Chapter 23
For the first time Puck can remember, they’re having trouble keeping the names of all the Homewreckers contestants straight.
It took a long time to acquire the skill, with plenty of ad hoc mnemonic devices invented along the way: Rebecca Smith looks like a lesbian.
Well, the book Rebecca was famously queer and Smith is full of lesbians, so Rebecca Smith.
That one turned out to be true, oddly enough.
Rebecca came out shortly after her season aired—the first of a surprising number of Homewreckers women with wandering boyfriends who turned out to be disciples of Sappho anyway.
Now, though, as Puck stands in the video village, they’re having trouble remembering whether Micah’s girlfriend is named Alexa or Allegra.
Virtual assistant or allergy medication?
It doesn’t matter what she’s called; Puck just has to send this woman off somewhere so they can talk to Jess Sandusky alone.
“Micah’s over at the gazebo,” Puck tells Alexallegra, then adds, “He was looking for you, I think.”
It’s the slyest thing Puck has done since coming back to work, and it doesn’t feel great.
Micah is not, in fact, at the gazebo. Ron has asked Puck to get Micah and Jess alone so they can deepen a connection that has apparently been rekindled since “Massage Gate,” as everyone on set was calling it by the time Puck got back to work.
Today should be easy, almost automatic: Send the devoted girlfriend on a wild-goose chase, have Nick install Micah in a spare bedroom, and then covertly deliver mistress Jess to Micah, all wrapped up in a bow.
Bad decisions will predictably ensue—and the cameras will catch it all.
But this morning, Mia’s words have been echoing in Puck’s mind: “I’m a person, not your doll.”
As few brain cells as some of these contestants have, they are still indeed people—even Micah’s girlfriend, whose name, Puck confirms with a glance down at their face sheet, is in fact Alexa.
The girl dutifully scurries off through the back garden toward the gazebo, blissfully unaware of Puck’s lies.
Toward the end of a season, many contestants inevitably realize the producers are not their friends, but Alexa has remained reliably gullible, which is why today’s shooting schedule has “Micah–Jess love scene” written in ink: They can bank on this one.
It’ll be simple to produce, and it will deliver exactly what the audience wants.
The millions of women who watch Homewreckers will tsk at Micah and say, “Once a cheater, always a cheater.” Biases need confirmation, and it’s always been Puck’s duty to shore up those assumptions.
Except that bargain has felt more Faustian these past two weeks than ever before.
Nick, who has turned out to be quite the career climber, is already back from setting Micah up in the mansion, eager to collect on Puck’s offer to shadow them. “Should I get Jess on the walkie now?” he asks.
Some part of Puck hears Nick ask the question. But the idea of hailing Jess on the walkie makes them think about the one girl they actually want to call.
In the two weeks since getting back home, they’ve done almost nothing but think about the things they wish they could say to Robyn, most of them beginning with some inadequate version of “I’m sorry”: I’m sorry I ruined your best friend’s wedding.
I’m sorry I was jealous that your best friend used to be my best friend.
I’m sorry I lied, deceived, and manipulated everyone around me, thinking I was helping them when actually I was just assuaging my own loneliness with a false sense of control.
But the longer that litany of self-flagellations went on, the more certain Puck became that Robyn could never—and probably should never—forgive them.
Not that this has stopped Puck from rehearsing their countless apologies out loud while anxiously cleaning their bathroom, which only made them think about the amazing shower sex they had; while watering their dying plants, which made them think about the terrible and extremely gay joke they made about the rubber plant in their room at the Athenian (“I hardly know ’er!
”); and while microwaving frozen tortellini, which made them wish they could be eating bacon-wrapped dates with Robyn at the Iberian Pig.
They debated texting Mia to ask when—or even if—they should reach out. Why would she say what she said back at the motel if there was no possibility of reconciliation with Robyn? But there are a million things Puck needs to say to Mia before they can ask for her advice.
“Puck?” Nick prompts, wrenching them back to the harsh reality of the Homewreckers set, where they have to boss people around whose names they’ll flush from their mind in a week. “You wanted to talk to Jess, right?”
“Uh, yes,” they finally confirm. “Let’s do it.”
Nick turns to mutter into the walkie, leaving Puck with their thoughts again.
It’s a characteristically hot Atlanta day, but they wish it were even hotter so their brain could cease to function.
Anything to melt away the image of Robyn’s face when she came into the bridal suite carrying that cursed piece of paper.
Mia said that Robyn deserves to know the Puck that she once did.
But who even was that, really? At some point, the scrappy, headstrong young queer they once were became nothing but a manager with a hollow life.
That entire week at the Athenian, they turned up their nose at their friends for unblinkingly following the social order, when they’ve been down here enforcing it all along, making sure that the Homewreckers contestants step in perfect time with heterosexuality’s most expected beats.
Puck looks across the lawn to the back patio door of the house.
What’s taking so long for Jess to get sent outside?
When a request comes from Puck, delays aren’t acceptable—or usual.
But when the door swings open, it’s not Jess who emerges from it.
Is that? No. It couldn’t be. And yet it is: Robyn with a “y” is storming toward them, trailed closely by the set security guard.
“Hey!” he’s feebly shouting, unable to keep up with her pace. He might as well be trying to stop a tsunami with a feather.
When Robyn wants to find someone, she’ll find them, whether it’s inside a hotel spa or on the set of a reality show hundreds of miles away.
But how? Even though the filming location has been posted online countless times over the years, the home is fenced in, and the security at the gate is top-tier.
Did Robyn hop the fence? How many fucking barre classes has this woman taken?
Puck is frozen to the spot as Robyn stomps off the back deck onto the grass and barrels straight toward them.
“Do you know her?” Nick jokingly asks, with all the bravado of a man in his twenties, registering Robyn more as a spectacle than a serious threat.
“We just met,” Puck says, and the statement feels as emotionally false as it is factually true.
But Puck has learned more about themself, and about love, in the last few weeks than in the last decade.
For starters, they’ve learned that they became an asshole sometime between graduation and now.
They’ve learned that friendships aren’t save states in one of Damon’s video games that you can simply reload.
And most of all, they’ve learned that it’s still possible to feel a sort of totalizing infatuation with someone—the kind of crush that tempts you to shred up your life and start over.
Because as terrified as they are of Robyn charging toward them, Puck mostly feels thrilled to be anywhere near her again.
“Were you ever going to call me?!” Robyn shouts, dangerously close now.
“Is this like your ex or something?” Nick asks, and even he seems nervous, getting a crash course in the intensity of dyke drama.
But before Puck can answer him, Robyn is standing in front of them, wearing a form-fitting black shirt and matching leggings, like some kind of sexy burglar.
Did she seriously pick out a “break onto the Homewreckers set” outfit for this confrontation?
That’d be hot if it weren’t also unnerving.
“Robyn, I’m at work,” Puck says, dumbly, as though that wouldn’t have already occurred to her, and as though it would make a difference.
In the corner of their vision, they spot the other producers, and yes, Jess Sandusky, gathering at a distance to watch this scene unfold.
Even Ron is walking over to find out what’s going on.
“Can we not do this here?” Puck begs her.
“Do what?” Robyn asks.
“I don’t know …” Puck mutters, suddenly finding the grass very interesting. “This?”
Nick pretends like his walkie made a noise and retreats into the forming crowd.
The freckle-faced security guard has apparently given up entirely now that he sees Robyn and Puck talking, safely assured that she’s not going to shoot anyone.
He too joins the gawkers on the periphery.
Even amid the intense awkwardness, the irony of it isn’t lost on Puck: After so many years of producing the show, they have finally become the show.
The homewrecker-in-chief is now the ignominious star of a Homewreckers scene.
“I think this is the perfect place to talk about the wedding, actually,” Robyn says. “Isn’t breaking people up what you do here?”