Chapter 7
The bartender wants to know what kind of vodka Puck would like in their sea breeze, but Puck refuses to dignify a question that unnecessary with an answer.
“The clear kind,” they say dismissively.
Puck rarely feels the need to resort to the bottle, but it turns out trying to influence their friends is more anxiety-inducing than corralling a bunch of hot strangers who signed up to generate drama on television.
They made some headway today, but the stakes of all this hit Puck immediately after croquet: If they don’t successfully break up the couples on the show, they can always try again next season with a new set of faces.
But if they don’t wrestle Mia free from Damon, they could lose her for years, maybe even forever.
Yes, their visits are infrequent, but Mia’s still their best friend—or at least Puck thought she was.
The fierceness she once had is already fading.
Puck can’t have that, and their head also hurts from doing this all without a fleet of employees.
They spent the end of the croquet game talking to Mia as much as possible so she didn’t pull Damon away from Lena, and also trying to smooth things over with Robyn, all while fending off fantasies about what the maid of honor looks like underneath her Lycra.
It was confusing. And it was a lot to juggle.
Horniness and deviousness don’t blend well when there’s too much stress in the cauldron too.
When the wedding party disbanded twenty minutes ago, Phil asked for the name of “that randomizer app” because “it might be useful for team-building exercises at the next company retreat,” and that proved to be Puck’s limit.
They lied, rattling off some fake name like “Teamstr, without an ‘e,’” and hurried off to the bar to decompress.
The space itself is welcoming enough. Between the checkered marble tile and the gold columns separating the bar from the rest of the lobby, the impersonal luxury of the Grove, as it’s called, reminds Puck of the Cheesecake Factory at the Lenox Square mall, but made from more expensive stuff than drywall.
The topiaries filling the space between columns are actually real, and they’re apparently thriving under their watering schedule, unlike Puck’s wilting pothos.
If only the bartender were less of a pretentious twit.
Puck would take a five-dollar margarita at the Factory over this interaction any day.
“If you’re really fine with any vodka, I’ll just give you the house brand,” the bartender says, and then turns around to select some glorified paint thinner from a shelf near the floor.
Puck is debating whether they should take the drink back to their room to avoid any further conversation when a familiar alto voice sounds behind them. “Hi.”
They turn to find Mia standing there, alone. “Mind if I join you?” she asks.
Puck pulls the adjacent high-top closer to them and lowers their voice. “Sure, but fair warning: I think the bartender hates me.”
“What did you do?” Mia whispers back a little excitedly as she accepts the seat.
“I don’t know how to act rich,” Puck answers, still in a hushed tone. Then, without thinking, they add, “Can you teach me?”
Mia looks wounded for a moment, but then the bartender clears his throat and they both swivel forward to face him.
He plunks a glass of orangey-pink liquid down on a coaster and announces, “Sea breeze.” Then, voice dripping with disdain, he adds, “With Smirnoff.” His frown disappears as he turns to take Mia’s order. “And what can I get you, miss?”
Puck didn’t get a gendered salutation, which they were grateful for, because they’re not sure which one this man would have picked. Anyone who thinks there are essential differences between vodka brands isn’t likely to have a very fluid conception of gender.
“A French 75, please.” Mia recites her order, and Puck has no idea what that means. Is she ordering an extremely expensive wine? A 1975 vintage?
“Great choice,” the bartender says, with the same condescending tone one might use to compliment a dog who can shake hands. “What gin would you like?”
OK, so it’s a cocktail. Surely Mia doesn’t have an opinion on this question, right? She’s not that far gone. The ritziest thing Puck ever saw her drink back at Emory was a Blue Moon. But she responds right away.
“Aviation.”
Did she go to finishing school before she joined the McLeod family? Or is this Robyn’s doing? Puck wants to comment on it, but the bartender hasn’t left yet. Instead, he’s standing there stroking his chin, as though this drink Mia ordered is some great philosophical paradox that needs unraveling.
“Aviation’s a solid choice,” he says, “but can I actually recommend Empress? The herbaceousness of the spirit would cut through the sweetness of the lemon and champagne beautifully—and it’s a really unique purple color.”
Putting legal poison in your body shouldn’t be this complicated. Whoever coined the term “mixology” deserves to be drowned in Everclear. But instead of dismissing the bartender and sticking by her original choice, Mia smiles.
“That’d be great. Thanks for the recommendation.”
Who is this docile young woman, and what has she done with Puck’s tiny but feisty roommate?
Did it really only take Mia a year of living among the McLeods to learn how to stomach this kind of treatment?
Being told what to drink, what to wear, and how to behave?
Puck takes a sip of their sea breeze in an attempt to wash down the bitterness rising within them, and maybe they should have asked for top-shelf vodka, because it tastes terrible, like cranberry-flavored nail polish remover.
“So, Robyn’s an interesting girl,” Puck says after their throat recovers, putting just enough spin on the adjective to suggest they find her infuriating.
“Oh, Puck, you know I would have asked you to do her job,” Mia says. “But with you being nonbinary, I figured you wouldn’t want to go that far—and besides you’ve been so busy with your show, and things haven’t been the same since, well, you know …”
It’s the closest Mia has come to acknowledging that getting together with Damon has put distance in their friendship, but she walks back from the edge of saying it aloud, and Puck is glad for it. They don’t need to go there quite yet. Not until they’ve had more to drink.
“… and I just really needed someone nearby to help me plan, is all,” Mia finishes, opting for a less hurtful conclusion to her sentence.
Puck had watched the meticulous blueprints for this wedding come together online.
Mia’s Pinterest activity has been off the charts.
Over the last year, she made nine different moodboards for the flowers alone: three apiece for the cocktail hour, the ceremony, and the reception.
Puck wonders now how much of that was actually Robyn’s doing.
“Robyn lives in Raleigh too?” Puck asks, and at this point they’re also just trying to gauge how easy it would be to visit her for a weekend.
This astringent sea breeze is doing nothing to abate the contradictory blend of annoyance and almost cartoonish lust they’ve felt ever since they paired themself with Robyn by mistake.
A long-distance hate-fuck buddy could go a long way toward alleviating their Atlanta loneliness; it’d introduce some variety into Puck’s routine at least.
“Yes, we met at a barre class after I moved in with Damon,” Mia says.
“I forgot to bring grippy socks, so Robyn loaned me a pair. After class, we exchanged numbers and she sent me a calendar invite for brunch the next day with a photo of the menu attached and her recommendations circled. That’s just how she is. ”
Puck is trying to decide which detail from that story they find the most obnoxious when the bartender returns with Mia’s deep purple French 75.
He carefully sets it down on a coaster, wraps a spiralized lemon peel around one side of the rim, and then looks up at Mia, expecting praise.
Where was Puck’s garnish? Do nonbinary people not deserve citrus?
“Wow,” Mia says, trying to appease him. “It looks gorgeous.”
But instead of leaving to tend to another customer, he just stands there, waiting for Mia to take a sip, and Puck can tell even she is starting to lose her patience with this whole song and dance now.
That’s refreshing, at least. Mia isn’t a lost cause yet.
But she still needs some help dealing with this bartender, so Puck does what they have always done best: intervene.
“Hey, uh, barkeep?” they pipe up, sounding as boorish as possible. “I think you forgot the, uh, lime wedge for my sea breeze here.”
The bartender looks annoyed but walks to the other end of the bar where Puck spotted the garnish tray earlier. Only then can Mia enjoy a sip without having to please an audience.
“Thanks for that,” she says. “He’s a little much, isn’t he?”
“A little? I want to turn his face a ‘unique purple color.’”
Mia nearly spits out her drink but manages to swallow her sip before returning to the subject at hand. “Anyway, Puck, I know Robyn’s a lot, but she’s been a lifeline for me. I hope you like her. Please be nice.”
“I will,” Puck says, and Mia has no clue just how nice they hope to be.
The bartender returns to deliver a small white bowl with a lime wedge sitting in it, and Puck pointedly refuses eye contact to discourage him from staying.
“So you do barre now?” they ask Mia. “Is that part of a wedding workout plan or something?”
They know they’re being a little shady, but Puck genuinely wants to know the extent of Mia’s acculturation to aspirational Carolina womanhood. In college, Mia’s idea of a workout was walking up the stairs to the computer lab on the third floor of the student center.
“I started working out in New York,” Mia says. “We’re not twenty-one anymore, you know.”