Chapter 22
A knock on the door in a place like this can never be good.
Unless it’s someone coming to fix the room’s sputtering AC, in which case hallelujah.
Puck had just decided to fetch some ice from the machine outside, but they’ll accept a mechanic instead.
Puck opens the door, bucket in hand, wearing nothing but a tank top and pajama shorts, only to find Mia looking just as slovenly in the kind of sweatshirt that girls only put on in times of extreme duress: Break glass in case of emergency, except instead of a fire ax, it’s an Emory Eagles softball hoodie with a decade’s worth of sad nap slobber baked into it.
Her hair is frizzy, and bent in odd places where yesterday’s hairspray must still be doing its work.
She’s not crying now, but she has been doing some borderline seismic sobbing recently, judging from the lines on her face.
“Fuck,” Puck utters, without thinking. Her being here can only mean one thing.
“You couldn’t find a nicer place to hide?” Mia asks, casting a look of disapproval over Puck’s shoulder into the motel room, likely imagining what sorts of horrors a black light might reveal if she were to shine it on the sheets.
“How did you—” Puck stammers.
“Find My Friends,” Mia explains. “You set it to ‘indefinitely’ the last time you came to New York.”
Puck thought a lot about that visit on the drive: Mia was at the end of her rope with Zander.
Even though she loved her kids at P.S. 178, she was applying for private school jobs so they could afford to survive yet another rent increase.
Puck was stressed about leaving Homewreckers behind, even for a long weekend.
The pair took a subway ride out to Brighton Beach that Saturday and ended up at some random retro roast beef restaurant where they ate a plate of cheese fries.
Puck and Mia laughed about how all that time at Emory they wanted to get out of the bubble, and now that they were well “outside the perimeter,” they missed this: friendship, food, spontaneity, no high stakes or crushing responsibilities.
But Puck forgot about the joy of that impromptu meal the second they got back to set in Atlanta.
“Well, yeah, it’s a small step down from the Athenian,” Puck says, shuffling their feet, unsure what Mia’s intentions are.
The wedding has been called off. That much is obvious.
But why would she follow them here? To make it extra clear that Puck’s meddling was unforgivable?
To go scorched earth? Mia has never been an angry person in their decade plus of friendship, but after the scene at the wedding, Puck doesn’t know what to expect anymore.
They feel like they’ve locked eyes with a stray dog in an alleyway and need to figure out whether they’re in any danger.
And they deserve to get bit, don’t they?
“Good thing I’m just passing through, then,” Mia says. “My mom and I are caravaning down to her place in Atlanta, but when I saw where you were …”
Puck risks completing the thought. “You just had to make a pit stop at the E-Z Inn, huh?”
Mia doesn’t crack a smile and, in truth, Puck wouldn’t want her to. “What happened with the wedding?” they ask, before awkwardly pivoting: “I mean, I’m so sorry, Mia.”
But Mia doesn’t look like she wants to address it in a doorframe.
“Can you make me a drink after you get your ice?” she asks instead, sniffling, then pointing at the empty bucket.
It’s a hopeful indicator. Mia is probably still going to cut Puck out of her life forever, but they can at least be civilized about ending things.
“A French 75, I’m guessing?” Puck quips, realizing from the scolding look that appears on Mia’s face that it’s much too soon for a joke like that. They’ll have to break the tension another way.
“What do you even have in there?” Mia probes, wrinkling her nose at the sight of the cheap bedding and the boxy TV/VCR combo on a faux-wood console with peeling laminate. “Besides bedbugs.”
Puck takes a quick mental inventory of what they have remaining in the QuikTrip bag on the nightstand: some Ritz crackers, a half-eaten pack of beef jerky, and a few energy drinks that they bought for the drive.
“I only have tap water and Monster,” Puck offers. What a menu, and judging from the condition of this motel, only one of those two options is likely to be lead-free.
For half a second, Puck spots the corners of Mia’s mouth being tempted to turn up into a smile—and based on the brief look they exchange, they both know why.
Back at Emory, Monster was Mia’s hangover cure du jour.
She hated the taste of it, but she spent many a Saturday afternoon lying on a blanket on the floor, lights off, slurping down that ungodly mix of caffeine and sugar in an attempt to rally for another night out while Puck read poems aloud for the ambience.
As miserable as those days were, there was something perfect about them, too: Puck holding Mia’s hair back for her in the bathroom with one hand, reading from an Emily Bronte collection with the other.
“The night of storms has past / the sunshine bright and clear.” It was sacred and profane, what could happen in a room alone with someone who really saw you.
And now Puck has broken that bond for good.
Bronte would have something to say about that, too: “Now trust a heart that trusts in you.”
“Well, if I’m going to have Monster, I’ll definitely need ice,” Mia says, and walks past Puck into the room.
There’s no avoiding a big talk now, and although they might dread it, Puck needs it to happen, too.
They need to hear it all out loud again: That they try to fill an absence in themself by interfering with other people’s lives.
That they may have discovered early on that they were gay, and then nonbinary, but that they never really found out who they were after that, not really.
That they have always been nothing but a puppeteer.
Maybe if Mia says all that again, louder this time, it will finally make them change for good.
Puck can leave this motel with the condemnation tattooed on their skin and try to become somebody at long last. They’ll take up ceramics or something.
Isn’t that what people do? They work and then they try to shape something: a mug, a poem, a relationship?
They let Mia disappear into the room behind them and walk past the parked cars, toward the buzzing of the vending machines at the back of the motel.
Is this the last hour they’ll ever spend together?
They wouldn’t blame Mia if she wanted to cut all remaining ties and run far away.
She could start all over in L.A. and talk about her exes and old friends like they’re unspecified villains in some tragic backstory.
The sound of ice crashing into the bucket only underscores the harsh reality of that possibility: Mia being gone for good.
Puck has barely made any new friends while working on Homewreckers.
They didn’t realize until this week just how much they relied on the thought of the Emory crew simply being there, even when they didn’t talk to them frequently at all.
They were a backstop against the threat of an entirely solitary life.
And now Puck will have to … what? Start over?
Go to dinners with Ron and a bunch of glassy-eyed network execs?
Get after-work beers with the PAs? No, even pottery would be better than that.
And in another timeline where Puck didn’t ruin everything, they could try to pick things up with Robyn.
She’s so much more than the workout girlie Puck thought she was at first blush; she has a ferocity that has helped her survive having a brain that betrays her every second she’s awake.
There are flames in her heart that Puck wants to fan in their direction, too.
They want the courage to open up to her the way she opened up to them two nights ago.
But that possibility is foreclosed now too.
Puck takes a deep breath as they reopen the door to their room, bracing themself to look in the eyes of their best—and probably soon to be former—friend.
“Do you want green or blue?” Mia asks from the foot of Puck’s bed, holding up both options.
“I’ll do green,” Puck says, walking over and accepting the can with all the humility of accepting a peace offering, though there’s nothing conciliatory about Mia’s expression. “It really tastes like green, you know?”
Puck is only cracking wise out of discomfort, and Mia is not amused.
She remains eerily quiet as Puck rinses out two glasses, scoops some ice from the bucket, and pours out the neon-colored liquid.
For a moment, they consider sitting next to Mia on the bed but decide to adopt a cross-legged position on the floor in front of her instead.
If they’re going to take a badly deserved tongue- lashing, they shouldn’t be eye level.
Mia inhales sharply as Puck’s butt touches down on a carpet that probably hasn’t been steam cleaned since the seventies.
“Puck, really?” she says, unsettled.
“I’ll shower,” Puck shrugs. “I tried taking one last night but the water has a very fine line between freezing and scalding so I gave up.”
They’re biding time at this point, making chitchat in an attempt to delay their own execution. Small talk about plumbing is better than the obvious topic. But Mia is ready to talk.
“I called it off,” Mia says. “Someone probably told you by now, though.”
Puck’s phone hasn’t made a peep since they left the Athenian, with the exception of a text from Nick asking: Mission accomplished? They deleted it as soon as it appeared on their screen.
“I assumed when you showed up,” Puck clarifies. “No one has said anything to me.”
“Phil heard all the shouting, and even though Robyn tried to get everything back on track, I knew I had to tell Damon—and you know what he said?”
Mia waits for Puck to respond before continuing.