Chapter 21
The worst part of fleeing the Athenian in disgrace is still having to wait for the valet to fetch your wheels.
It’s so humiliating that Puck wants to march off to whatever hidden dirt lot all the cars are kept in themself and hot-wire their own ride.
But instead, they stand at the top of the front stairs, in shock, waiting for some kid who probably can’t even legally rent a car to bring back their Subaru.
Life’s little mundanities, it turns out, don’t come to a halt when you’ve fucked up in the worst way imaginable.
Puck still had to pack their bags, bring their key card to the front desk, and say that their stay was “great, thanks” in an extended stupor, all before they could stand here on the edge of escaping this horror show of their own creation.
Thirteen years of friendship with Mia are over in a flash.
Their reputation with anyone who cares about them—or used to—is in tatters.
And then there’s Robyn. Losing her shouldn’t hurt most of all because Puck has only known her for a week, but it does.
Last night, Puck felt uncertain whether Robyn could fit in to their routines at home; now, facing the prospect of an entire life without ever seeing her again feels impossible.
Puck wants to lie down and curl up into a ball right here and let everyone coming and going step over them. But they only need to keep it together long enough to climb into the privacy of their car, which will ideally happen before—
“Puck? What are you doing here? Are you leaving?”
It’s Zander, in his suit and bow tie, appearing from the sliding doors behind Puck.
The only comfort is that he looks just as gutted as Puck does, and they can’t blame him.
How do you go from having your ex kiss you like she’s trying to suck out your soul to watching her marry your friend the next morning?
Maybe it’s because they’ve spent the last hour in pained silence as they packed and checked out, or maybe it’s seeing Zander so downtrodden too, but Puck can’t hold it together anymore.
They all but fall into Zander for a hug.
“I fucked up, Zan,” they say, letting out a sob into his chest.
“Back up … what’s going on?” Zander asks, wrapping his arms around them and giving them an extremely gender-affirming pat on the back. Even in crisis, he can make Puck feel seen for exactly who they are. But wait: Does he not know yet?
They linger for a moment before letting the hug end, accepting that Zander is going to see them cry, as if they have any choice at this point. “I lied to everyone, Zan. Including you.”
“Hey, it’s OK,” he says. “I don’t know what happened but let’s talk it out. I’m leaving too, OK?”
That’s when Puck notices the rolling suitcase behind Zander, aluminum handle extended.
Has he been too busy packing to hear? Puck had assumed that everyone in the wedding party would have caught wind of what happened by now, but Robyn might have instituted a strict lockdown.
If anyone could keep word from getting out, it’d be her.
“You’re leaving?” Puck asks him.
“Yeah, I, uh, kissed Mia last night,” he says, looking at Puck, expecting shock and getting none.
“Then this morning,” he continues, “when I found her and asked if she still wanted to go through with this, she just cried and ran away. So I figured it’d be better for everyone if I wasn’t here. Why are you out here?”
Puck realizes this is the first time they’ll say it aloud, and it feels shameful to even form the words in their mind.
If they had just looked in a mirror earlier this week and recited the plan to themself, maybe they would have realized how wild it sounded, and then they could have prevented all this unnecessary anguish.
But instead they have to tell Zander everything while daubing the tears from their eyes.
“I already know that you kissed Mia, Zan, because I made it happen. I’ve been planning all of this.”
Zander looks confused, taking a step backward while he reassesses what’s happening. “I’m the one who kissed her. What do you mean you ‘made it happen’?”
“I mean I’m the reason you happened to find Mia alone in the Grove when I asked you to fetch me a club soda.
I’m the reason you both ended up at the pond.
I’m the reason you got to talk to her so much this week,” Puck says.
“You think Damon just conveniently wasn’t around?
It was me, the producer, producing. I distracted him, with Lena’s whole glow-up situation. ”
“Dude, that’s kind of messed up,” Zander says, understating things but thankfully not rebuking Puck as forcefully as all the bridesmaids just did upstairs. “Did you make Lena hot, too? How long have you been working on this?”
“No, no,” Puck clarifies. “Her makeover wasn’t me. I just saw the potential there.”
Zander lets out a long whistle. “So you’ve been engineering everything?”
“Yes.”
“That day in the lobby with the cucumber water?”
“Yes.”
“And the game on the bus.”
“I can’t take full credit, but yes.”
“The scavenger hunt?”
“That was me.”
“Christ, Puck, did you forget you weren’t at work?”
It’s a fair question. For Puck, Homewreckers has felt like serving in the military: Even when you’re on leave, you’re still technically in it.
They never understood how other people their age could just “clock out.” Puck can never forget they aren’t at work because work is an extension of who they are and what they do: not just understanding what makes people tick but actually making them tick.
But can that really be who Puck is? What kind of inner purpose requires betraying your friends?
“I guess so,” Puck finally responds, giving up on thinking about it. They’re well past their limit on looking inward, and suffering the consequences for it.
Zander shakes his head disapprovingly. “Why’d you do it, dude?” he asks.
Puck wishes they had a good answer. When the idea first occurred to them it seemed a bit devious but ultimately beneficial.
But it was never even that, was it? Something as simple as staging the croquet teams was still a bridge too far.
At some point, securing the outcome they wanted became more important than their friends’ feelings, even as they learned about their post-college lives in more depth than they ever had before.
What’s wrong with Puck that they could hear these people in some of their most private moments and still decide that the plan was the most important thing?
Has Homewreckers really made them blind to the impact of their actions?
Maybe if they had been forced to follow one cast for seven years, and witnessed the repercussions of the show beyond a few heated reunion episodes, they’d have behaved differently—but even then, Puck’s not so sure, and that’s cause for concern.
“I don’t know, Zan,” they say, unable to express any of that just yet. “I guess I just thought she was making a mistake.”
“I did too, but I didn’t fake an entire scavenger hunt,” he says. “How did you even do that?”
“Friend at work.”
Zander sighs, his mood visibly shifting into some sort of nihilistic bemusement, the disappointment he feels toward Puck seemingly blunted by a fresh wave of his own heartache. “Well, fuck, man. And they all found out?”
They nod.
“I mean, Puck, what you did was wrong. Like, really wrong. And they can be mad at you—hell, I could be mad at you if I wanted to be. But you didn’t make her kiss me. You didn’t shove our heads together. Unless you had some kind of wire-and-pulley system I wasn’t seeing.”
He’s offering a way out of the shame, and Puck wishes they could take it.
But they can’t. Everything that was said to them upstairs, as much as it hurt, needs time to sink in.
It would be so easy to blame everyone else for what they did this week, even though Puck crafted all the conditions for them to do it.
Then they could return to Homewreckers with a clear conscience believing that their old friends had overreacted to some mild antics.
But the truth is they didn’t cross a line; they leaped straight over it.
They were so busy trying to ensure everyone made the “right” choices this week because they didn’t want to examine their own: the choice to value work above all else, the choice to sleep their way through all of Feeld instead of looking for someone to love, the choice to derive meaning in life from emotionally devastating other people, all for an Emmy that isn’t even theirs.
At least, Mia, Zander, and the rest of them were trying to build something, even if they were failing along the way.
What has Puck been working toward? Record-breaking ratings?
They’ve been afraid to grow up and they made it everyone else’s problem.
So, no, they can’t take the escape hatch.
“I appreciate what you’re trying to do,” Puck says. “But frankly, I deserve to be run out of town by an angry mob. I’m just lucky they’re not tarring and feathering me.”
“Well, at least everyone will know why you left,” Zander says. He runs a hand through his hair, trying to pass it off as an idle gesture, but Puck can see the agony painted across his sweet face.
“I’m sorry, Zan,” they tell him, but no words will ever suffice for what he must be going through.
Zander shakes his head. “You know, I talk a lot about AA,” he says. “But my parents also started going to Al-Anon, and you know what they teach you there?”
Just yesterday, Puck would have been tired of more sober-speak, but now they feel lucky Zander is even talking to them. “What?”
“You can’t control someone else’s addiction.”
Puck doesn’t agree with what Mia is doing but they resent the comparison. “Are you saying that Mia is addicted to Damon?”
“I’m saying you’re addicted to controlling people,” Zander replies.
Puck feels the comment land in their gut. It’s heavy—the sort of observation that will take months to digest. And it’s a reminder that Zander is indeed chewing on what Puck did, even if he isn’t going to consign them to pariah status quite yet.
“I really do regret what I did, Zan,” they say, and it’s true, though they don’t want to admit how deeply his words have cut them.
They thought they were mostly intervening because Mia was making a critical error, but by the end, they had convinced themself they were acting on his behalf, too.
They’ve seen this past week how much he’s changed.
He deserves to be with someone he loves as much as Mia—but apparently that won’t actually be Mia, who is presumably getting her makeup redone right now.
“You know, Puck, if I had wanted you to be my wingman, I would have asked,” Zander says, speaking earnestly now, man to man.
Then, a flash of recognition. “You were working me from the very beginning, weren’t you?
What did you say to me that first day over breakfast?
You’re here, right? Something like that. ”
“I swear I hadn’t started plotting yet,” Puck says, then catches themself. “But it was right after that.”
“Well, you shouldn’t have encouraged me. It’s clear she wants him now.”
Zander turns around, pretending to look back into the hotel through the sliding doors, but it’s obvious he’s just hiding his face.
“Oh, Zan,” Puck says.
They wish they had the moral standing to comfort him, because right now he’s experiencing the rawest, simplest, and most brutal feeling of all: rejection.
It’s a punch to the throat that robs you of the breath you’d spend on anything else.
Zander has been in love with Mia since they were practically kids and now he probably still has the taste of her on his lips as he flees her wedding.
Out of instinct, Puck opens their mouth again to attempt a reassuring word, or to try to cheer him up with a joke.
They could say something true but ill-timed, like a reminder that he’s definitely the “hottest guy on the J train.” That his future wife will probably suck his dick every night because she’ll never have to order DoorDash again.
But before they can add that to the hundreds of other mistakes they’ve already made, the valet pulls up in Puck’s stuttering Subaru.
“That’s you,” Zander says, turning back around, eyes wet, and it reads like a command to leave.
But it’s also an accidental description of Puck.
This fucking car is them: It’s broken, and it doesn’t know when to quit.
Without a hug, only a bleary-eyed look from Zander, they get in and drive.
The cabin gets overwhelmingly hot on sweltering days like this, but they keep driving.
They stop at a Waffle House for the world’s saddest patty melt, and then they drive.
They sit in a park somewhere in North Georgia and cry and drive some more.
And finally, when they’re too tired, too weepy, and too sweaty to keep going, they pull off at a motel to sleep.
It’s the world’s shittiest roadside inn with a sign that still advertises rooms with Jacuzzis and HBO. It’s exactly what they deserve tonight.