Chapter 11 #3
But Zander interrupts her. “Sorry, Mia, I don’t want to make it awkward. I would have picked ‘drink,’ except, well, I kind of can’t.”
The mood in the bus gets heavy for a moment, which Puck can’t have. There are still three-quarters of the circle left to go. It’s Zander himself who rescues the vibe. “I can chug the rest of this, though,” he announces, then cranes his neck back and starts draining the seltzer.
Puck starts a semi-ironic chant of “chug, chug, chug,” and the rest of the bus joins in after the first round, clapping until Zander hoists up the empty can. The group laughs and cheers before settling back down.
By the time it’s their turn to answer, though, Puck’s mood is decidedly less ebullient. Their last breakup is not a topic they want to discuss, especially in front of Robyn, who does seem very interested in their answer indeed, judging from her intent gaze and the mischievous curl of her lips.
They could just lie. Or Puck could say that Samantha broke up with them because she thought being a reality TV producer was “a slippery slope to fascism,” garnering some extra sympathy by saying that she did it over text.
The Emory crew know all about Puck’s work—and have side-eyed it for years—and they’ll probably never see the rest of these people after this week, so they shouldn’t give a damn what anyone thinks.
But then there’s Robyn, sitting across from them with that dumb Cheshire grin.
Pissing her off is fun but, oh God, it seems they actually care how she perceives them.
They must, or something would have come out of their mouth by now.
But why? She’s been nothing but mean to them—publicly, at least, and privately, too.
And it’s not like there’s any world in which Robyn wants to date them, right?
Puck hates themself for even entertaining the thought—for even wanting to hope—but there’s something about her that compels a fascination that can’t be satisfied in a week alone.
They shouldn’t feel this. They don’t want to feel this. And yet.
“Well?” Robyn nudges them.
Puck locks eyes with her, lifts up their cup, and burns their throat with a sip of vodka.
“That bad, huh?” Robyn asks, and the group laughs, but she just smiles, her expression bemused and knowing at the same time.
Puck is still reeling during the next couple of answers, only focusing again when Mia’s turn arrives.
Everyone is now painfully aware, if there ever were any ignorant stragglers, that Zander was Mia’s last breakup, so she should have no trouble answering.
He broke the door down and all she needs to do is step through it.
She could easily defer to Zander’s explanation and let the game continue.
So why does she look like she’s struggling to decide what to do, pouting ever so slightly?
“I think we’ve probably heard enough about my last breakup,” she says, and takes a sip of her drink, a brief hush falling over the group at even the slightest possibility of the bride being sad.
Francis, though, fails to respect the mood. “If I talk about my ex, I’ll want to drink anyway,” he announces, “so I might as well cut out the middleman.” The rest of the line drinks, too—even Robyn, seemingly out of a desire to be done with the subject more than anything else.
But Puck’s not going to ease up now that it’s time to ask their question. If anything, the pump is primed for even more forced vulnerability.
“How many people on this bus have you kissed?” they ask.
Across the aisle, Robyn’s eyes widen and her nostrils flare.
She clearly wants to keep their recent tryst a secret.
And she can’t be happy that another question will resurface the subject of Mia and Zander’s relationship.
But as far as Puck’s concerned, Mia should be thinking about all the times she’s kissed Zander, and how much better that must have been than anything she’s ever done with Damon.
“Puck!” Lena shouts, scandalized by the question.
“It’ll help paint a picture,” they explain, grabbing on to Anya’s knee for stability while the bus takes a turn. “I mean, we all know about Mia and Zander, but surely some of you have dated each other, right? I’m still getting to know everyone.”
“Well then, you go first,” Robyn prompts, but the venom in her voice makes it clear she definitely doesn’t want to be included in Puck’s total count.
“I’m only at one,” Puck says. Robyn looks briefly panicked, but it’s not her they’re counting.
“That time when I was drunk?” Mia asks, and half a dozen pairs of eyebrows raise in unison, some out of surprise; others, Puck is sure, out of titillation.
“You’ll have to be more specific!” Puck jokes back.
“It happened more than once?” Damon asks, as his brother elbows him in the ribs.
“We never made out,” Puck clarifies. “It was just the occasional drunken ‘I love you so much, bestie’ smooch, you know? No one else has ever done that?”
“No, I can’t say I have,” Phil says with a derisive laugh—an unsurprising interjection coming from him. It’s just shy of homophobic, but still awkward enough to bring the conversation grinding to a brief halt until beautiful, perfect Zander resuscitates it.
“I don’t know, you should try kissing the homies goodnight sometime,” he says, and coming from someone with his inherent charisma, it’d be enough to turn any straight man bisexual.
To Puck’s left, Tom answers, “I guess I’m at zero.”
“Francis and I dated for six months in high school,” Willa adds. “So I’ve got one. Two if you count Phil, which I don’t.”
“Well, fuck you, too,” Phil says, toeing the line between vindictive and playful. Clearly there’s history there, but Puck can unearth that another time.
“Never again,” Willa emphasizes.
Only then does Puck notice that Lena, sitting across from Willa at the back of the bus, looks especially flushed.
She’s only taken one sip in the entire game, for the breakup question, so alcohol alone can’t be responsible for the tomato-red hue of her skin.
“We have to actually say?” she asks. Is she trembling, too?
“Well, yeah, that’s the whole point,” Puck confirms, their curiosity growing. “Unless you want to drink again.”
“Yeah, but we kind of know you’ve kissed at least one person now,” Anya says, drawing even more attention to Lena’s nervousness.
Whose name could Lena possibly be nervous to utter?
Is she gay now? Did Lena have a lesbian fling with one of the bridesmaids that no one knows about?
Puck admittedly didn’t even consider Miss Goody Two-Shoes when posing this question to the group.
Lena probably requires notarized consent before kissing someone.
“Yeah, I mean, I’m at one …” Lena says, and everyone—especially the Emory crew—looks at each other.
“Who, Lena?” Puck asks, unable to contain their curiosity, and not wanting to.
“I only had to say the number, right?” Lena stalls.
But then Damon of all people speaks up: “OK, fine. Lena and I dated for three months during senior year.”
“You what?!” Puck can’t stop themself.
“Yeah, um, what?!” Mia echoes. She’s not quite as exasperated as Puck, but close enough.
The non-Emory contingent shifts their gaze around the bus nervously, recognizing that this history precedes their entry into Mia and Damon’s lives.
The bride looks dumbfounded, but also increasingly betrayed the longer the silence lasts.
College was nine years ago now, but still, Mia’s husband-to-be probably should have told her about this …
relationship? Fling? A dare gone wrong? Sensing Mia’s confusion, Lena tries to defuse the situation, even though it’s Damon who owes her an explanation.
“It was nothing,” she says. “I think he was mostly just bored.”
Damon doesn’t endorse Lena’s theory, but he does deign to offer some context for his near decade of silence: “I had ignored her crush on me for so long that I thought you guys would make fun of me if you found out we were actually dating.” But judging from the regret that flashes across his face, he has barely enough social adroitness to realize how that could come across.
“Not that it would be embarrassing to date Lena. Now, I mean. Well, not then, either. But it was just that I never … fuck, you know what I mean.”
Damon is going red now, the anxious nerd reemerging from beneath the preppy veneer. Across the aisle, Lena can’t stand to see him feeling so self-conscious.
“It’s fine,” she assures him, but then she leans forward to look down the bus bench at Mia. “Is it fine? I’m sorry, I guess I always assumed he’d told you. Sometimes I even forget it happened.”
Puck doubts that very much. Lena has probably written her own fan fiction about the failed relationship.
The last two days, she’s been looking at Damon with that same hopeless, forlorn expression she had back in college, even if she’s trying to convince herself she doesn’t need him.
But she did have him once, briefly, which must make it that much harder to let go for good.
Mia stays silent, weighing how to respond as Lena’s expression grows more pleading by the second.
Instead, Zander interrupts. “I guess there were a couple months where you kind of fell off the face of the earth, Damon. Did you two hook up over spring break or something? I remember knocking on your door the week after we got back and I swore I could hear you inside, but you didn’t come.”
Except he probably did come, Puck thinks. All over Lena. How could they have missed this? Puck prides themself on their perceptiveness but an entire three months of Lena and Damon having sex somehow eluded them. They should be forced to resign from Homewreckers for not having noticed.
“Yeah, it was right before graduation,” Damon confirms.
“Jeez, Damon, leave some for the rest of us,” Peter says, somehow finding the most vile way possible to try to lighten the mood. Meanwhile, Mia has finally figured out what she wants to say.
“So who broke up with who?” she asks, her face contorted into a chipper smile, but Puck can see she’s processing the painful surprise.
“Mia, we don’t need to talk about this now,” Robyn says, trying to intervene.
“No, it’s fine,” Mia insists, regaining mastery over her expression, any shred of embarrassment or pain wiped away. “It was a long time ago now. I do just want to know. For the record. Before I marry this … well, this Lothario, apparently. Jeez.”
“I broke up with him after I moved to Raleigh,” Lena says, no longer able to meet Mia’s gaze directly, dropping her head apologetically.
She broke up with him? Puck is shocked for the second time in as many minutes.
“I could tell he wasn’t as into me as I was into him, and he was too scared to hurt my feelings and break up with me, so I did it for him.
But I liked North Carolina, so I stayed, and I guess I never looked back. ”
The group is pin-drop quiet as Lena waxes introspective in front of all of them.
The party bus is not living up to its name.
But this reveal is, as a Homewreckers sizzle reel might promise, a “total game-changer.” Puck can see Mia across the bus reassessing Lena, mentally refiling her friend as an antagonist, far from the former wallflower who didn’t know how to use a makeup brush.
Some healthy competition could be good for Puck’s plan—but they also don’t want Lena to be too visible on Mia’s radar.
The “Stay away from my man” part of Mia’s lizard brain should remain deactivated for now.
Better for her to keep reminiscing about the good old days with Zander instead.
On the other hand, Damon might be even more susceptible to Lena than Puck originally thought.
Could Lena be more than just a distraction?
Is there a contingency plan that involves her and Damon getting caught by Mia instead?
The mood in the bus is still heavy, but Puck’s mind is skittering through an array of hypothetical scenarios, trying to assess whether they should take a different tack.
No, better to stay the course. Mia and Zander have the chemistry and the history to make this plan work. That’s what matters.
Lena finally tilts her head back up, becoming even more keenly aware that the entire wedding party has been hanging on her words. “Well, look at me doing therapy,” she says, and then attempts her version of a joke: “Whose idea was this anyway?”
“Puck’s,” Robyn answers, her narrowed eyes landing back on them. “It was Puck’s.”