Chapter 18
This shouldn’t have to be so suspenseful.
As Puck slinks through the Athenian hallways, paranoid they’ll run into Zander even though they gave him a five-minute head start to get downstairs, they think back to the croquet match.
Should they have paired Mia with Zander that first day?
Their regrets and second-guesses could fill a book at this point: They could have asked an even more provocative question on the party bus.
They could have sent Damon a different clue that said, “Go to the fishing pond, you big dum-dum.” The plan could have just been a single step this whole time: Get the two hot people to make out as quickly as possible, subtlety be damned.
But Puck also wants to give themself credit: This Hail Mary pass would have no chance of working if they hadn’t run good plays up to this point. And tonight can still work, with enough luck.
The stairs are safer than the elevator, Puck decides, though either way there’s a chance of collision.
God, this is so much more slapdash than Homewreckers, but then again, they’re flying solo here, all while sleeping with the enemy and taking long absences from the front lines.
And just like Homewreckers, so long as it works, they can still take full credit for victory.
No one has to know how much went wrong along the way.
Not that they’ll ever tell anyone about this.
No, this secret goes to Mia’s grave. Or Puck’s. Whichever gets dug first.
They tiptoe out of the stairwell toward the Grove, carefully scanning for familiar faces, but as they hoped, the place is deserted: Everyone is already preparing for their beauty sleep.
And there’s no sign of the moms, which means they must have obeyed Robyn’s cutoff time to the second, but Mia is nowhere to be found, either.
Only a handful of hotel employees remain, picking at various tasks: swapping out the flowers on the lobby tables, polishing the marble floor, emptying the water dispenser next to the check-in desk—all the little odds and ends that add up to make the Athenian feel like a pristine oasis.
If Puck hadn’t been so stressed this past week, they could have tried to actually appreciate some of this luxury; as it stands, the hotel has felt like the Homewreckers set, just with nicer furnishings and a lot more walking in between.
At the sound of Zander’s voice, Puck creeps carefully toward the row of indoor topiaries cordoning the Grove off from their side of the Athenian lobby.
As expected, he’s at the bar, presumably ordering Puck’s drink.
They check their phone: 10:02 p.m., almost exactly when they wanted him to arrive.
But where is Mia? Did she already go upstairs?
Does Puck need to text her and ask her to get them a club soda, too, and then apologize for sending both of them to do the same thing? How should they salvage this?
“Zan?” Puck hears Mia call out from the other side of the lobby.
Phew. Mia’s steps quicken when she notices where her ex is standing—and even peering through the bushes, Puck clocks the look of concern on her face.
“You’re not drinking, are you?” she asks.
Zander turns to face her, seemingly wounded by the accusation. “You really think I’d slip that easy?”
“No, I just—”
The bartender returns with a glass, a pair of lime wedges floating atop the ice. “Your club soda, sir.”
“It’s for Puck,” Zander reveals. “They said their stomach is doing cartwheels.”
“Sorry, I just got worried,” Mia says, quieter now that she’s close to him.
“I’ve just been so happy all week that you’ve stopped drinking, you know?
I’m really glad we got to talk more today.
” She casts a sideways glance at a stool, as though suggesting to Zander that she might want to continue that conversation.
Puck doesn’t make a peep, but internally, their heart is shouting, Yes, yes, yes!
They don’t know what became of their talk by the pond, but it doesn’t matter, because whatever happened, Mia is conflicted enough now to resume it.
“That’s not how I think of it,” Zander says, somewhat cryptically, picking up on Mia’s cue and sliding a stool out for her.
“Huh?” Mia asks as she takes the seat.
“That I ‘stopped drinking,’” he says. “Yes, that’s literally what happened, but that’s not how I want to remember that milestone. It’s not when I stopped, it’s when I started. It’s when the rest of my life began.”
“That’s such an accomplishment, Zan,” Mia says, and Puck can understand why she’d be impressed. In college, liquor evaporated the second Zander got within a few feet of it—and Mia could certainly keep up, too.
“Some people can never go near a bar again, and there are still some nights when I know I shouldn’t,” he says.
“But I’ve got so much going for me right now that, if anything, I feel addicted to the things sobriety is unlocking for me.
Turns out sous viding lamb chops is a lot easier when you’re not loaded. ”
There’s a pause as Mia waves away the approaching bartender, who dutifully retreats to the back of the house. “And if the restaurant goes away?” she asks him.
Mia is worried about Zander, which means she’s invested.
Puck spots a familiar smile on his face at the question: It’s the smile that means Mia has found the crux of a matter—her superpower as a friend, and, presumably, as a partner.
She’s talking to him like old times, but their mouths need to do more than just talk sometime soon.
“Yeah, I’ve been speaking to my sponsor about that,” Zander replies, a little wistfully.
“He warned me that if I pin my sobriety to success, to something external, it increases the risk of a relapse. It has to be internal”—he pauses to tap an index finger against his chest, and Mia follows the motion—“I have to change here, too.”
“And are you? You know, changing … there?” She reaches out a finger to tap Zander’s chest and Puck has to resist cheering from the topiary at the intimacy of the touch. Mia is teetering dangerously close to the edge now.
Before he speaks, Zander swivels his stool directly toward Mia, obscuring his face from Puck’s view, but they can tell from his first word that something inside him is melting.
“Yeah, I think I am,” he says, in a hushed tone. “Because even if everything crumbles and I’m right back to some prep station, chopping scallions for two hours a day, I won’t ever forget how this feels.”
“How what feels?” Mia asks, her voice breaking, and she’s just fishing now, but Puck can’t blame her.
“Sitting here,” Zander says. “Talking with you.”
Mia smiles, but almost simultaneously, Puck spots the telltale glisten of a tear in her eye.
The former lovers are talking so quietly now, almost whispering, that Puck has to hold their breath to avoid detection.
“Why wasn’t this enough for you before, Zander?
” Mia asks, pleading, the question scratching her throat on its way out.
“Remember when we went up to that cabin in Vermont and got snowed in? You said it was so nice to just talk, and to not be able to drink even if you wanted to?”
“We did a lot of stuff in that cabin,” Zander says, and Mia shoves him, playfully, but with an edge to it, and almost forcefully enough to knock him off balance.
“Be serious, Zan,” she says.
The old Zander would keep joking. But this Zander isn’t afraid to look inward.
“Mia, I tried to say this earlier, but I can’t tell you how sorry I am for hurting you,” he says, his voice throaty.
“By the time I realized the full force of what I had done, and how terrible I was to you, you were somewhere else. I wanted to make amends—I need to make amends—but I thought you might think I was just trying to win you back. Or that … he would see it that way anyway. And I do want you, but even if I didn’t, I would still want to make it right. ”
It occurs to Puck that their club soda is going flat on the bar by now.
If their stomach were actually in knots, they’d be pissed about the delay.
But this is good. The more time Zander and Mia spend together, the more likely it’ll end with their tongues down each other’s throats.
They have enough faith left in their chemistry for that—though they don’t love Damon being invoked in this conversation, if not by name.
“I wish you had stopped drinking earlier” is all Mia says.
There’s a pause. Puck stops breathing for a few seconds, even through their nose. Zander could probably julienne the tension in the air.
“I wish I had too,” he says, sounding almost hoarse now, choking out the words.
“Every. Single. Fucking. Day. But it had to be for me. I loved you then, and fuck it, Mia, I love you now, even if you’re marrying someone else tomorrow.
Because when I say that I never want to forget how this feels, I mean how it feels for me to even be able to say how I feel.
I didn’t have that when we were together, but I have it now, and I never want to let it go. ”
Puck still can’t see Zander’s face, but those gleams of moisture in the corners of Mia’s eyes have become full-on waterfalls now.
She leans toward Zander, placing her hands on his shoulders for stability as she slides to the edge of her seat.
And then she’s kissing him, not how Puck used to see her make out with him in their dorm room in college, all sloppy horniness with no precision, but tenderly and purposefully, like she doesn’t just want to kiss him, but that she wants him to be kissed—to really feel the fullness of her feelings for him.
“I don’t want you to let it go, either,” she says, when she finally pulls away. Zander stands up, but not to walk away; instead, he steps closer and pulls her into a heaving embrace.
This is the moment when Puck would turn to Ron with that knowing “I told you so” grin, but as it stands, all they have is the satisfaction of knowing their friend is being pulled back from the brink of a bad decision.
And this has to be enough. There’s no way she can marry Damon now.
This scene, even viewed from cracks between shrubbery, has an air of finality to it: This is how it was always supposed to end.
Which only makes it more distressing for that profound correctness to be interrupted by a ding. Puck’s. Fucking. Cell phone.
How could they have forgotten to put it on silent?
“Was that your phone?” Mia asks Zander, ending the embrace and suddenly looking very guilty.
“No, I thought it was yours,” he says, and then they both start to look around the empty lobby with guilty faces, sending Puck scurrying away in a flash.
“I better get this up to Puck anyway” is the last thing they hear Zander say as they dash into the elevator bank. That must mean he didn’t spot them, right? But if they want to keep it that way, they have to get upstairs fast—and not by the route Zander will take.
Only behind the door to the stairwell does Puck take half a second to check their phone. It’s Lena: Hey Puck, Robyn is up here looking for you. She says she needs to chat about your suit for tomorrow but doesn’t have your number. Is it cool if I connect you two?
Always the ethicist, Lena had to check first instead of giving Robyn the fucking phone number.
Now Puck has to beat Zander to their room, accept a club soda from him, and field Robyn’s apparent booty call, all within the next ten minutes.
But this is exactly the kind of high-pressure situation Puck was built for.
They shift into their highest Homewreckers gear.
First, they somehow draft a text back to Lena while taking the stairs two at a time: Tell her to come to my room in 15.
They fire it off before they’ve even reached the second floor.
Then, they gun it up the rest of the stairs, breaking into a sweat by the third landing, but a little clamminess will help with their excuse.
They’re supposed to look nauseous, right?
Puck hopes they’ve timed this right so that Robyn doesn’t arrive before Zander has left their room; someone as fastidious as she is might interpret fifteen minutes as five.
Bursting out onto the fourth-floor landing, Puck hears the elevator counter ding in advance of the doors opening.
Zander. They break into a sprint, whipping around the corner just before they hear the elevator open in the distance behind them.
Mercifully, they can use this next stretch to try to catch their breath.
It’s not like Zander’s going to run the club soda down the hall.
But they still need to make it to Room 444 free and clear.
Each door they pass is agony. Robyn, or another member of the wedding party, could poke their head out at any minute, and Zander’s not far enough behind that he wouldn’t overhear Puck being up and about—in which case, why would he have had to fetch club soda for them?
Finally, Puck reaches their room. They let the door close onto the security latch behind them, take a deep breath, then basically leap under the covers, rumpling them up for effect as they prepare to win the Academy Award for best portrayal of a person with a mild illness.
Ten seconds later, there’s a knock at the door. Phew.
“Zan, is that you?” Puck croaks, but their heart is still racing from the thin margin of error. “Come in.”
Zander walks in with the now-flat glass of club soda. Puck can still spot a bit of Mia’s lipstick on his chin.
“One club soda,” Zander announces as he sets the glass down on the coaster waiting on Puck’s nightstand.
“You’re a lifesaver,” they say, throwing in a groan for good measure. “I hope it wasn’t too much trouble.”
“It wasn’t,” Zander says with a smile. “I really needed the walk.”