This is for my friend, A.J. ... Happy Birthday! 3
August 22, 2038
If anyone had told sixteen-year-old Noah Puckerman that he would one day be standing here, he would have insulted them and thrown them in a dumpster for having the audacity to lie to his face.
Days like this had not been in the cards for Puck. Moments like these didn't happen to people like him.
His life had not been easy; even now, there were days that were harder than others. Puck wouldn't trade them for anything though. They served as reminders of where he had been, where he came from, and most importantly, where he was going.
At forty-four years of age, it wasn't too late to dream and to follow those dreams to fruition.
Like many in life, Puck had chosen the difficult path … or maybe it had been chosen for him. Either way, he was the one who ended up fighting the demons – sometimes coming at him from all directions but most times, deriving from within his own psyche – and he was the one who finally left those demons beaten and defeated in the proverbial dumpster.
He deserved this day. He deserved this moment.
In the years following high school, when all his friends were in college and he was still weeding through the minimal options he had for his future, Puck sort of fell off the face of the earth. He only kept in touch with his sister, although he didn't call very often. He had to get away, try to move on, and forget the tragedies that had befallen him throughout his young life.
Puck had grown accustomed to losing things, or more accurately, people. His father had abandoned him when he had decided that younger women and drinking beer with his buddies were bigger priorities than his wife and two young children. Puck had lost his mother, in a sense, to two and sometimes three jobs so that she could put food on the table. He had lost his baby daughter moments after he had fallen in love with her and before they had the chance to bond, because he and Quinn had not been equipped to raise a baby. He lost the only woman he truly loved to her college life and someone named Biff. Perhaps the most painful of losses, though, was the death of his best friend – Finn Hudson: the man who had kept him anchored, the man who had taught him more than any other person had, the man who never got the chance to know how Puck truly felt about him. Puck loved Finn … in every sense possible.
All the loss weighed heavy on Puck and without a true outlet, the heaviness accumulated until Puck just couldn't withstand it any longer. On his twenty-first birthday, when he should have been celebrating with friends and looking forward to a bright future, Puck began the journey to the lowest point in his life. He tried to run from all the demons, from all the hurt. He frequented bars and drank entirely too much, too often. He bedded anyone who would give him the time of day. He got into fights, some of which ended with him in the back of a police cruiser. One of those times, the victim ended up worse for wear in a hospital bed. He charged Puck with assault. If Puck had felt any respect for himself whatsoever, he would have lawyered up and fought the charges, but he couldn't be bothered. He ended up going to jail. It wasn't a long sentence, just a few months, but as far as Puck thought, he deserved every day he got and more.
It wasn't until halfway through serving his sentence that his life truly changed. He received mail from someone he hadn't seen in five years, although he thought about her every single day of his life. It wasn't a letter really. It was a whimsically drawn picture of a clown pig – resembling the one he had drawn all those years ago. Attached to it was a picture of a six-year-old girl, his daughter. As he sat in his small cell, he couldn't take his eyes off of the image. Her little face looked back at him with clear eyes and silky blonde hair, resembling her birth mother's. Puck fell in love again.
In that moment, he broke down. He knew his daughter's adoptive mother had been behind the correspondence. It was an olive branch. It was the push he needed. It was the validation he had always wanted to feel. He was needed. He was wanted. He had been given the opportunity to succeed at something – something important like being a father. He realized then that Beth needed him and was depending on him.
Puck knew what it was like to grow up without a father and even if Shelby had married and her husband had adopted Beth, he was her father. He was the one who would teach her about her background and culture. Luckily for him, Shelby thought the same. The letter was proof of that.
Puck served out the rest of his sentence humbly. He put his head down and did the work they had assigned him to. He spent his free time in the courtyard working out or in the library reading every business book he could get his hands on. He attended Alcoholics Anonymous meetings and counseling. By the time his sentence was up, he was in a much better place to take life on.
He moved back to Lima and sought out his sister, who welcomed him with open arms. He resurrected his pool cleaning business, this time putting emphasis on actually cleaning the pools instead of hitting on his clients. He continued his therapy, often ending up in tears as he lamented the loss of his best friend. Coming to terms with losing Finn was the hardest thing Puck had ever had to do.
As the months progressed, therapy helped Puck let go of his inadequacy issues and his fear of abandonment. He started to feel like he was important and even though many people in his life had left him, there were still people who cared about him and loved him – the most important of those being his daughter.
His Beth.
A year to the day after his release from jail, Puck contacted Shelby and made arrangements to travel to New York, where she and Beth lived. She allowed him to see Beth and from the moment he met his daughter again it was love at first sight. The eight-year-old knew him immediately, as she had a baby picture of herself with her father on her night table, right below Puck's own clown pig picture, which was now framed and hanging. When she saw him she had squealed and hugged him; they instantly became inseparable. For the first time in his life, Puck felt like he could breathe.
As time went by, Puck's business grew and he saved enough money to make a permanent move to New York, where he enrolled in a small college to study business administration and was able to be closer to his daughter. He saw her almost every day and Shelby graciously allowed her to spend as many weekends possible with him.
Puck reached out to old friends, most of which were happy to hear from him and the ones who lived in New York saw him often – Artie and Tina, Kurt and Blaine, and Santana and Britney. Puck also made new friends – desperate to not let his past define him – and soon enough he had many people around him who loved him and supported him. His best friend in the world was Shelby, who always made it a priority for her daughter to spend time with her father. Puck didn't know if it was for her benefit or for his but he didn't care because he found himself suddenly happy.
Now, on this day, in this moment, Puck stood in the foyer of the small and beautifully decorated chapel in upstate New York and peeked out at the guests filling up the pews. He saw some people he didn't know but also ones he did. His closest friends were there, sitting and chatting with one another. His gaze settled to the front row where his sister and Shelby sat with the brightest smiles on their faces.
"Are you ready, Daddy-o?"
Puck smiled at the now familiar endearment. It was a loaded question. Was he ready to give his daughter away? Never. Was he ready to be the father she deserved to have? Always. In a sense, Puck had always been ready for this; the journey had just been a little longer and was a little more painful than it should have been.
"I was born ready, babygirl," he said, then turned to look at Beth. The sight of her in her wedding dress made his heart stop in his chest. He swallowed back the instant tears that welled behind his lashes. Puck was pretty sure Beth was the only person in the world who he could fall in love with again and again.
"You okay?" She asked as she moved forward, her lacy train dragging gently behind her.
"I've never in my life been better," he said. "You are so beautiful."
She rolled her eyes delicately and kissed his cheek. "You don't look so bad yourself, Daddy-o."
Puck grinned. "Do I look better than that punk who's waiting for you at the altar?"
She laughed; so did Puck. "It's a good thing you like him," she said. She then threaded her arm through his elbow and leaned in close. "And just between you and me," she whispered, "you will always be my very favourite."
The-sixteen- year-old Puck would not have believed this. There were times when the forty-four-year-old Puck didn't believe it either, but sometimes the most unbelievable things end up being the best things.
"And you will always be mine, babygirl. I love you."
"I love you too, Daddy-o"
When the doors to the chapel opened and the mass of people stood in Beth's honour, Puck walked his daughter down the aisle with his heart fully and completely healed.