Chapter 13
Many women who look like Mia make for nightmarish drunks.
Millions of petite blondes have demons living inside them who only need to taste the unholy combination of vodka and cranberry in order to emerge.
But Mia has always been adorably sentimental when alcohol is in her system, and tonight is no exception.
In the limo back to the hotel, Mia went a little too hard on the champagne, on top of the drinks she had at the tapas bar, so she spent the whole ride telling everyone how much she appreciated them.
By the time the car pulled up beneath the Athenian portico, it was clear she wouldn’t be able to get up to her room unassisted.
In a somewhat surprising gesture of trust, Robyn asked Puck to “help Mia upstairs, please.” It’s a role that would have naturally fallen to them back in the day, but now it has to be delegated.
Even as they tend to Mia now, Puck is thinking about how often they used to provide this support unbidden, and about what changed.
Was it just the distance? Damon? Something else?
And why did Mia drink so much on the way back?
Was she rattled by what happened on the bus ride, suppressing it all day until she got in the car home?
She’s not so far gone that she can’t walk, but Puck takes her hand in the elevator anyway to keep her steady.
“Did you have … funds today, Buck?” Mia slurs.
“Funds?” Puck asks.
“Fun!” Mia shouts, almost earsplittingly loud in the confined space, and then giggles at herself.
“Yes, I had a lot of fun,” Puck tells her, slowly, like they’re responding to a child, wondering whether Mia would even remember it tomorrow if they told her about showering with Robyn after hot yoga.
“Good, I wanted you to have fun,” Mia says, her eyes welling up. “I just … I just … I miss you a lot, you know? Like a lot.”
Puck isn’t sure how to respond to this sudden sincerity.
There’s almost no point putting extra care into their words given Mia’s current state, but they want nothing more than to match her earnestness with their own.
They miss Mia, too. Like, a lot. They wish they could have lived two lives after college: one in Atlanta climbing the ranks at work, and one up in New York being a stabilizing influence on Mia.
A little human cloning would’ve been all they needed to preserve their best friendship—and maybe the turbulence in Mia’s love life could have been averted, too.
Puck was always a load-bearing beam for her relationship with Zander, and look at what’s happening in their absence: a doomed wedding with a heartbroken ex and a new set of friends who don’t seem to know the real her.
“Fourth floor” is all Puck ends up saying, right before the elevator doors slide open. “This is us, honey.”
They tug Mia into the hallway, which amuses her. “Weeee!”
She careens out of the elevator. OK, maybe Mia is drunker than she seemed at first. And Puck is realizing they’re not sure where she sleeps. The sign at the elevator bank has two arrows pointing in opposite directions: To the left is 400–450, to the right 450–499.
“What’s your room number, Mia?” Puck asks her. But instead of responding, Mia pulls them toward a random chair by a side table in the elevator bank, sits down a little too fast for Puck’s liking, and starts to laugh.
“You’re not going to leave it, Puck,” she says, then catches her mistake. “Be-lieve it.”
“Believe what?”
“My room number,” Mia says, switching on a dime from uncontrollable laughing to faux solemnity. “It’s so creepy. It’s 468”—and then she adds a ghastly “Oooooh” for effect.
She pauses as though waiting for Puck to react. Are those numbers supposed to mean something? They’re even, but that’s all that comes to mind.
“I’m lost,” Puck admits, deciding that if they’re going to wait for Mia to sober up some more, they might as well sit down on the carpet.
“It’s Zan’s old dorm number,” Mia gravely intones. “Room 468.”
That’s all the assurance Puck needs to know they’re on the right track. Her recall, all these years later, of the placard on the door of Zander’s dorm is telling. Her bringing it up now, two days from walking down the aisle with another man? It’s damning for Damon.
“Really? That’s wild,” Puck says flatly, not really selling it, but knowing they don’t have to bother with the correct tone right now. The information is useful, but the coincidence itself isn’t all that interesting.
And then Mia starts to weep. “He’ll be OK, Puck?” she asks, tears dribbling onto her chin. “Zander? You think he’ll be OK?”
If Puck were feeling mischievous, they’d tug on Mia’s heartstrings a little, appealing to the misplaced guilt just below the surface.
They’d tell her that Zander might fall apart without her, that he could relapse and lose his job and end up working in fast food before too long.
But there are still rules of engagement that Puck has to abide by—a Geneva convention for stopping weddings that forbids them from stooping quite that low—and besides, Mia is already doing their work for them.
She’s still crying in the chair, and Puck softens at the sight.
“He’s already OK, Mia,” Puck assures her. “Zander’s doing really good. I’ve been talking with him a lot these past couple days. He’s been promoted at the restaurant twice, and he’s so proud of being sober. He wants to open his own place one day if things keep going well.”
Even though Puck is telling the truth for once, Mia doesn’t like the answer. She loses control, dropping her face into her hands and sobbing even harder. “Why … why couldn’t he have been doing good with me?” she chokes out.
Puck’s heart sinks. They know they’re answering more for their own benefit than for Mia’s at this point—in the morning, this entire conversation will probably be a blur for her.
But she wants Zander, that’s for certain.
And he can be “doing good” with her, if Mia can just do one brave thing—once she’s back in her right mind.
But pointless though it may be, Puck is willing to hear themself talk for a bit, if only to pass the time while Mia takes a breather.
“I think sometimes people need to lose everything in order to fix their lives,” Puck says, shifting out of a cross-legged position and pulling their knees toward their chest. “You wouldn’t believe how many people who come on Homewreckers didn’t give a fuck about their partners until they got cheated on.
Once everything’s ruined, they suddenly become invested in making it work again. ”
Puck looks up to check on Mia before staring back down at the crimson carpet. “People like Zander have to assess the wreckage of their actions before they can rebuild,” they continue. “It’s just how he is, Mia.”
“Rock bottom,” Mia says, nodding, which suggests she’s talked with him at least a bit about AA. Have they had conversations here that Puck hasn’t witnessed firsthand? If so, good. They need as much tailwind as they can get headed into tomorrow.
“Rock bottom,” Puck repeats, like they’re confirming to a child that she pronounced a word correctly.
“He had a cute bottom, too, Puck,” Mia says, chuckling as she wipes away her tears, the emotional shifts happening so fast now, they’re starting to give Puck a headache.
Puck allows themself one guilty pleasure of a pointed statement, Geneva convention be damned: “He still has a cute bottom, Mia. It’s almost enough to make me glad skinny jeans came back.”
Mia laughs again, but this time her eyes start closing as she does, and while she’s thin as a rail and Puck would like to think they have strong arms, they definitely can’t hoist an unconscious woman down this eternal hallway to Room 468.
“No, no, come on,” they say, pushing up off the floor and grabbing Mia by her shoulders. “Let’s go to bed, sleepyhead.”
Mia jolts back awake, looking at Puck with a trusting gaze that stings because of how long it’s been since they’ve seen it, but also because they have to keep operating behind her back for her own good.
“And Damon and Lena?” Mia asks, her mind leaping between subjects. “What the fuck?”
Mia’s in no state to be a reliable source but Puck can’t resist a little recon.
“Yeah, what did he say about that?”
Mia’s speech is broken but Puck tries to follow the through line: “He called me at the shopping place. The barricade?”
“Arcade,” Puck says, helping her find the word.
“He said it was so long”—Mia swallows down what sounds like a particularly perilous burp—“ago. Didn’t think it mattered. Awkward enough with Zan here. Two exes is too many, isn’t it?”
This girl needs to sleep. But file this under the reasons this whole ceremony needs to go up in smoke: Two days before the wedding, Mia still doesn’t know key parts of her fiancé’s backstory, Damon’s insecure about one of his oldest friendships, and neither of them are being fully honest with each other.
Puck kneels down, drapes one of Mia’s arms around their shoulder, and stands her up, walking her down the hall until she gains her own momentum. Bit by bit, they work their way to Room 468.
“OK, where’s your key card?” Puck asks when they finally reach her door.
“Dress … pocket,” Mia says. “I love that this dress has sprockets.”
It’s the sort of banal observation that Puck might lovingly make fun of at a different time—the verbal equivalent of someone hanging wall art in their vacation home that says “Life’s a Beach.
” But Mia’s feeling too tender now. Instead, they pull the key card out of her front pocket and open the door.