Beca's focus is broken when a message notification slides across the corner of her computer screen. Normally, she'd get pissy about being interrupted when she's feeling in the zone - and she really is right now; she's pretty sure she has a kickass hook figured out - but seeing who the text is from dials back her irritation.

"Hey you. Busy later?"

She smiles at Chloe's text and toggles to her Message app. "Not really. Sup?"

"Bored. Come hang out with me? Xx"

She smiles again; every time Chloe invites her over, Beca feels like Chloe's a shy little girl trying to make a friend for the first time despite them knowing one another for going on 10 years.

"What's in it for me?"

"I thought I was enough for you."

That's the other thing that makes Beca smile, the way Chloe can shift from shy to vixen at the drop of a hat. It's always done things to Beca, twisted her up inside and confused her about how she felt (feels) about her best friend. It was particularly bad, stifling, even, when they were in college, all those hormones running wild coupled with free-flowing alcohol and all-night study sessions that ended more than once with the pair sharing a bed.

All Beca was doing was trying to help Chloe pass her Russian Lit class.

At least, that's what she always told herself, and the rest of the girls who threw teasing, often inappropriate remarks their way when they would both emerge from the same room in the morning.

And the flirting - God, the flirting. Chloe was a relentless flirt - still is. Beca's never quite mastered how to handle it; sometimes she can return it tête-à-tête and sometimes it leaves her an embarrassed, flustered fool.

It felt like a lifetime ago, and in a way, it was. They've long-since graduated. She has a decent job where she actually gets to work on music most of the time. She's still low on the totem pole at the studio, but she's not so low that she has to get coffee and burritos for people anymore. She actually has an assistant of her own. Well, an intern, really, and he assists everyone on the team, but she likes to think of him as her assistant. He brings her coffee if she asks for it. She has an apartment that isn't a total shithole nor in a bad neighborhood, a car that starts reliably and doesn't have a cracked windshield, and she can pay her bills.

And Chloe's there.

She'd moved to Los Angeles two years ago citing a bad break-up and a need to start over. She'd spent the first two months in the city crashing at Beca's place. She insisted she would sleep on the couch, or buy an air mattress, but she spent every night in Beca's bed.

It was comfortable.

It was comforting.

It was platonic, but every night, Beca fell asleep with her mind wrestling with itself.

"You're more than enough for me. But what do you wanna do?"

"I found this quiz online. I want us to take it."

"?"

"Just come over. I already ordered pizza."

"Okay," Beca says after she takes a sip of her favorite beer that Chloe happened to have on hand, "what's this quiz?" She watches Chloe light up in excitement at her question. "It's not some Cosmo shit, is it?"

They're camped out on Chloe's couch in her studio apartment. The TV is on, tuned to some channel that has a "Friends" marathon going, but it's muted in favor of the music playing through Chloe's little sound system via Beca's phone.

Chloe shakes her head and grabs a notebook from the floor next to the couch. "It's from The New York Times."

"You read The New York Times?" Beca says with a laugh as she turns and settles against the arm of the couch to face Chloe, their feet sharing the cushion between them.

Chloe sticks her tongue out at her. "Someone shared the article on Facebook."

Beca nudges Chloe's foot with her own. "Okay, okay. And you wrote it all down?"

"I didn't want to have my phone out the whole time."

"How long is this quiz?"

"36 questions." Chloe shifts in her seat and takes a long drink of her beer. "Question number one: If you could invite anyone in the world to dinner, who would it be?"

"Alive or dead?"

"Doesn't matter."

Beca thinks for a second. "Janis Joplin."

"Why?"

"Because she didn't care that women weren't supposed to be rock stars and I want to ask her how to deal with sexism in the industry better."

Chloe smiles at her. "I'd pick Harriet Tubman."

The unexpected answer makes Beca snort. "Why?"

"Because she went through unimaginable hardship and kept fighting for what she believed in."

Beca regrets her gut reaction and feels foolish. "Sorry."

"It's okay." Chloe smiles at her and passes the notebook; only one question is written on the page it's open to - the one she just answered. "Your turn to ask."

"But we both answer?"

"Mhm. Go."

Beca flips to the next page and reads the question. "Would you like to be famous? In what way?"

"No. I don't want to be famous." Chloe's answer is quick.

"No?"

Chloe shakes her head and holds out her hand expectantly, so Beca puts the notebook in it while she answers, "I don't want to be famous either. But if I'm good at what I do, I might be. And I'm okay with that."

"You're going to be super famous." Chloe smiles at her and it makes her blush a little. "Okay. Before making a phone call, do you ever rehearse what you are going to say? Why?"

"All the time."

"Do you really?" Chloe asks with a laugh. "Why?"

"Because I hate talking on the phone. It makes me feel dumb."

"We talk on the phone all the time."

"That's…" Beca hesitates. "It's different. What about you?"

Chloe's voice is quiet when she answers, "Sometimes."

"Really?"

"Next question." Chloe turns the page and says hurriedly, "What would constitute a perfect day for you? Sorry, that was supposed to be your question to ask."

"It's fine." Beca keeps wondering why Chloe would ever have to rehearse a conversation when she answers, "I don't know. I guess, like...I'd sleep in. And then I'd move to the couch with my coffee and lay there for an hour and do absolutely nothing, or until I got hungry. I'd have grilled cheese and tomato soup for lunch, and I'd write the biggest song of the year in 15 minutes in the shower. I'd have my dad's homemade apple pie for dinner -"

"Pie for dinner?"

"Don't question my perfect day. I'd have pie for dinner and take a bubble bath and read my favorite book with a glass of wine until I can't keep my eyes open and then I'd go to bed and curl up with -" she catches herself. "Curl up and fall asleep without a struggle."

Chloe looks like she's about to ask a question and Beca's relieved when she instead says, "I think my perfect day would be getting up early enough to watch the sunrise while I go for a run. I talk to my granny aaaand, yeah I get sushi for dinner. I like the bubble bath and sleep part of your day; I'm stealing it."

"You can't steal part of my day!"

"Stealing it. And sex. Sex happens somewhere in there. Like, multiple orgasm sex. That's my perfect day."

Beca's feet seem to go numb at Chloe's final addition and she's glad she's sitting down right now. Her instinct is to make a wisecrack about Chloe wanting sex as part of her perfect day, but she spent a millisecond too long playing out that perfect day in her mind and now it's foggy.

Or steamy.

She clears her throat and shoves the notebook back at Chloe. "Go."

Chloe laughs when she turns the page.

"Oh no - how embarrassing is it?"

"It's not." Chloe smiles at her. "When did you last sing to yourself and to someone else?"

Beca rolls her eyes and cherishes the relief. "In the car on the way here. And like half an hour ago. And I already know your answers."

"Do you?"

"Oh yeah. You were singing to yourself when I got here, and we were singing to each other half an hour ago." Beca likes the way her chest warms when she really thinks about what it's like to sing to Chloe and have her sing back. They've done that innumerable, infinite times but she hasn't really thought about it and how it makes her feel in years. "Hand it over." She waits for the notebook and flips the page once it's in her hand. "Okay, question six: If you were able to live to the age of 90 and retain either the mind or body of a 30-year-old for the last 60 years of your life, which would you want?"

"Body."

Beca laughs. "That was quick."

Chloe gestures at herself. "Why wouldn't I want to keep this body until I die?"

"I guess I don't blame you," Beca says with a pointed look; they're discussing Chloe's body, so why not look at it? "I feel like it'd be weird to look like you do but not have the mind to match."

"No, think about it. Instead of being hot and making dumb mistakes because I haven't learned my lesson yet, I'd have a lifetime of experience and look great. I could become President."

Beca wants to question her logic, but as ridiculous as it is… "Okay, I guess that checks out."

"Then I assume you'd want to keep your mind young?"

She nods. "I watched my grandfather's memory go. He had Alzheimer's and it was so sad and confusing for him. I don't want to go through that."

Chloe's attitude softens and she offers a look of understanding instead of more jokes. "I'm sorry. I didn't know."

"I was 13 when he died; it's okay." Beca clears her throat and tosses the notebook to Chloe.

Chloe seems to wince a little before asking, "Do you have a secret hunch about how you will die?" She puts down the notebook. "I'm sorry, that's - we can stop."

"No, it's okay." Beca shifts and tucks her feet under herself. "I always figured I'd go in my sleep. Nothing traumatic. Maybe a brain aneurysm? Something quick and painless."

"You've thought about it a lot?"

Beca shrugs and finishes her beer to set the bottle on the table. "Not a lot. What about you?"

"Cancer."

"Why would you think -"

"It runs in my family," Chloe says quickly. "Here; ask the next question."

"I'm sorry, I -"

"Ask, Beca." Chloe looks like she's trying not to cry and Beca wonders about who Chloe lost; in all the years they've known each other, not once has Chloe had to fly home for a funeral. That she knew of… "Please?"

"All right. Name three things we have in common."

Chloe seems relieved by the simplicity of the question. "Singing, duh," she says with a smile. "We're both super protective of the people we care about. And we're both slow to let people in."

Beca has to think about Chloe's answer for a second; she's never considered Chloe to be guarded or not trusting of others. Chloe had breezed into her life with a carefree attitude that Beca envied. Chloe was warm and affectionate with almost everyone she met.

But the more she thinks about it, the more Beca remembers what their earliest interactions were: top-level things like Beca assimilating into the Bellas, planning fundraisers, and planning parties. Chloe pulled her into her personal space, sure, but it wasn't until winter break Beca's second year at Barden that Chloe told her, alone and in the dark, that she was scared she didn't know how to be more than a Bella. It had been the first time Chloe told her something serious and personal that wasn't a matter of TMI. It was a real fear, and it took Chloe a year and a half to open that part of herself to Beca.

She'd never considered that before - that Chloe wasn't an open book to just anyone.

"Well? What about you?" Chloe says and interrupts her thoughts. "And you can't say the same things."

"Sorry, just thinking about my answer," Beca replies as she watches Chloe finish her own beer and set it aside. "Okay, if I can't say the same things you did, then…" Beca holds up her fingers to count them off. "We both love dogs. We both hate horror movies."

"You hate all movies!"

"But I hate horror movies the most."

"Because they scare you."

"They scare you, too!" Beca says with a laugh. "You had nightmares for a month after we watched The Conjuring."

Chloe shrieks at the memory and covers her face. "Don't make me think about it!"

"Oh God, okay, sorry!" She leans forward to reach out and pull Chloe's hands off her face and decides to hold one of them for a few seconds until the fear subsides. "And we both want to go to Switzerland someday."

Chloe's panic stops immediately. "How did you know I want to go to Switzerland?"

"You love skiing and I saw you looking at their tourism site once."

"That must have been...I haven't thought about going in years."

Beca feels Chloe's hand tighten on hers. "Yeah, it was when you were crashing with me."

"Wait, you want to go, too?"

Beca feels her cheeks trying to blush. She didn't mean to set herself up for having to white lie her way out of the fact that she wanted to go anywhere Chloe wanted to go because it meant experiencing Chloe's pure joy first-hand. "Yeah. For the chocolate. And like...their watches. Go." She pushes the notebook into Chloe's lap with her free hand; Chloe's still holding the other. "Ask."

Chloe laughs a little and flips the page with her free hand and reads the question, but when she asks it, she looks at Beca. "For what in your life do you feel most grateful?"

Chloe's thumb is brushing back and forth along the back of Beca's hand and Beca has to fight to stop her answer from exploding from her the way it wants to. It's such an instinctual answer, one she didn't consciously decide, but there it is on her tongue. She chokes back the vigor it wants to come out with and instead manages a much calmer response. "Meeting you."

She watches her words affect Chloe. They make her lips part and her breath stutter and her eyes fill with tears. "Beca," Chloe whispers and it hangs between them for an eternal moment until Chloe lifts her free hand to wipe away a tear that's fallen. "I'm stealing your answer," she says with a watery smile.

She wonders what Chloe's reaction and answer mean; if she's moved that Beca values their friendship so much or if she understands where Beca's coming from. That it's more than valuing friendship and sharing experiences and altering life paths. She doesn't get to dwell on it too long because Chloe rotates the notebook and turns the page for Beca to read.

Beca has to take a deep, steadying breath before she's confident that her voice won't crack. "If you could change anything about the way you were raised, what would it be?"

Chloe's quiet for a moment and Beca can see her weighing her response. "Sometimes I wish my parents had taught me more about boundaries." She lets go of Beca's hand as she says it, as though she noticed she'd crossed one.

Beca misses the contact immediately but doesn't comment on it. "Why?"

"Sooo many awkward situations," she answers shakily with a forced smile. "What about you?"

"I wish my parents hadn't split." Beca doesn't have to think about that answer, either. And she's relieved when Chloe moves to ask the next question and doesn't ask her to expand on it.

"You know what? I could use another beer," Chloe says instead of reading the question. "What about you?" She stands and heads for the fridge.

"Yeah, thanks." Beca takes the few seconds of not being under Chloe's scrutiny to wipe her brow and check her face in her phone's camera to make sure that her mascara hadn't run. She hadn't cried but she'd come close. "What kind of quiz is this anyway? Are we supposed to be scoring each other or something?"

Chloe returns with two beers in one hand and a bag of salsa verde-flavored Doritos chips in the other. She drops the chips onto the table and hands Beca a bottle which she opens using the bottle opener on her keychain and hands it back to Chloe to open the other while Chloe takes her seat again.

"It's just a quiz I thought would be interesting for us to do together. There's no score."

"It's kind of heavy, don't you think?" Beca says as she tosses the two bent bottle caps onto the table with her keys.

"Do you want to quit? We don't have to keep going."

Beca shakes her head. "I didn't mean that. It was just...an observation. It's your turn to start, right?"

She watches Chloe nod and take the first sip of her fresh beer as she turns the page in the notebook. "Okay. Take four minutes and tell each other your life story in as much detail as possible."

Beca looks at her incredulously. "My life story in as much detail as possible in four minutes?"

"I think it means two minutes each."

She suddenly feels like the clock's already ticking and sits up straight. "Are you going to time me?"

Chloe laughs as she says, "No," and settles further into her seat.

"You probably already know all of this, but okay. I was born in Portland. I didn't start talking until I was almost 3, and when I did it was in complete sentences. But my parents were so worried that I was going to be mute or something they took me to all kinds of doctors and did all kinds of tests but I was always fine. I just didn't talk. The first thing I ever said was, 'I don't want to take a bath, Mom,' and it's not like I remember it, but apparently she almost fainted in shock and fell into the bathtub.

"I used to go to my grandparents' house every day after school and we'd have peanut butter sandwiches and my grandpa would teach me card tricks. In every play we did at school until I was in 8th grade, I was cast as the baby or the child because I was always the smallest in the class and the only reason it stopped was because I was old enough to say I didn't like being typecast.

"I failed Chemistry. I almost got in a car accident when I was taking my driver's license test so I failed that the first time, too. Oh, but I won every spelling bee at my school and even went to the state competition once. I got sent to mall jail when I was 15 because Olivia Johnson put a pleather jacket from Delia's into my backpack without me knowing and it set off the alarm at the store. My parents got divorced. I graduated from high school. My dad forced me to go to college and you know everything that happened after that." She takes a breath. "Was that two minutes?"

"It wasn't a strict limit, Bec," Chloe says with a smile. "What happens in mall jail? I've always wondered!"

Beca laughs. "It's not as exciting as it sounds. Real jail was way more interesting."

Chloe laughs, too. "Always taking the fall for your friends. Do you still know those card tricks?"

"I'd probably have to practice a little first, but yeah."

"Maybe you can try them out on me later? Only if you want to, of course."

"Yeah," Beca says. "Maybe I could try. Okay, let's hear it."

She listens to Chloe share her two-minute life story and she's starting to feel a little drunk; not so much on alcohol - they're only three beers in and they ate an entire pizza - but on Chloe. It's the way her eyes light up as she talks about getting an Easy-Bake Oven for Christmas and how jealous of it her younger sister was and how her older sister didn't talk to her for an entire month because Chloe used her makeup without asking, and the way she grimaces while she shares that she got her first period in gym class during a game of volleyball, and how she rolls her eyes at her terrible first kiss in middle school, and gets a little teary-eyed over the family dog passing away, and preens over going to prom with the hot South American foreign exchange student. She confesses she and her friends tried to devise a way to cheat on the SATs but ultimately were too chicken to try it. She mentions she met Aubrey in their freshman English class, which Beca knew, but she didn't know that Aubrey took Chloe to her first college party. She shares that the break up that drove her to leave Atlanta and move to LA was caused by her boyfriend cheating on her. She'd never told Beca what happened, only that it was over, and Beca's partly relieved she didn't know because it would have been hard to stop her from getting on a plane to Atlanta and knock the jerk on his ass.

"And then I invited my best friend over for pizza and beer," she finishes with a tip of her bottle toward Beca in acknowledgment.

Beca feels a little dazzled by it all, or maybe dazed. Some of it she knew, much of it she didn't, but she was thrilled all the same to hear every word of it. "Wow, right up to present day."

"Yep!" Chloe takes a drink and nudges the notebook with her toe. "Go."

"We're not going to unpack any of that?"

"That's not the game. Go."

"So now it's a game?" Beca teases as she flips the page.

"Quiz. Whatever. Go!"

Beca laughs at Chloe's impatience but reads the next question anyway. "If you could wake up tomorrow having gained any one quality or ability, what would it be?"

"Ooh, that's easy! I want to fly."

"That's it? Fly?"

"What's wrong with that?"

"You could choose to, like, have everything you touch turn to gold -"

Chloe's serious when she explains, "Then everything I touch would turn to gold and I would kill anyone I touched."

"Wow, okay, overthinker."

"This is serious, Beca!"

"Okay, okay," Beca laughs. "I'm sorry. You want to fly - cool. I think I'd…" she thinks for a few seconds. "I wish I could heal anyone who's sick by thinking about them."

Chloe seems confused. "Not by touching them?"

"If I had to touch them to heal them, I couldn't heal that many people because I can only be in one place at a time. I'd have to go all over the world, or people would have to, like, take a pilgrimage to me and that's weird. They should be able to call a hotline or send a letter and I read it and just like that," she snaps her fingers, "all better."

"I think that's really beautiful," Chloe says with a gentle smile. "I'm learning a lot about you tonight that I didn't know."

"That seems like it might be the point of this quiz." Beca's not completely sure why Chloe wanted to take this quiz with her. It's been emotionally taxing and with no end goal or points system, and she's struggling to find a point to it - other than the fact that Chloe wanted to do it. "You're up. Lucky number 13."

To be continued...