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It crawls on her, this weirdness. As Mrs Beale smiles like she just won the lottery – when really, Beca only asked for a second serving of potatoes, it’s not that amazing a moment – it seizes her like a hot flash. She’s weird. Beca’s the kid who never had those meet-the-family moment; not even with Jesse. She gets out of those so easily that she never actually noticed that she avoided them.
And now, as Chloe’s perfect mom smiles a perfect smile, she gets it.
Actually gets it.
Beca has never had a normal family dinner like this one, doesn’t even know if she wants one or not. She used to wish for one – back when she was the kid who dreamt her parents would stop screaming at each other; the girl who hid in her closet to listen to cassettes and forget everything – that Beca would’ve wanted that.
Fingertips fall on her thigh and Beca blinks – Chloe. Chloe is there, with the same perfect smile Mrs Beale has, and the fright passes.
Because Chloe likes that Beca is weird. Flawless Chloe actually loves that Beca doesn’t do this kind of stuff.
But Chloe is so perfect all the time and one day... Beca worries sometimes. One day Chloe won’t find it cute that Beca frowns all the time. One day Chloe won’t tease her for being grumpy – won’t be patient and kind and wonderful like she always is.
One day Chloe will want what her parents have; a warm house with lots of sunlight, a dog and a pool – second servings of potatoes and a family recipe passed down for generations. And all Beca will have is her ability to google “how to make pancakes” every time she tries to surprise Chloe with breakfast because she keeps forgetting how much milk it needs.
For now, though, Chloe’s hand is warm and solid and Beca has nothing to do other than nod and try to smile. So far, she’s been okay with the first part; the latter is tougher but it doesn’t seem to be noticed.
“So, Chloe tells us your father is a professor?”
Beca tries not to choke on the potatoes. Delicious, they are, but also deadly and treacherous. She can’t go around coughing up half-chewed meals in front of the in-laws. “Yeah,” she hardly manages to breathe out.
An uncomfortable silence settles at the table and Beca knows she put it there.
“He teaches comparative literature,” Chloe fills in for her.
Mr Beale nods. “Interesting,” he notes.
It’s a firm nod. Confident and strong and not at all the hesitant head bobs that Beca has been doing all night.
Mrs Beale redirects the conversation towards Chloe as if there was nothing else she liked to talk about and Beca doesn’t mind. So far she’s learned about Chloe’s first word, how old she was when she took her first step, when she lost her first tooth. In just a few hours she’s been given all these little glimpses into Chloe that she never really asked for and this constant offering is both terrifying and intoxicating.
So, not unlike her relationship with Chloe, now that she thinks of it.
But it’s weirdly fascinating, that shade of red that colours Chloe’s cheeks from time to time. That little side-eye – shyness that Beca has never seen in Chloe before. It’s new, it’s strange; it’s endearing.
Beca wishes she could stare at it all night.
Mrs Beale loves to talk about how artistic Chloe has always been, ever since she could speak; how she’s always been curious about arts and literature and cinema. Beca is listening, she really is, but she doesn’t quite know how they land on this conversation.
“Oh it reminds me of that video you did, when you were, what? Fifteen?”
One glimpse to the side confirms what Beca had guessed; Chloe’s cheeks are turning lobster-like. On the other side of the table, Mrs Beale continues to speak as if her daughter isn’t about to catch fire.
“Oh you know which one, Chloe darling,” she insists and turns to her husband, “she was fifteen wasn’t she?”
Beca can feel the heat of Chloe’s embarrassment beside her. The hand on her thigh pulls away and Beca wonders if she should offer the same comfort or not. She’s not too sure about the rules, so instead she draws lines in her now-mashed potatoes with her fork, and hopes she could disappear into the floor.
It seems better than staring at Chloe anyway, which is what she really wants to be doing, but knows she shouldn’t.
“Thirteen,” Mr Beale corrects. “And I did not approve.”
His voice is serious – no, concerned. As if it’s a thirteen-year-old Chloe that is sitting in front of him. Beca can easily picture him scolding Chloe on bad report cards or for reading too late at night, but not for being in a music video as she barely hit her teenage years. That seems strangely rebellious and oh so not Chloe.
Flawless Chloe, red as a lobster, doesn’t say a word.
“It was just a thing that kids did,” Mrs Beale waves her hand like its past history – and Beca has to remind herself that it is.
It’s been ten years to be precise. Beca wonders if it’s on YouTube.
She shouldn’t be, she realises. It’s not nice – not girlfriendly at all that Beca likes to think Chloe isn’t perfect after all. That Chloe has things she’s embarrassed about; things she doesn’t like about herself. It’s not right.
But it’s oddly comforting.
And that’s how she ends up that night, after kissing Chloe good night and hiding in the bedroom she shares with Amy, after making sure that Amy is not faking sleep like she so often does and like Beca really hates – after all that, Beca finds herself searching for the damn video and hoping – praying – this doesn’t make her a bad person.
Then she clicks play.
It’s so 1990’s pop that she cringes, but it doesn’t take long before Chloe’s face appears. She’s cute and sweet, her arms are too long and the singer is way too old to crush on her. Way too old to sing those lyrics at her and when money gets thrown at teeny Chloe, Beca wants to punch someone who has probably long forgotten about this video.
She’s only relieved when the song ends and none of the boys have kissed Chloe. A small comfort – though the jealousy is still there. Dumb and uncomfortable and unwarranted.
And then – then – she realises. This is embarrassing – but the chorus is stuck in her head.
Stuck like Staying Alive after a night of karaoke. Stuck like The Sign during her first year at Barden.
It plays over and over and Beca falls asleep to it, and dreams of thirteen-year-old Chloe leaving her for one of the boys – the one with the ear piercings and the backwards baseball cap. When she wakes up, Beca thinks it’s karma.
She’s an awful person for watching that video that Chloe is clearly embarrassed about, and now the universe is punishing her for being an awful girlfriend. That has to be it.
Because she’s a stubborn one, she manages to forget about the song, though. It lasts about three days. Three days before Chloe borrows her laptop without asking, to search for a song that Beca just has to hear – which means she wants Beca to remix it – and frowns.
The kind of scowl that means trouble.
Just like Chloe blushing when they were at her parents’ house, this expression on her is new. Strange. It isn’t endearing at all, though.
“You looked it up?”
Her eyes are locked on the screen and Beca’s heart is doing the funny thing where it misses beats and tries to crawl up her throat and Beca doesn’t like it one bit.
Chloe isn’t talking. Usually she speaks a lot or she smiles or she hums. Chloe does a lot of things all the time – she’s white noise. Beca loves that about her. But right now Chloe is completely mute. Like on the bus when they returned from the semi-finals, that first year. Defeated.
“I...,” there’s nothing she can say that will make it better. Not really. “I was curious.”
Going with honesty is everyone’s advice, right? Except it’s a terrible one, because Chloe’s eyes turn angry and she closes the laptop. Grabs her bag. Does that thing where she pretends not to notice Beca’s wide eyes full of interrogation marks.
“Where you going?”
“Out,” she answers dryly and when the door closes behind her, Beca realises she never actually discussed the video with her. Never asked if it was okay for her to look it up.
Never gave Chloe a chance to trust her with it.
Beca messed up. She can see that now.
She messed up.
What she does next is pretty stupid. She can see that too, but she’d do a whole bunch of stupid things if it meant Chloe would smile at her again.
So she buys an old boombox like they had when she was still a kid – like the one she asked for but never got. She cringes at the thought of what’s coming but if she can pull off this one thing, this one tiny thing, then it’ll be worth it.
That’s how she finds herself wearing baggy pants and a hoodie twice her size, a boombox on her shoulder, knocking on Chloe’s bedroom door.
She doesn’t wait for her to answer – it’s Tuesday and on Tuesdays Chloe rewrites her Russian Lit notes in her good notebook (that is not to be mistaken for the regular notebook which is the one she actually carries to class and looks exactly the same).
So Beca feels pretty confident that she’s not interrupting anything when she barges into Chloe’s bedroom, dressed like one of the boys from the video. The first notes of the song are already playing and she can feel her cheeks flaring up as the door closes behind her, Chloe’s surprised face turning into a frown.
The same one she had when she saw Beca’s list of Recently Played YouTube videos.
The same one Beca’s here to wipe away – by embarrassing herself even more.
This is a solid plan, she thinks. Not really mature and probably not what perfect people do. When she (unwillingly) thinks of Mr Beale romancing up Mrs Beale, Beca is pretty sure he never tried putting on awful, non-flattering clothes to sing horrible lyrics to her.
But Beca’s 70% sure that this might maybe not end up wrong.
You can be my girl, you can be my boo, she sings and tries not to cringe.
Chloe’s frown stays the same.
It’s okay; Beca has another three minutes of humiliation planned, so basically, all the time in the world.
Now you’ve been seen with another guy, and he’s been treating you wrong, she continues as a flicker of amusement flashes in Chloe’s eyes. It isn’t enough to make her uncross her arms, but it’s a start. And no matter how hard you try, he won’t leave you alone.
Now Chloe’s making that cute pout where she’s trying not to smile and scrunching up her nose in the process and despite how much Beca wants to grab her by the waist and kiss that adorable expression off her face, she isn’t done making a fool of herself.
Besides, she feels all warm inside at the idea that she’s doing things right. She’s making Chloe smile.
Her, Beca. The grumpy, awkward one. She’s making Chloe happy.
She drops the boombox and starts the choreography she’s more or less learned from the video and Chloe laughs – downright laughs, and it’s like a cold glass of water on a hot day. Beca has to focus not to mess up the lyrics and the moves; while it’s not perfect, she manages.
It’s when she reaches the rap part of the song that she notices it – at the top of Chloe’s laptop, that familiar white light.
The one that means her webcam’s active.
And then she hears it.
“Chloe sweetie, is that Beca?”
Chloe’s smirk turns into a smug grin. “Yes mom,” she confirms without turning around.
The song goes on but Beca isn’t singing and dancing anymore. She feels her cheeks burning up to her ears and her mouth drying up so quickly she might cough when she speaks. Still, she struggles to push out a weak “hi Mrs Beale.”
One finger on the square stop button of the boombox, Beca swallows her shame and carefully ignores Chloe’s burning eyes. The music stops and for a few seconds, all Beca can hear is her own lack of breathing and Chloe’s repressed laughter.
For a few seconds, she can pretend that maybe, just maybe, Chloe’s cheap microphone hasn’t caught her singing.
“Was that from your next set?” she asks oh so earnestly and Beca facepalms too strongly for someone who is still filmed by a treacherous webcam. Chloe turns around, obviously reassured that her mother hasn’t recognised the song.
“It isn’t,” she dismisses the question quickly. “Can I call you later?”
The goodbyes don’t take enough time for Beca to regain her composure and when Chloe’s whole focus falls on her, she feels like a five-year-old caught with her hand in the cookie jar.
Which is ridiculous, because Chloe isn’t a cookie jar and she certainly didn’t have a hand – this metaphor just isn’t the right one. But Beca cannot for the life of her concentrate when Chloe’s looking at her that way.
“So that’s... new,” Chloe’s still smirking.
Beca bites her lower lip, nervous. Her ridiculous plan sounds just like that – ridiculous – and she’s glad she hasn’t confided it to anyone. Although it might have prevented this embarrassment, so she’s not sure which one is worse.
“Is that you apologising, Beca Mitchell?”
“Um,” Beca isn’t entirely sure. She didn’t actually plan that part – especially not the unexpected Skype session with Mrs Beale – and she’s never been great with words.
She should’ve burned Chloe a CD with sappy songs instead. Some weird remix of Swallow My Pride with So Sorry. Something dripping with emotions that would make Chloe’s eyes water a bit and then maybe Beca wouldn’t actually have to say anything. “I should’ve asked,” she tries anyway.
Chloe nods, and in the time it takes for Beca to blink, she’s already stepping forward, her hands circling Beca’s wrists and pulling her close. Chloe’s forehead presses against hers and Beca stops breathing again, for entirely different reasons.
It’s just that Chloe smells awfully nice and she’s warm and sweet and Beca really, really wants to kiss her but she’s not sure she can. She’s pretty certain she’s supposed to wait for Chloe to make the first move but maybe this was the move in question and maybe Beca’s overthinking-
Chloe’s lips on hers have a way of shutting out the world.
Beca almost forgets she’s wearing baggy pants.
“It’s just not something I’m really proud of,” Chloe explains, her minty breath tickling Beca’s lips. “I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but the song isn’t actually good.”
“That video’s a train wreck,” Beca agrees, and sense Chloe pulling away slightly. “But um... you looked cute.”
There’s a sigh. A small pout. The biting of a lip and then – then – a shrug. “Perv,” Chloe accuses.
Beca frowns. “I didn’t mean it like that.”
“Sure,” Chloe winks.
And just like that, Beca knows.
She might not know how much milk it takes to make pancakes, but she can keep Chloe smiling. Maybe that’s enough.