His car was still black and still shiny and she could hear Van Morrison from the open window. That hadn't changed. Just everything else.
"Hi" he said, leaning to open the door for her from inside
She stuffed her bag in front of her knees and closed the door. She had packed snacks; she always packed snacks. Marshmallows, peanut butter sandwiches and really red apples, because they were the ones he really liked. She hadn't forgotten that.
"Hi" she said.
He reversed out of the bus station parking lot and drove through the city of Boston. She hadn't been here in so long. Their city, the one they had decided on together, so long ago.
"How are you?" he asked, too politely, like he used to ask her mom.
"Fine" she said just as formally. "And you?"
"Not too bad" he replied.
Like strangers or acquaintances or colleagues. Not like people who had loved each other for such a long time. Not like people who had built a life together, bought an apartment, used to have joint accounts in the bank. Not like people who had sent out Christmas cards with both their names printed neatly next to one another.
"Just twelve hours to go" he said lightly, just like he always did on the beginning of this trip, the trip to Beth.
They visited her once a year, that was the deal, on her birthday. Every year in early June they took this drive from New Haven, at first, and then from Boston after their move, to celebrate their daughter's birthday. This year wasn't any different, except from the part that they weren't a couple anymore. They hadn't been one in almost a year.
...
It was her sophomore year of college when he turned up on her doorstep of her off-campus apartment with a duffel bag and a huge grin.
"Hi Quinn" he said excitedly and she stepped back to let him in.
They hadn't met much during her previous college years. She had avoided coming home from the holidays and from she had heard, he had moved to LA. Basically they had just met for Beth's birthday in May and thanksgiving in November. And despite that, here he was, inside her tiny apartment.
"I'm doing a tour" he said. "Crashing on all my friend's couches until they throw me out. Sorry, but you're my next victim."
She laughed because it was ludicrous and so was Puck and she found him sheets and a blanket that her mother had bought ages ago.
"I stayed with Santana, Rachel and Kurt in their awesome place in New York for almost six weeks before they got sick of me" he told her.
"What did you do?"
"Forgot to close the toilet lid or something. Rachel got a panic attack and started screaming things about germs."
"What's your plan then?"
"In life? I don't have one. I go on this tour, trying to get interested in something other than playing XBOX. It's nice to see new cities and stuff, you know."
Quinn didn't know. She had barely left New Haven in two years. She felt safe in this city now and desperately didn't want to feel insecure again.
"And it's nice to see you" he added, smiling at her.
"Yeah" she exhaled, feeling awkward for the first time.
He didn't notice. He found her remote control and turned on Mythbusters. She sat down next to him, wondering if he wanted something from her. Someone to sleep with. She had a boyfriend. Well, not a boyfriend actually. She had Henry, her former professor who she sometime kissed on this very couch. He was married of course, still, and at this point, she doubted that would ever change.
"Jesus, I've missed Discovery Channel" Puck sighed. "All Rachel and Kurt ever wanted to watch were black and white movies about people being loud and upset."
"I think I learned all I needed to in Biology watching this channel" Quinn smiled.
"Yeah" he said passionately. "It likes educates you."
"Yeah" she agreed. "Yeah."
...
God, she hated Van Morrison. Always had and always would. She had put up with it when they were together because love is a compromise and all that. He hated her compulsive way of always sticking small pouches of dried lavender in the closet to make everything smell like summer, but he had put up with that too. Now she didn't have to listen to this anymore, nothing to compromise with.
"Can we listen to something else?" she asked after half an hour.
She saw his jaw set. He looked slimmer than he had before, more grown up and less like a young boy who had played football in high school. He had a new shirt too, it was gray and looked soft. She wondered if she had bought it for him.
"Fine."
She opened the glove compartment and flipped through the CDs. She used to keep her Bon Iver and Emmylou Harris CDs there too but they were gone. All that was left was heavy metal and classic rock. He had sorted hers out, erasing every trace of her. It hadn't worked completely though because here she was in person, in his car, again.
"The radio maybe" she suggested.
He fiddled with the car stereo for too long before founding a station. It played hits and hits were okay because they annoyed everyone but enraged no one.
"You did always hate my music" he said, almost bitterly.
"Not all of it."
"Yes, all of it."
She took a deep breath and stared out of the car window. They had passed their old apartment just a few minutes ago. She wondered if he still thought of her when he woke up every morning in it. She wondered of everything reminded him of her, just like everything reminded her of him.
"You hated my music too" she said after too much time.
"No" he corrected. "I never hated it. I just didn't care for it that much. You don't always have to be so dramatic about your feelings. You don't have to hate or love things."
"Maybe I do."
"Yeah" he sighed.
She turned the volume up and let Katy Perry or Kesha or whoever it was fill the silence between them.
...
They quickly fell into a routine. She went to classes in the morning, studying to get her journalism degree (acting hadn't been her thing), and in the afternoon they ate food on the couch and watched TV. She liked animal documentaries the best, the ones were the filmed deep down in the ocean or in a green rainforest. The ones where a lion would kill a zebra and she would cheer for the lion and cry for the zebra. Puck liked anything concerning World War II, like how Albert Speer designed the concentration camps or about how Eichman had escaped to Argentina.
"It's like history of my people" he used to say, even though she was pretty convinced he just thought they were fascinating because it felt like a movie, but was actually real.
"What do you do when I'm gone all day?" she asked.
"Wait for you to come back" he teased.
She rolled her eyes and opened her laptop to write a report.
"You're really smart, aren't you? Yale girl and all" he asked.
"You should meet the pre-meds. Jesus. I can't even understand what their saying. My roommate freshman year used to date one. I had to google everything that came out of his mouth."
Puck laughed. He had always been like that, generous with his laughter, even if it wasn't a very funny story or joke. It made her feel good about herself. He had always had that effect on her.
"Don't you feel weird, spending all day with those geniuses and then coming home and watch TV with me?"
"No" she said honestly. "Of course not. I have known you since we were kids."
"You're supposed to say Puck, you're smart too" he grinned.
"You are. You don't need me to say it."
"I never went to college."
"You still could, if you wanted to."
He shrugged.
"I don't, not really. Can't afford it anyway."
"Not everyone has to go to Yale" she said.
"Nope" he said, winking at her. "Just Quinn Fabray."
She threw a pillow at him and closed her computer again because she would much rather talk to him than write about social economic structures. It was weird, that feeling. All through her freshman year she had imagined killing her roommate Maggie at least a hundred times and wished she had had a single room. Living with someone meant there was always someone to talk and make stupid noises and distract you. Puck did all those things and it just felt nice, reminded her of high school when she was pregnant and lived with him.
...
Beth was turning eight years old and that was something that always made Quinn feel rather sick.
"I'm too young to have a kid that's eight" she had told Santana repeated times over the previous couple of days.
"I'm too young to have friend who keeps going on about her eight year old kid" Santana retorted because she was in a bad mood.
Quinn guessed that you couldn't really understand the surrealistic thing about a child growing older, if you weren't a parent yourself. Not that she was a parent per se. A mother, sure, but not a parent. She had no responsibility or obligations. And almost no contact. She saw her daughter once a year and gave her gift and then left the next day. That was the deal.
"Can you believe she's turning eight?" Quinn mumbled to Puck, both to lighten the mood and because she really wanted to know what he thought.
He still looked upset with her. His lips were straining as he pressed his mouth together. She wanted to coax him out of it, make him smile again, but that wasn't her job anymore.
"No" he answered shortly. "Not really."
She decided to drop it. They didn't need to talk after all. Rachel had told her that several times.
"You're not in a relationship anymore, Quinn, you have no obligation to make small talk with him" she had told Quinn before he picked her up.
"I know" Quinn had answered.
But it was still horrible to sit silently in a car, with someone you had once talked to about everything. Someone who, one year ago, would have discussed the Beth thing with her until they both felt better about once being teen parents and growing older.
"I have to go the bathroom" she said instead because she needed fresh air and to collect her thoughts.
She hadn't been this close to him in a long time. She wasn't prepared.
"We haven't even been on the road for an hour."
"Sorry."
He sighed.
"It's three miles to the next Subway. You can pee there."
"Thanks" she said sarcastically.
Maybe she should have bought a plane ticket instead.
...
Quinn's friends at Yale were all astounded with Puck. He wasn't Ivy League in any way. He was rough around the edges and spoke with food in his mouth and didn't care about the rowing team. (Neither did Quinn but she didn't feel the need to point it out like he did.) Despite all that, they all loved him. He was a lost puppy and they all wanted to give him a home.
"So… you are like just trying to find yourself?" Anne-Belle asked with huge eyes.
"Yeah, basically" he replied sheepishly.
Quinn rolled her eyes. Puck wasn't someone who needed taking care of. He didn't need to college girls with cardigans and blazers to bring him cupcakes (yes, they did that). He enjoyed it too much, she thought.
"He's just a guy" she told them.
"I'm not" Puck argued, pulling her down next to him on the couch. "I'm the guy, right?"
"No" she smiled. "You're not."
Anne-Belle and Mary and Kerry all stared at her and him.
"You sure that you're not together?" they asked her later.
"God, no" she replied.
"But he lives with you…"
"That's Puck for you. An inconvenience in human form."
She didn't mean it though. She loved bringing him to parties and school functions because he thought the same things as she did were ridiculous and his tongue was much sharper as he hissed things in her ear. She loved his pasta with meat sauce that he made for dinner almost every night because it was basically the only thing he knew how to make. He was just good to have around. A safe buffer.
"What do you think of my friends?" she asked him one night when Kerry had just gone home.
"They're nice."
"Wow. Please be less specific."
"They're all very nice" he repeated, winking at her.
"Is there something wrong with nice?" she asked.
"You tell me, considering that your best friend is the biggest bitch in the world."
"Santana isn't that bad" she argued.
"Whatever" he grinned.
"And Brittany is the kindest person ever, and she's one of my best friends…"
"Sure."
She exhaled unhappily, giving up and reaching out the change the channel on the TV. He put a hand on her shoulder.
"Look, Quinn" he said. "Your pals are all perfectly nice. But I like you better."
And she realized that was exactly what she had wanted him to say.
...
He bought a sandwich while she pretended to use the bathroom. In reality, she washed her face with cold water and then squirted hand sanitizer all over herself. Quinn stared at herself in the mirror. She looked the same as ever, almost the same as she had at sixteen. Her hair was light and reached her shoulders. She kept it like that, it made her feel more grown up than having it long and wavy. She wore glasses when she read now, a sturdy pair with black frames that Puck had teased and told her made her look like some indie music journalist. Other than that, she could have been sixteen or twenty or thirty. Ageless and still heavy with the weight of her years. Beth was eight; which meant that she was twenty-four.
She stepped out of the bathroom and looked at Puck. He didn't look like his sixteen year old self anymore. First of all, he had lost the hideous Mohawk and let it hair grow about an inch over his entire head. He was still wide with muscles and loved to pushups but age had softened his features a bit. He looked kinder than, not as scary as he had once.
She wondered for the umpteenth time what Beth looked like now; which one of them she resembled the most. Quinn could barely remember what she had looked like last year, even if she had photos and video tapings of the last birthday. The most vivid picture she still had of her daughter was the one when Shelby had taken her away, that tiny, pink baby with those big eyes. She cleared her throat because she didn't like thinking about that.
"You done?" he asked, his mouth full of white bread and lettuce.
"Yes."
"Want a sub?"
"No, thanks" she said, almost affronted. "I brought snacks. You know, peanut butter sandwiches and stuff. Like I always do."
"Right" he said, looking at his half-finished plate with something that almost looked like shame. "I wasn't sure you had… So…"
"Well, I did."
He nodded. The pimply boy behind the counter stared at them with sneer on his face. She wanted him to stay out of it. She wanted everyone to stay out of it. Of course she had made snacks for the trips, she had always did.
"You know me" Puck said softly. "my tummy's never full. I can eat until I die."
Yes, she did know him. She was the one who had nagged him about stop eating everything with covered with cheese because he might have heart attack at thirty.
"Let's get back on the road" she suggested.
He agreed and waved in farewell to the boy with acne. A bell sounded as they closed the door behind them. It was hot outside.
"Are you staying in the city for the summer?" he asked.
"Yeah" she answered. "Me and the tourists. Someone has to serve 'em cold drinks, right?"
"Santana's going to the Hamptons, right?"
"Yeah, but she has a girlfriend with a villa on the beach."
"You could always go home to Ohio. Swim in that pool that I used to clean for you" he said and smiled.
"I have to work. Make rent. You know."
"No time for play then?"
"Nope. We can't all be so lucky to have eight weeks of vacation."
He grinned.
"The benefits of being a teacher."
"You ever got that educational degree?" she teased.
"Well, the benefits of being an under qualified teacher then."
She got back into the car and felt like maybe it would be okay after all.
"I couldn't have one of those sandwiches now then?" he asked.
She laughed (yes, actually, laughed).
"No."
"Oh well…"
...
"Is he your boyfriend?" Puck asked about Henry after two or three months. "That dude in tweed?"
Quinn had never introduced him, because hadn't introduced Henry to anyone. For obvious reasons. Because he had a wife and two kids in a house outside of town. They spent most of their time together in his office and had only been in the apartment once or twice since Puck moved in.
"No" she answered.
"Why not?"
"He's married."
Puck snickered.
"Of course he is."
She scowled at him.
"What do you mean by that?"
"I mean, no offense, but you can't just pick an ordinary, nice boy, can you? It has to be destructive in some way, right?"
"Shut up."
He raised his palms to show himself defeated but the harm was already made. He had no right to judge her. She said nothing about his life choices, or rather, of lack thereof.
"Whatever. If he makes you happy…"
"I'm not in love with him" she almost screamed in some kind of defense.
"Does he have kids?" he retaliated.
"None of your business."
"A guy who sleeps with his students. Classy."
She felt her cheeks burn with humiliation and anger.
"What do you know about class?" she snapped.
He got up out of his chair. She did too. She remembered being this angry with him before, when she pregnant and blamed him for everything. He had never shouted at her then, always just accepted her wrath. But he had loved her back then. That had changed.
"Your dad, he slept with some young woman, you remember that? Ripped your family apart, crushed your mother…"
"It's not the same…"
"And do you really think that you're the only one? Are you really that fucking naïve, Quinn?"
His voice was raised now. She hated when people screamed at her. It reminded her too much of her father.
"You don't know anything about us."
"There is no you and him. He's just an asshole who's using you. Can't you see that? You're supposed to be smart."
She wanted to slap him. She wanted to make him hurt like he made her feel pain. This is why she never went home, people who knew her could hurt like the girls in cardigans and glasses never could.
...
"How's… Karen?" she asked as they past Waterbury, Connecticut.
She looked out of the passenger seat window because she didn't want him to see her face. She tried to keep it impassive and uninterested but he knew her better than anyone and she just couldn't risk it.
"Fine" he replied.
"Still working at the same school as you?"
"Quinn, do we really need to do this?"
She swallowed hard. Probably not. She just needed to know the circumstances so she could adapt to it.
"No… It's just… we're friends, right? We should talk about stuff."
"We could talk about the weather" he sighed.
"It's been a year, Puck" she insisted even though to her it made no real difference how much time had gone by.
He sighed again. She still didn't dare to look at his face.
"Fine, okay. Yeah, she still works at my school."
She wanted to ask if she had moved in yet. If Karen now lived in the apartment that Puck and Quinn had bought together. The one they had gone to bank and ask for a loan to able to buy. The one they had picked after just looking at two other places because it was perfect, an attic apartment with a high ceiling and wooden beams. She wanted to know if Karen had redecorated, if there were pictures of them on the walls now. She wanted to know so much, but she couldn't ask.
"Have you met someone then?"
She jumped and felt her checks burn.
"No."
"Right…"
"I don't really meet people at all. I work almost every night and sleep through the day."
The tone of her voice was so apparently bitter than she bit her tongue. She should at least pretend to be happy.
"City life, eh?" he commented.
"I guess."
Her New York City life was like that, though she doubted most people lived in total isolation. Her life consisted of getting up twelve, going to work at five and then working to two in the morning. She shared that ridiculous Bushwick apartment with four other people but she barely ever met them. Sometimes guys at the diner where she worked would make an effort to flirt with her and some even left there number with the tips. She never called anyone. She didn't want to date anyone who spent their nights at a 24/7 open diner in Brooklyn. Frankly, she didn't want to date anyone.
"You haven't gotten any offers to get another internship?" he asked.
"No. It's… a tough market, I guess."
Honestly, she hadn't applied to any jobs or internships. The blow of being rejected by the last one had turned her off it.
"Luck will turn, Q" he said kindly. "I know it. You're the most talented person I have ever met."
She felt like she wanted to cry. What did he know?