Chapter 19 #2
It’s been hard for Puck to keep their hands off Robyn long enough for them to get into the weeds of their profession, but she knows as much as anyone else at this wedding about what they do—and that includes the Emory crew.
“Yeah,” Puck responds, and as they do, a new tier of dimmer stars come into focus, a hundred dots of light they couldn’t notice until their pupils had dilated more. “Every day, I have to make sure people get into some sort of trouble.”
“And they wouldn’t get into trouble without you?”
“Not enough for the show to be worth watching,” Puck says, repeating the same line they’ve always used when asked why reality shows need producers.
For the first time in a while, though, they wonder whether they should interrogate their own pat answer.
Why do they do what they do? And why do people like to watch it?
So many things have become axiomatic to Puck over the years they’ve spent throwing themself into this work: Drama is millennia older than Shakespeare, as they like to pontificate, and it serves a vital function in human society, even if it takes new, sometimes trashy forms. Maybe 90 Day Fiancé isn’t The Iliad, and yet it kind of is.
But none of that argumentation feels like it matters out here with Robyn.
“Well, I certainly couldn’t do what you do,” Robyn says, then quickly points at a spot in the night sky. “Oh! There!”
It’s already too late to follow whatever meteor Robyn just noticed.
And Puck is too busy swallowing down the offense of her remark.
Why couldn’t Robyn do what they do? She certainly seems to be organized enough to be a producer.
So, is she just like Samantha, then? Does she have qualms about how Puck earns a paycheck?
Puck has gotten good about not caring when queer people judge them, but this?
This actually stings, as much as Puck wishes it didn’t.
“Why not?” they prod. “If your wedding planning is anything to go by, I think you’d be better at my job than I am.”
“The wedding is me using my powers for good …” Robyn says, trailing off at the end as she realizes how that observation could be interpreted.
So it is the reason Puck suspected: moral condemnation, as though everyone else who works in marketing or banking or whatever Robyn’s desk job entails is so pure.
“Oh, and I’m using my powers for evil?” Puck’s question comes out just on the wrong side of the thin line between wounded and defensive.
“No, no, no, I don’t mean it like that,” Robyn says in a surprising moment of contrition. “I just mean it would stress me out.”
“But don’t you thrive on that stuff? You gave people fridge magnets of the bachelorette party pics, for God’s sake. I’m not sure how that’s even possible. Do you have a 3D printer in your room? And why don’t we ever fuck in your room, anyway?”
Puck is trying to cover up how hurt they sound with a flurry of jokes.
But none of them appear to have any effect.
In fact, Robyn stays silent long enough that Puck turns away from the sky to make sure she’s awake.
Her eyes are open, but she doesn’t seem like she’s tracking meteors anymore—more like her gaze is glued to some imaginary point in the middle distance.
“I know we tease each other a lot, and we’ve been having fun, but can I tell you something real?” she asks, still looking up.
Puck immediately answers “yes,” curious about what could have precipitated such a long pause. Robyn remains a mystery even after all the intimate things they’ve done together. But maybe the bedroom is where she feels strong, and this is where she can actually take off her armor.
“I’ve battled with OCD my entire life, in case it wasn’t obvious,” she says. “The way I am about the wedding? It’s not some quirk; it’s clinical.”
Puck hates that they have to stifle the immediate urge to banter—to say something like “I just chalked it up to maid of honor syndrome.” Compassion used to come more readily to them, and they do feel it for Robyn now, but it’s unsettling that it’s not their first instinct.
Have they spent too long thinking about how to turn people’s vulnerabilities into entertainment for them to be able to just …
listen? Homewreckers has changed them, they’re realizing, and in ways that require active effort to counteract.
“I used to think that if things didn’t go a certain way, or follow a certain track, that something terrible would happen to me or the people I love,” Robyn continues.
“Like if I took the ‘wrong’ road home from work, I thought I’d get in a car accident and die—or kill somebody.
A kid, even. Sometimes the anxiety would get so overpowering that I’d pull over and wait hours for the traffic to stop and the roads to empty before driving home. ”
“Jesus,” Puck utters involuntarily.
“I tried Jesus,” Robyn says. “And then exercise. And then staying home all the time after my job went fully remote. The only thing that helped was a ton of therapy.”
Robyn has always seemed so, well, unstoppable is the word that comes to mind.
It’s hard for Puck to picture her feeling overwhelmed by anything, even though they know it’s possible, even though they know brains love to misbehave.
“How did the therapy help?” Puck prompts, before finding the tact to add, “If you feel comfortable sharing …”
“Not in the way I thought it would,” Robyn says. “I thought she’d help me figure out how to get rid of those thoughts, but instead, she told me I’d probably never stop thinking that way, at least not entirely.”
Puck catches their first meteor streaking across the sky, tracing a bright line at the edge of their vision, but now is not the time to point it out.
Something much more beautiful is happening beside them: a night-blooming flower, opening up.
Puck realizes how rare it must be for Robyn to really talk to someone.
This whole time, beneath all her bluster, she’s been dealing with a deep wound.
Of course she has. Everyone is, whether or not they show it.
Robyn inhales sharply, then lets out the breath, before continuing, her eyes still fixed on a spot somewhere between earth and heaven.
“She told me to accept the outcome I was dreading instead of trying to outthink it. Turns out you’re a lot less worried about trying not to die if you tell yourself you’re absolutely going to die, if that makes any sense. ”
Puck tries to decipher the strategy. “So you’re walking around all the time telling yourself that terrible things are definitely going to happen?”
“Yeah, I guess I am,” Robyn responds, a hitch catching in her throat as she admits it. “But it’s better than believing I can prevent those things with sheer willpower, you know? The fear is easier to deal with if you don’t try to stop yourself from feeling it in the first place.”
It’s hard for Puck to imagine someone with so much drive having airplane crashes and brain-eating bacteria playing in her mind on a constant loop—not because they doubt it happens, but because it seems so cosmically unfair that it does.
Puck doesn’t enjoy life’s pleasures half as much as Robyn seems to, so wouldn’t it be better for the universe to saddle them with all that anxiety instead?
Let Robyn watch the stars without worrying about one falling on her head.
If Puck were to be as honest as Robyn is being right now, they’d have to admit that they, too, are white-knuckling life.
They’re trying to stay one step ahead of that nagging, unresolved feeling that they never really grew up.
That Homewreckers froze their development at “hot masc on campus” and they haven’t learned how to move past it.
That they’re too scared of what life might look like outside of an all-consuming routine of work and play that leaves little room for introspection.
What would it feel like to say some of that to Robyn now? Puck opens their mouth, searching for the words, then they think twice. Holding hands was hard enough.
By morning, the wedding will be called off, Puck is sure.
That kiss Mia and Zander shared at the bar, however brief, is not the kind that can be easily forgotten.
Then, after the dust settles, Puck can pick up their friendship with Mia again.
They’ll try to be more caring, and less of a work drone.
They’ll make plans to visit Mia wherever she decides to move.
They’ll be an ear for her as she recovers from the shock of all this.
Things will get better, starting tomorrow, Puck assures themself, but only half believing their own promise.
Fifty, friendless, and alone still feels like their most likely future.
But what if Robyn were in that future instead?
What if they could be who she needed them to be?
Picking up twice as much toilet paper on the way home from work wouldn’t be so bad if every so often, even just a couple times a year, there were moments like this: feeling absolute trust from someone who doesn’t easily give it out.
Puck reaches out to take Robyn’s hand again and squeezes it, not caring anymore about how needy it makes them feel. Goddamn it, they like this girl.
“I’m so sorry, Robyn” is all Puck manages to say.
“There’s nothing to be sorry about,” she says. “I just wanted you to know why I’m like … this.”
But as they notice another brilliant vertex of light cut across the sky, a distressing thought occurs to Puck. One they almost don’t want to vocalize. “Do you feel that way about the wedding?” they ask. “Like if it doesn’t go well, something bad will happen?”
The possibility puts them in a terrible position.
So far, Robyn has likely been operating under the assumption that Puck doesn’t approve of Damon, and is just very indelicate about it.
But Puck wasn’t counting on actually caring about her grand aspirations for a picture-perfect “Appalachian luxury chic experience” wedding, as they once heard her refer to it.
Robyn would be livid if she knew anything about Puck’s plan, and after what she shared tonight, they don’t want to devastate her.
“No, it’s not like that,” Robyn clarifies. “I have a good handle on my management strategies. I just meant that I still know how to pay attention to little details, without all the catastrophic thinking. Like I said, using my powers for good.”
“For Mia,” Puck says, the guilt like acid in their throat.
“For Mia.”
Puck focuses on the feeling of Robyn’s palm in their own.
On the incredibly basic but unimaginably powerful gesture of giving another person your hand.
They lean over and kiss Robyn on the cheek, unsure what to say and feeling a creeping uncertainty about what they have already done. But it’s too late now.
“For the record, I take back what I said about the Emory crew,” Robyn says. “You’re not all bad.”
She’s referring to the group as a whole, but Puck can’t help but feel like the statement is just about them. They’re not all bad, right? They hope not.
Puck lies with Robyn on the lawn for another hour, still watching the sky at first. But then, as the novelty of watching rocks sear through the atmosphere starts to wear off, Puck’s gaze returns to earth.
Now that their eyes have fully adjusted, and thousands more stars have come into focus, the rounded mountains surrounding the Athenian look like gently arcing swatches of darkness cut out of an otherwise dazzling canvas of light.
It’s as though the peaks don’t want to encroach on the night sky, clinging low to the ground not because of how eroded they’ve become over an eon, but out of respect for the display above.
They’re merely a frame for the picture, and they know it.
It is ennobling to call them mountains when the Appalachians could easily be mistaken for hills.
Maybe falling for someone is less like long division, Puck decides, and more like respecting these ancient, fading peaks: You feel something for someone that you call “love” until it becomes true.