code!” Emily takes a deep breath and lowers her voice. “I broke girl code. I went out with your ex.”
Cynthia Rose presses her hands down on Emily’s shoulders. “Don’t worry. I set you up, didn’t I?”
“With your ex-girlfriend!”
Cynthia Rose laughs a little, but it tapers off into a shuddering sigh. “How did she look?”
It takes Emily a moment to understand that there might have been an ulterior motive to this set up. Not a malicious one, but still. She collapses onto the couch, pulling Cynthia Rose with her. “Well, first of all, she’s very cute.”
Cynthia Rose ducks her head under Emily’s gaze. “Yeah, she is. I bet she ordered a chai latte. They’re her favorite.”
“Yes, she did,” Emily confirms. She spends the next ten minutes answering questions about Rachel, who Cynthia Rose is clearly not over yet. They windup up on opposite ends of the couch, feet in each other’s laps, Cynthia Rose telling her about their first date and how Rachel had half the earrings she does now. They talk about their first fight and how Cynthia Rose had to admit her gambling problem to Rachel. Cynthia Rose goes on and on and Emily just listens, taking it all in.
“What’s up, biotches?” Beca tries to hop over the back of the couch but gets caught and ends up face first in Cynthia Rose’s lap. She turns over and stares up at the ceiling. “I nailed it.”
Cynthia Rose leans forward and sniffs. “Are you drunk?”
Beca throws a hand up in the air. “Tipsy. I am slightly on a tip.”
Chloe comes into the room, a large smile on her face. “I found you,” she says, pointing at Beca.
“Did you lose me?”
Emily watches the way Chloe’s face tightens and her eyes clear. She’s never seen a person sober so quickly. Beca hums in between them, obviously to it. But Emily sees it and it hurts.
She takes initiative, hauling Beca up onto her feet, steadying her when she sways forward violently. “Come on, Captain. I’ll put you to bed.”
Beca pouts, sticking her lip out. “But Chloe does that.”
Emily tucks Beca under her arm and spares a glance at Chloe, still leaning against the entryway, her eyes glossy now but not with alcohol. “I’ve got it tonight. She’s got a thing.”
She’s almost out of the living room before she looks back at Cynthia Rose. “Call Rachel. I think she wants to hear from you.”
She gets Beca halfway up the stairs before she hears Cynthia Rose’s soft ‘thank you’ from the living room.
Fat Amy: Go commando
Emily should have known that taking Amy’s advice would be a terrible idea.
Especially advice about this.
She saw the President’s performance with her mom, shoved in front of their tiny TV, popcorn spilling from their mouths, open in horror.
(She actually saw way more than she ever wanted to. The first few weeks living with the Bella’s, Emily looked around every corner, just in case Amy was getting out of the shower or leaving her room or walking to the kitchen. She was terrified of seeing it again, in all its glory.)
So when Emily is in the living room, talking to Chloe about how things are starting to get serious with Benji since she accepted his request for a date, and Amy jumps in, Emily should dismiss her advice immediately. But she actually leans forward and asks “really?” in a way that makes Beca, sitting with her back against Chloe’s front, wince and leave the room.
“I am not taking any responsibility for this.” She points at Chloe. “Do not let Amy kill her.”
Amy rolls her eyes. “You say that like I would actually give bad advice.”
Beca doesn’t wait to make a comeback. Emily leans forward again, waiting.
“I’ve had plenty of boyfriends, you know.” Amy looks to Chloe for confirmation. Chloe makes a noise that sounds something like agreement and that’s enough for Amy. “Hot, foreign, doesn’t-eat-McDonalds-boyfriends.”
“You said you had advice?”
“Oh, right. Sorry, daydreaming about Brad, the plumber from down under. Where was I? Right, my advice.” Amy leans forward, beckoning Emily closer. Chloe is sitting next to her on the couch, a hand idly tracing circles on her back. It’s not weird, not anymore. They snuggle sometimes, when Beca is out late or with Jesse, and Amy declares it a movie night. It’s a nice, warm feeling – like she fits in a space.
Emily scoots over on the couch, though, out of Chloe’s reach, when Beca comes back into the room. Beca fills the space she empties and Chloe’s hand picks up where it left off, bolder than before as she scratches Beca’s lower back.
“My mother, a Tasmanian lady legend, always told me to go commando. It spices things up.” Amy raises her eyebrows suggestively.
“Dude, no,” Beca says immediately. “Absolutely not. Remember where that got you, Amy. No.” She turns to Emily. “Do not to that, Legacy.”
“It works!” Amy demands.
Beca starts laughing and Amy ends up trying to sit on her. Chloe rolls her eyes and pulls Emily off the couch to save them being squished. They stand against the door frame leading to the front hall, Chloe’s arm around her shoulders, while Beca and Amy tussle. When Lily and Stacie join in, then Jessica, Chloe huffs under her breath and goes to break it up.
Emily jogs up the stairs to get ready for her date. She quickly makes a decision and stuffs her underwear back in the top drawer of her dresser. Taking a deep, steadying breath, she checks the time and rushes down the steps. She stops briefly at the front door to watch the progression of the wrestling match – Amy now has Lily over her head while Chloe has Beca pinned in the easy chair, both of them laughing too hard to breathe.
She meets Benji just a few minutes late but he doesn’t mind. The whole date is great. Benji pulls out chairs, holds her hand when they walk, and magics the check away before she can get her hands on it. It’s the kind of date where she is definitely going to be calling her mom later on, just to gush.
But halfway through dinner, the new pants she’s wearing start to really chaff. And the air conditioning in the storefront café is broken and it’s humid outside and she can feel the sweat dripping down her lower back. She spends all of dinner and most of the walk deep breathing and wishing she was at home, in the shower.
Eventually, Emily can’t stand it any more.
“I have to go,” she blurts out.
Benji, leaning in mid-kiss, reels back. “Oh, um, yes. Very well.” He bows deeply and rights himself, his face flushing red. “Splendid. Uh, no. That wasn’t… That wasn’t right.”
He’s so adorable, flustered and nervously wringing his hands. Really, Emily typically finds it adorable when confetti shoots out of his sleeves or he burps up handkerchiefs but now is not the time. She takes off down the sidewalk, trying to keep her thighs from touching and she doesn’t even care if she’s waddling.
Amy, in the kitchen when Emily gets home, asks how the date went.
Emily toddles past her and swears to never take Amy’s advice again.
Beca & Chloe: Don’t be afraid to have feelings
Benji is graduating from college. Before her. It’s something Emily has known, obviously, but not something she always remembers. It comes up sometimes, like, what is he going to do after college, but Emily has to really rack her brain to remember that ‘after college’ for Benji is in days, not years.
It makes her nervous. She really, really likes Benji. A lot. More than she ever liked One Direction or Alanis Morissette in the fifth grade. (Jagged Little Pill is brilliant.) It terrifies her. It keeps her up at night. She thinks of the all the reasons why she likes… loves Benji and it is quickly followed by all the reasons why they can’t – won’t – last, all the ways it could crash and burn, all the ways it could never work.
She tells Chloe all these fears, curled up on the couch in a Bella Barden snuggie with a bowl of Rocky Road ice cream while Chloe flips between two made-for-TV-movies.
“You should tell him,” Chloe says when Emily is done. “Seriously.”
Emily groans and spoons another heap of ice cream into her mouth. “I’m terrified,” she says with her mouth full.
“That’s what love is, though!” Chloe scoots closer. “It’s terror and free-falling and jumping out into the void and knowing someone will catch you.” Chloe blushes a bit. “That’s what love should be.”
“What’s it like for you and Beca?”
Chloe drops the remote control in her hand. It hits the hardwood floor with a clatter that makes Emily wince. The room is startling still for a moment.
“Emily,” Chloe says slowly. “Beca and I are not in love.”
Emily takes a moment to carefully consider her words. “Does she know that?” is what comes out.
Chloe laughs, high and nervous. “Beca and Jesse-”
“Are cute, don’t get me wrong,” Emily interrupts. “But you two are much better than them.”
Chloe recovers a little bit now. “Well, we’re not dating.”
Emily frowns, dropping her spoon back into her bowl. “You’re not?”
“No,” Chloe demands. “Did you think we were?”
Emily shrugs, trying to fade into her snuggie. “I thought maybe you guys were all… Nevermind. It’s nothing.”
Chloe shakes her head, her eyes wide. Emily knows that she has made a mistake now, that she’s unleashed a monster. “No. No, what is it?”
“I thought that maybe she was dating both of you and that was cool with everyone?” Emily blurts out, wishing she could turn back the clock by just two minutes and never, ever mention this. “Seriously, forget I said it.”
But Emily can see the cogs in Chloe’s head turning and she knows that Chloe will never forget this moment or Emily’s words. She can practically imagine them being seared to the inside of Chloe’s skull. It’s evident in the narrowing of Chloe’s eyes, in the way she bites her lip, in the way she twirls a ringlet of hair around her finger.
“Oh. Oh. I like her.” Chloe whispers the admission; eyes now wide again, with fear this time.
Emily smiles softly. “I know,” she whispers back. “I think everyone does.”
“Beca?”
“Probably,” Emily admits.
The door bangs open and Beca stumbles through it, lugging a large bag of recording equipment, an access badge tangled around her neck and hair. She huffs her bangs out of her eyes and growls as she tries to fit through the smaller doorway to the living room.
“Beca?”
Beca looks up, startled. “Oh. Sorry. I didn’t know there was anyone in here. Why aren’t you at the graduation rehearsal?”
“Why aren’t you?”
Emily tries again to shrink in stature, pressing her back into the couch and hoping that it will swallow her whole.
“I was out trying to put something together for Worlds.” Beca unloads her bag at the end of the couch and flops into the armchair, putting her feet up in Chloe’s lap. “I’ll let you listen to it later?”
“Are we dating?”
Beca’s eyes widen. Emily inhales sharply. Chloe teeters forward, Beca’s feet sliding off her lap.
“Nevermind,” Chloe breathes out, standing quickly. She turns to Emily, her hands out in front of her, shaking a little. She opens and closes her mouth and shakes her head. “Nevermind,” she repeats, stepping over Beca’s feet, intent on getting out of the room.
Beca reaches out and grabs her wrist. Emily can see the surprise on Beca’s face, that she would even make a move like that. “No, wait. What did you ask me?”
Chloe’s voice is low and warning. “You heard me, Beca.”
Beca lets go of Chloe’s wrist. “I…”
Chloe rounds on Beca. Emily notices their height difference, the way that Beca only comes up to Chloe’s cheek. She watches the way Beca has to tilt her head back just a little to see Chloe’s eyes. She feels invisible and she’s grateful.
“I like you,” Chloe says. This time, her voice is stronger and her shoulders are straight.
Beca’s face stays the same but her voice wavers. “Well, yeah, dude. We’re best friends.”
“No,” Chloe sighs. “I… I, God.”
Chloe reaches forward, laces her fingers together at the back of Beca’s neck, pulls Beca a step closer, and kisses her.
Emily swallows her gasp of surprise and nearly chokes on air. They’re kissing. In front of her. Beca is up on her tiptoes with her hands resting carefully on Chloe’s waist and Chloe is leaning down to meet her and their eyes are closed and they’re not moving their mouths, just pressing them together. Emily tries not to breathe so she doesn’t break the moment.
They break apart slowly, Beca blinking a few times before her mouth opens in an ‘O’ shape, realization sinking into her head. “Um,” she starts.
“I like you,” Chloe repeats.
“I guess so,” Beca breathes out. “Um.”
Chloe leans back down to kiss Beca. Emily watches her hesitate; Beca closes the gap. Beca’s hands tighten at Chloe’s waist and then there’s no space between them.
Slowly, Emily unfolds her legs and stands up. The back of her knees hit the couch arm but she swallows back the ‘ouch’ on the tip of her tongue and slips out of the living room.
She has a mission now.
She walks down the street to the Trebles house, chest puffed out in confidence she’s not sure she can maintain, and bursts into Benji’s room.
“I love you,” she declares before he can get a word in.
When she kisses him, it feels like the kind of kiss she’ll write songs about.