Not mine.
When he hears the door to his room open and Matt walks in unexpectedly, he looks up and nods in greeting. "Hey."
"Hey Puck," Matt says, walking over to take a seat on the bed.
Shit, thinks Puck when his eyes fall on his bedside table. Sitting in plain sight on the wooden surface is a photograph he had been looking at this morning.
He breathes a sigh of relief when Matt simply flops onto his back, stretching out on the mattress. "What's up?" he says to his friend.
"Not too much. Wanted to see if you were interested in going to shoot some hoops down at the park."
"Sure. Not doing anything else right now," he shrugs, eyeing the picture that is now only inches from Matt's head. It is a little bit faded, and the edges are soft and slightly bent from years of handling. He keeps the picture in the bedside table drawer, and pulls it out more often than he cares to admit.
"Cool," says Matt. "Two on two? You call Finn and I'll call Mike."
"Yeah, sounds good," he says, reaching across his desk to grab his phone. He flips it open and hits speed dial number two. Finn quickly agrees to meet them at the park, and he snaps the phone shut. "Finn's in, he'll meet us there."
"Sweet," replies Matt, still lying on his back. "Mike too. You ready to head over?
"Yeah."
Matt sits up and swings his feet over the side of the bed. Puck knows his friend spots it when his dark eyes widen a fraction in surprise. "Dude," Matt says, picking up the picture. "That you?"
He sighs and walks over to sit next to his teammate, looking down at the snapshot of two dark haired children, a boy and a girl, standing on grass. Their hands are clasped, and the boy is pointing with his free hand at something in the distance as they laugh together. "Yeah. I was about eight years old, I think."
"Huh. Who's the girl? She looks kinda like—"
"Rachel Berry," he sighs.
Matt blinks. "Seriously? You keep a picture of you and Rachel next to your bed?"
"Hey, it's not like that," he scowls, frantically trying to come up with an explanation for having the photo there. The truth is, he pulls it out whenever he feels like he's losing sight of himself, whenever he needs the reminder that he can make it through all the crap that life seems to like throwing at him. No way he's admitting that, though.
"Yeah? Then what's it like?" Matt says, raising an eyebrow.
"Berry and me, we go way back. We've known each other forever, grew up together. She's just . . ." he trails off, wondering how to finish the sentence in a way that Matt will understand.
She's the girl who stunned me with her voice when we were seven. The one who, one day a year, makes sure one way or another that I forget it's the anniversary of when my father walked out. The girl who snuck me her cookies in the fifth grade when my mom went on that health kick. The one who, God knows why, never stopped believing in me even after I abandoned her in high school so I could be cool.
My speed dial number one, because even after all the shit I've put her through, I know I can always count on her to be there for me.
He doesn't know exactly what to say, but he knows he can't say all of that.
"It's just that she's –"
Matt watches the struggle for the right words play across Puck's face, and cuts him off. "Yeah," he says, nodding in understanding. "I get it, I think. She's Rachel."