And Here's What You Missed on...GLEE

“GO! C’mon, Houston, pick up the pace!” the football coach screamed at an inhuman level at some small guy on the field. The poor kid looked like a freshman, and he was working his ass off. Clearly, he wasn’t fast enough.

I never liked football, and now, watching the practice…it made me hate it even more. Who wanted to endure torture filled with running thousands of laps and doing an incomprehensible number of jumping jacks and push-ups? Puck, Finn, Mike, and Matt, apparently.

My mind wandered as my eyes zoned out in the green of the grass, thinking back to Glee Club.

Finn had done a really great rendition of Superstitious by Stevie Wonder. It made me smile widely, since I loved Stevie Wonder. The whole team seemed to love it.

Of course, Rachel tried to one-up me by singing an Aretha Franklin song. As she belted out Respect (which was originally sung by Otis Redding), she did an excellent job. She shot me a look as she sat down, and it showed that she was thinking what I was: although her vocals had been better, everyone enjoyed my performance more.

TAKE THAT, RACHEL BERRY!

“Ellie?” Finn’s voice broke through my taunting thoughts. He was looking up at me questioningly, his helmet tucked under his arm.

“Hi, Finn,” I smiled.

“Uh, what are you doing here? Shouldn’t you be home or something?”

“Puck’s driving me home.”

A look of recognition seemed to cross his face. “Oh, alright. That makes sense.” There was a slight pause before he continued, “You two aren’t…?”

It took me about a millisecond to realize what he was saying, and I laughed aloud, cutting him off. “No. No way.”

He chuckled a little bit, probably to stifle any embarrassment that had arisen. “Well, with Puck, you never know.”

“Just the reason I’m not interested in him,” I told him.

“HUDSON!” the coach screamed. “GET BACK ON THE FIELD!”

He turned and smiled at me before jogging back into the field. I chuckled a little, thinking about what Rachel would say if she saw that little exchange. She would probably blow it way out of proportion, knowing her, even as little as I did.

My eyes scanned the field again, and I finally found Puck. I wasn’t sure how I recognized that it was him, with all his gear and everything. Maybe it was because he seemed to carry his cocky way he presented himself onto the field. It just never went away.

He threw a football in a perfect spiral, and the guy who caught it started running in the opposite direction. I had to admit: Puck looked pretty damn good out there.

Ugh, what was I thinking? Sighing to myself, I reached into my bag and pulled out my tan journal. I made sure to buy one that looked like an organizer so no one ever asked to read it. Why I was embarrassed about keeping a journal, I wasn’t sure.

As I scribbled down a few things that had happened throughout the day, my hand moved quickly across the page. I had completely lost track of time in what I was writing.

“What’re you writing?” Puck’s voice broke through my thoughts. I blushed and snapped my journal closed.

“Nothing interesting,” I lied smoothly, but my face gave everything away.

He just smirked at me in that way he does before starting to walk away. “You ready to go home?”

“Never,” I mumbled, but he didn’t hear me. We walked to his car, and I got into the passenger’s seat, placing my bag on my feet.

As Puck turned the car on, a Billy Joel song started playing through the car. “You like Billy Joel?” I questioned, kind of shocked. I wasn’t positive why it shocked me so much, since he didn’t really give me any particular vibe about what kinds of music he liked, but it did.

“Sure,” he replied simply. “He's a Jew. Us Jews gotta stick together. Plus, who wouldn’t like a guy who’s singing to a girl to put out for him?"

I rolled my eyes. “I love that song, but you don’t have to put it that way.”

“Why not? That’s what it is.” My face heated slightly, and I heard Puck laugh a little. “Aw, am I making you uncomfortable?”

“No,” I muttered, but I couldn’t keep my face straight for long. Letting out a small laugh, I kind of wondered about the whole thing. Was it possible to get two people who were more opposite when it came to experience in relationships (or whatever, exactly, Puck has) than Puck and me? I thought not.

We pulled into my driveway, and I opened the door immediately. “Thanks for the ride!”

“Yup. See you tomorrow at Glee. Wait for me tomorrow afternoon.”

“I know, I know,” I smiled at him before shutting the door.

The second I walked through the door, I was ambushed. “Who was that?” Dad snapped at me, throwing an arm toward the window to gesture and almost knocking some decorate vase with fake flowers to the ground.

“Just a boy from school,” I responded, shooting him a dirty look.

“He looks like trouble. Wait…is he the gay one…?” Dad sounded shocked, almost like he couldn’t believe it.

I couldn’t help but let out a loud, honking laugh in his face. The thought that anyone even considered Puck as gay was enough to make me laugh for years, but I was good at controlling myself. “No. Far from it.”

This seemed to offer little comfort. “He looks like trouble,” he repeated, “don’t talk to him.”

“Like I’m going to listen to a damn thing you have to say,” I scoffed. I turned away and went to the fridge, grabbing a bottle of iced tea, and ran upstairs. Dad tried to call after me, but I didn’t pay him any mind, instead closing my bedroom door to shut out the sound.

Right when I got into my room, I pulled out my algebra homework and threw it in front of me on my bed, making the mattress bounce slightly.

I thought about Dad wondering if Puck was gay again and laughed a little. That was definitely something I had to tell him as soon as possible.

* * *

“He thought what?!” Puck nearly squealed when I told him the next day before Glee. “How did he get that vibe? How the hell did his Gay-dar go off for The Puck?”

“I don’t know. Maybe you’re not as masculine as you think you are,” I shrugged. He glared at me with angry eyes, but I just kept up my sweet smile.

Out of the corner of my eye, I caught Finn staring at Puck and me with a questioning look. Of course, it lasted about five seconds before Rachel slapped him.

“Ow! What?” he gasped, holding his arm. Hopefully, that was surprise more than actual pain. Otherwise, he was kind of a wimp.

I snickered slightly before turning back to Puck, who was still venting about the fact that my dad thought he might have been the gay kid that I was hanging out with. Maybe I shouldn’t have told Puck…I was never going to hear the end of it.

Mr. Schuester walked in a couple minutes later, looking kind of out-of-it. “Everything okay?” I asked, wondering the second the words were out of my mouth if that was an appropriate thing to ask.

“What? Yeah,” he replied, making it even clearer that there was actually something wrong. Whatever. I was just his student, not his psychiatrist.

“Who’s supposed to go today…?” Matt trailed off, looking around the room. “We didn’t pick anyone yesterday.”

“You wanna go, Matt?” Mr. Schue questioned with a sigh.

“Um…” he trailed off, hinting that he didn’t really want to. “I guess I could…?”

“Go ahead.” Mr. Schue walked off, rubbing his temples. Matt went to the front with a big smile on his face and sang a pretty modern song that I didn’t know because I wasn’t too hip on modern music. There were exceptions, of course (like Pink), but for the majority…I was clueless.

“Ready to watch me play football?” Puck winked at me as we walked down the hallway after Glee ended. We stopped in front of the guys’ locker room, and he adjusted his backpack strap on his shoulder.

“Oh, you know it,” I joked before turning down the hallway. For a few seconds longer than necessary, I felt his eyes on my back, but when I turned around to make a crack about it, he was gone.