Chapter 9 #2
Puck scans Mia’s face for a reaction but her eyes betray nothing.
Upon closer inspection, though, she does seem to be keeping an especially tight grip on her cucumber water.
Intellectually, of course, Mia must know that Zander is available to be pursued, but it’s another thing to watch your bridesmaid make a bid for your ex.
“Probably a breakfast sandwich,” Zander finally answers, flashing a smile that could make an entire sorority pass out.
“What kind of breakfast sandwich?”
Oh, she’s down bad. Puck can see that Willa’s thinking about all the scenarios in which Zander might make her breakfast. Meanwhile, Zander is clearly ramping up to some borderline pornographic description.
“Well, I’m from Jersey,” he says, scooting forward in his seat, “so it’s gotta be Taylor ham.
Sear it on the cooktop, fry the eggs in the fat while you toast a kaiser roll.
Add a couple slices of American cheese on top at the last minute, just long enough for it to melt, and boom.
That’s heaven between buns right there.”
Puck takes note of Zander’s word choice, and while they appreciate how good he is at commanding a woman’s attention, they do need him to appeal to one particular woman. Fortunately, though, Willa notices that Mia is also here.
“Did he ever make that for you, Mia?” she asks, then immediately apologizes. “I mean, sorry if that’s an awkward question. I just know you two used to date.”
The statement catches Mia mid-sip and she looks startled for a moment before collecting herself.
“No, no, it’s fine,” she says, after swallowing.
“When we first moved to New York, he’d make one of those for me when he got home from the restaurant in the mornings.
I’d be waking up for school. He did that for a while. ”
“What happened?” Willa asks. “Too much of a good thing?”
Willa is doing the Lord’s work right now, asking questions that a surreptitious Puck no longer can. Maybe they should add her first initial to the notepad stashed in their nightstand.
Mia and Zander eye each other, silently debating whether to answer, and if so, who should. Sensing the tension, Willa tries to defuse the situation, saying, “Sorry, sorry, I’m prying. I’ve been told it’s a problem.”
But Zander jumps on the conversational grenade with a quickness that surprises even Puck.
“What happened is I started drinking even more than I was already drinking, which was a lot, and then I started mixing pills in there too, and that started making me really drowsy, so I tried to counteract it with cocaine before I got home, but then I’d be on the comedown just as I walked in the door.
So yeah, the breakfast sandwich was the first of many casualties.
” Zander takes a breath, then gulps down the rest of his cucumber water.
“Oh I didn’t know—” Willa stammers, “I mean, Mia didn’t mention …”
“Zan, I—” Mia starts to say, taken aback by her ex’s outpouring of honesty.
But Zander stops her. “It’s OK. If I were Mia, I’d want to forget all about it too. I wasn’t very much fun to live with. But for what it’s worth, this cucumber water is the hardest thing I’ve had since Christmas, so there’s that.”
Puck suspected some sort of mention of his sobriety was coming, and they’ve been hoping to find out how much Mia knows about it.
First, her eyebrows lift in genuine excitement.
“Really, Zan?” she asks. And then there’s a glimpse of another emotion—a sadness behind Mia’s own flashbulb of a smile.
Part of her must be imagining an alternate present where Zander had gotten sober while she was still with him.
Perfect. But Mia contains the tinge of regret before anyone spots it.
“Yeah, I mean, I’m not out of the woods yet,” Zander responds.
“In this case, literally,” Puck chimes in, gesturing toward the forested hills outside the lobby windows, sweeping their free arm around them in an exaggerated circle. “Eh?”
There’s a painful silence.
“Puck, that was bad,” Mia says. “Even for you.”
“We like bad jokes in AA,” Zander adds. “There’s an awful one about nonalcoholic beer and incest. But even we have our limits.”
“Wait, what’s the joke?” Mia asks.
“It’s too dirty for your virgin ears,” Zander fires back.
“Well, tell it to me, then,” Puck insists. “I can take it.”
“Yeah, but you’re banned from this conversation now,” Mia says.
There’s a rightness to this: Mia and Zander ganging up on Puck to tease them for being a showy try-hard; Puck watching the two of them flirt, even though Zander could probably make the case that his sly retort about Mia’s “virgin ears” was barely acceptable for two people with a long romantic history.
Puck doesn’t feel like they’re in the Athenian anymore: No, they’re back in the old dorm room, the natural order restored. This is how it should be.
Willa shifts in her chair, perhaps realizing that Mia can still command Zander’s full attention if she wants to, but that’s fine; the bridesmaid has served her purpose.
If this were Homewreckers, Puck could basically order Willa to be dragged away with a vaudeville hook so that Mia and Zander could have the chance to start going at it already.
But this is, sadly, a real wedding in the middle of the mountains with no contracts, cameras, or cash incentives at their disposal.
Instead, Puck counts it as a small victory that the exes are even talking to each other. If Ron were here, he’d want something explosive; for now, Puck will have to settle for quietly monumental. Real life can’t move on reality TV’s timetable, much as Puck wishes it could.