In the blink of an eye.

Telling him

"Do you have Jesse's number for me?" Beca asked while sitting at the dining table in Chloe's apartment. She had spent the past two days here, not wanting to face her parents. Chloe swallowed her bite of pancakes and looked at Beca a little unsure, "Why do need his number?"

"There's something I need to talk to him about." Chloe picked up her phone and scrolled through her contacts. She sent Jesse's info to Beca and put her phone down on the table again. "Thank you."

Chloe went to work after their breakfast, which left Beca alone in her apartment. Beca decided to take the opportunity to call Jesse. She didn't have to wait long until he answered the phone, "This is Jesse Swanson."

"Hey, Jesse. It's Beca."

"Beca.", he stated and the brunette was unsure about his tone.

"Are you still in town or are you back in Spokane already?" Beca questioned nervously, hoping he was still in town.

"I'm leaving tomorrow." He sounded conflicted.

"Jesse, can you come over? I'm at Chloe's. I need to tell you something." Beca felt like she was being too vague, but she didn't want him to find out over the phone. She had to do this in a way that she could control.

"Uh, okay. I need to sort out a few things, but I could be there around 1pm if that works for you?" Jesse offered. Beca thought about it for a moment. If he was here at 1pm, that would give them an hour before Chloe came home from work. Beca didn't want Chloe interrupting their talk, but figured she didn't really have a choice since Jesse would be leaving tomorrow. "That'll work.", she retorted quickly. "Thanks, Jesse. See you then."

"Yeah. Bye." He hung up and the tiny brunette was left alone with her thoughts again. It was almost 11am, so she had around two hours to practice how she would tell him. While she was practicing the conversation in her head once again, she heard a knock on the door. A quick look at the clock on the wall told her, that her time was up. She stood behind the door with the knob in her hand and took one last deep breath, before she opened it. "Jesse, hey. Please, come in."

Jesse sat down at the dining table and looked at Beca expectantly. "Can I get you something? Water? A Coke?"

"No, thanks. I'm good." Jesse answered in a friendly tone. Too friendly when it came to Beca.

He is awfully nice, considering I kicked him out after breaking to him that he has a child. Beca thought.

"So, uh, what did you want to talk about?" Jesse asked and Beca noticed he was picking the skin of his fingers. She sat down across from him. She had practiced her sentences at least a couple hundred times but now that Jesse was actually sitting across from her, it was like her mind was wiped clean.

"I want you to know the truth." Beca started.

"The truth about what?" Jesse asked, clearly confused.

"About your daughter." Beca answered nervously. "I know I should've told you when we saw each other last time, but-"

"I get it, Bec. It's fine." Jesse interrupted and took Beca's hand on the table. He probably did it to occupy his hands, more than he did to soothe Beca's nerves. "Tell me about her." He was longing for more information on his daughter.

Beca sighed. She wanted to tell him, but it was hard talking about it. "She's the most beautiful little girl. She has these blonde little curls on her head that bounce when she's excited, she loves to draw and help with my music. She-" For a moment it felt like everything was normal. Just a mother talking about her child, but Beca quickly remembered that nothing was normal in her family.

"You're still into music?" Jesse asked, reminiscing on how Beca used to create the most unique mashups all the time.

"Yeah. It's still my passion. I still want to be a producer."

"Go for it, Bec. You were so talented!" Jesse encouraged. "What's her name?"

"Her name is Georgia. Everyone just calls her Gigi." Beca said with a proud glow in her eyes.

"That's.." Jesse was speechless, but Beca knew what he wanted to say. "It's the name you told me you would choose for your little girl, if we ever had kids. I loved you so much back then, Jesse."

"You know I would've stayed if had had a choice, right?" Beca knew that it probably hadn't been his decision to leave, but more his parents'. They had both only been fourteen. A nod was Beca's only answer. "If I had known you were pregnant, I-"

"I know, Jesse. It's in the past. Let's not talk about it anymore." Beca interrupted. It hurt too much to think about what it would've been like if Jesse had stayed.

"Can I meet her?" Jesse changed the subject to his daughter again.

"No, Jesse. You can't meet her." Beca said with a trembling voice, knowing she had to break his heart.

"Why not?" Jesse withdrew his hands from Beca's.

"Please don't make me say it." Beca pleaded, her voice barely more than a whisper. Tears welled up in her eyes and she looked down at the table. Once she felt like she could control her voice again, she looked up at Jesse, who was still waiting on an explanation why he couldn't meet his daughter. "You can't meet her because she-" Beca closed her eyes and took a deep breath to brace herself. "-because she's dead, Jesse." Beca couldn't stop her tears from falling anymore. Big drops soon covered the table in front of her. Beca sniffled and tried to explain further, "She was diagnosed with cancer 11 months ago. We tried radiation, then chemo, but she lost the battle..."

Jesse closed his eyes and swallowed hard, "Bec, I'm so sorry. I had no idea what you've been through."

"How could you?" Beca questioned. She wasn't blaming Jesse so much as her parents.

Jesse knew it was a rhetorical question. His guilt about leaving had haunted him for a long time after moving to Spokane.

Beca pulled out her phone and searched for something. "Do you want to see pictures?", she offered and held her phone out for Jesse.

"May I?" Jesse asked while making a swiping gesture. Beca nodded and Jesse kept scrolling through pictures and videos of his daughter. With every new picture he saw, his smile got wider. "God, she's beautiful." Jesse whispered and looked at Beca intensely. "She has your eyes."

Jesse focused on Beca's phone again and stumbled across a video, in which Beca and Gigi were singing and dancing to one of her mixes. His heart got heavy looking at it. He could only imagine what it would've been like if he had been there. Would they have danced all together? Would they have done other silly things?

"You need to know one more thing, Jesse." Beca said more serious again. "She never knew."

Jesse put down Beca's phone on the table. "What do you mean?"

"She never knew about you- or me." Beca looked at Jesse attentively. She wanted to make sure he could take it. "My parents made everyone think that Gigi was my little sister instead of my daughter. They wanted to preserve my reputation. That's what they told me. They did it to preserve their own reputation more than anything. I realized that eventually, but at the time I was just a teenager, who didn't know any better. I was just relieved that my parents didn't force me to get an abortion."

"But how?" Jesse looked confused and shocked at the same time. "The others must've noticed you were pregnant eventually."

"I didn't really have a bump." Beca said and pulled up a picture on her phone. "This is me 8 months pregnant. Nobody knew."

This conversation really didn't do Jesse any good. It had been hard to get over Beca in the first place. Now that he saw, what he could've had with her, his old feelings partly resurfaced. For a moment they both looked at the picture on Beca's phone in the middle of the table. When they both looked into each other's eyes at the same time, Jesse leaned in and kissed Beca. After the initial second of his lips touching hers, she pulled away. Beca covered her mouth with her hand in shock. When she turned her head away from the table for a second, she saw Chloe walking through the door.