Chapter 11 #2
At that Puck swears they hear Robyn mutter “Jesus Christ” under her breath before reluctantly raising her glass.
Puck drains half their mimosa in one sip, then immediately looks toward the front of the bus at Zander, gauging his reaction to all this.
He’s stone-faced, nursing a Liquid Death, rightfully unamused.
It must be hard to watch your ex go through with this; it must be unbearable to watch it happen on a party bus.
Yesterday, when they first hatched their plan, Puck felt more neutral on the question of Zander and Mia actually getting back together so long as the wedding itself was stopped.
Their relationship was combustible all the way to the end, so it seems unlikely that Zander’s sobriety alone could repair it.
But then again, that was the root of their problems, wasn’t it?
Still, it’s hard to overcome the compounded resentment that comes from years of cleaning up after someone else’s mess.
Even if Mia could forgive him, could she really forget all the emotional energy she spent along the way?
All those nights she worried he might not come home at all?
And yet, if they could get through that reckoning, Puck thinks, how beautiful would it be that they grew up together, moved past a challenge that could have destroyed them, and then grew old?
They could have all the familiarity borne of time with all the cohesion of surviving a shared trauma—or Mia could have a loveless marriage full of lie-flat airplane seats.
Great dick or Delta One, take your pick.
Puck doesn’t want to think too many steps ahead, especially when they still need to get “M” and “Z” alone together for the first time, but maybe there’s a world where they do actually work.
Puck shouldn’t waste any more time nudging things along.
And thanks to the gender-divided itinerary, this ride may be their only chance today to talk to everyone.
They need to get a temperature check on Zander, investigate why Damon and Lena are so buddy-buddy now, and find out how Mia’s feeling about her ex-boyfriend getting clean.
But before Puck can move next to Zander, Robyn takes advantage of the post-toast silence to issue an announcement of her own.
“Hi, friends!” she calls out. “I want us all to have fun today, but you should have seen on your itineraries that we’re going to do a little icebreaker first.”
Puck really needs to start reading these papers more closely; they’ve been glazing over the subheadings and ignoring the concerning number of bullet points below them.
An icebreaker is going to eat up the time they badly need.
This week is already going by faster than Puck thought it would, especially with the bridesmaids and groomsmen splitting up so often.
“What were you thinking, Robyn?” Mia asks over the light chatter that’s broken out on the bus, directing the group to respect her maid of honor’s plan.
“Two Truths and a Lie,” Robyn says, and Puck has to stop themself from groaning.
This game won’t reveal anything—just quirky, outlandish- sounding factoids that don’t have anything to do with who people actually are.
Puck doesn’t need to know whose cousin played for the Lakers, or who saw Timothée Chalamet on vacation in Paris.
No, if they’re going to have to spend the first stretch of this ride participating in a conversation starter, Puck at least needs to be able to extract some valuable information.
“What about Truth or Drink?” Puck chimes in, knowing that Robyn will hate the suggestion, but not caring. They pissed her off yesterday, and she still came over, so fuck it. “We’ve got drinks on the bus, and besides, it cuts right to the chase …”
Puck lets the suggestion trail off into awkward silence, but they can bear it—and they do want to make this seem like more of a suggestion than a command, even if the outcome is the same.
Puck knows they’ll all go along with it eventually, just like everyone followed orders at croquet.
What they can’t do, though, is look at Robyn, for fear her gaze might literally light them on fire.
If last night was any indication, they’re going to be sexually tormented into apologizing for this later, probably with a bar of soap stuck in their mouth or something.
Even so, they can’t let today’s best opportunity go to waste.
“Can I just do the Truth part?” Zander asks from the front of the bus, holding up his garish green-and-yellow seltzer can.
Fuck. Puck admittedly hadn’t taken Zander into consideration when they proposed the change, but he seems open to the idea. Does he want to hear some unadulterated truth from Mia too?
“Except for Zander, we’ve all got to use something harder for this than mimosas,” Phil says, already fumbling around in the shelves above the bar for liquor—and Puck now sees how that ferry disaster might have happened.
The idea already has momentum behind it, but there’s one hurdle left to clear.
Puck finally braves a look at Robyn: She isn’t thrilled.
Her mouth is tightly shut. But Puck also sees a flicker of curiosity in her eyes, like she’s trying to figure out what they could possibly be up to.
What’s wrong, after all, with telling the truth?
“Robyn? Would that be OK with you?” Mia checks in.
Robyn casts one last suspicious glance at Puck, and appears to weigh the suggestion in her mind, but accedes. “Sure,” she says, curtly, making her displeasure known.
Red Solo cups are quickly filled with an unidentified clear liquor and passed down the aisle, with everybody but Zander taking one.
“How should we do this, Puck?” Mia asks, setting her empty mimosa flute in one of the cupholders built into the bench seats.
Puck doesn’t want to overcomplicate things, but they do need people—a few specific people—to be more honest than they otherwise might be in this setting.
The longer this game goes on, the better.
“Well, I think everyone should get the chance to ask one question that everyone has to answer,” they say. “And we can go around clockwise.”
Robyn, of course, raises an objection. “Won’t that take forever? The drive is only an hour long.”
“Yeah, and won’t we get wasted?” Peter asks.
But Puck is ready with their rejoinders. “Not if the questions are quick,” they say, “and not if everyone tells the truth.” And then they issue the death blow: “Why don’t you start, Robyn?”
“Fine,” Robyn says, swirling her red cup discontentedly, “what if everyone just says where they first met Mia and Damon?”
Does she not know how to play this game? Who would be uncomfortable sharing that?
“Do you want to go first?” Puck prompts, more to needle her than anything else.
“Sure,” Robyn says, speeding through it. “I met Mia at barre, and I met Damon a couple of weeks later at brunch.”
Peter, sitting to Robyn’s right, chuckles a bit at the question.
“I met Damon at home, obviously. Mom says I called him ‘an ugly potato’ when she brought him back from the hospital, so Damon hasn’t changed much, I guess.
And I think I first met Mia when Mom, Dad, and I came down for his graduation. ”
Damon picks up the figurative baton. “Hard to say when I met myself,” he says, smiling at the stupidity of it in a way that even Puck finds endearing, a flash of his more boyish demeanor slipping through.
“But I met Mia through Zander. We were all at Emory and she came over while we were gaming.” He leaves unmentioned the fact that Zander and Mia dated for most of their adult lives.
Puck largely tunes out the rest of the group’s answers while they try to calculate a question of their own—something a little risqué and potentially revealing that could still pass for being socially acceptable.
They’re glad there are a few members of the wedding party sitting between Robyn and themself, because this exercise needs some time to pick up steam before Puck injects their question.
When Willa asks everyone to share “the most embarrassing fact” about themselves, Puck wants to kiss her on the mouth, because that’s exactly how this game needs to unfold, even if the answers—like Anya’s “I still sleep with a teddy bear,” or Tom’s “I peed myself in eighth grade”—are fairly lackluster.
Both Willa and Francis opt for the Solo cup on that one, and Puck probably should too, if they were strictly following the rules.
The most embarrassing thing they could admit to is that they Photoshopped a picture of their head onto James Dean’s body in seventh grade to see how it would feel, but instead they opt for a less vulnerable—but still queer—admission: “My mom wanted to know why Rachel Weisz was my phone wallpaper when I was a teenager, and I told her it was because she was my ‘style icon’ and not that I was a huge lesbian,” which elicits a few nervous laughs from the group.
“What was the reason for your last breakup?” Anya asks when her turn arrives, but she immediately second-guesses her choice. “Oh God, I shouldn’t have asked that, because even I don’t want to answer it,” she adds, tilting back her Solo cup in shame.
Tom blames his last breakup on a move, and then it’s Zander’s turn. He had no trouble being honest in a small group yesterday, but Puck wonders how he’ll respond to this prompt in front of everyone.
“For anyone who doesn’t already know, my last breakup was with Mia,” Zander says, shooting her an apologetic glance.
“And the reason we broke up has a lot to do with why I’m drinking a ‘severed lime’ sparkling water,” he adds, looking down at his Liquid Death and reading the macabre flavor name off the can.
“Oh, Zan, you don’t have to—” Mia hits a note of tenderness that’s all the more surprising because of how public it is. Damon’s right there.