Recovery

“I knew something was wrong yesterday after I left,” Puck expressed as he sat back in his chair, a smug look on his face. We were in the Lima Bean again, but it was completely dead, since it was nearly eight at night. “Why did you lie to me?”

“Because I needed to get my head together,” I sighed, “and I didn’t want to spill my guts to you over text message. It really was something that I had to tell you in person.”

He shrugged and nodded. “I guess that makes sense.”

A silence settled between us as I took a small sip of my vanilla latte. Finally, I broke it, asking, “What do you think I should do?”

Puck pondered this for a long time, drinking half his coffee and staring at the table. I let him think, knowing that the process was something unfamiliar to him, and it took a lot of effort to get those inactive brain cells working again.

Finally, he let out a long sigh, letting me know that he was ready to talk. “You know, Evie, you’re probably not going to like what I’m going to say.”

Oh, God.

“Look, I have a lot of experience with shitty, pointless fathers who back down the second they have to step up to the plate of responsibility. It’s how my own dad is.” I nodded, since I already knew that. “If it was me I was giving advice to, I’d say to slip some arsenic in his morning coffee and get rid of the fucker.”

I struggled not to burst out laughing, since I knew he was actually being serious for once, and the anger he was conveying about his own father was a real emotion that he didn’t like showing.

“But I’m trying to give you advice,” he continued after a short pause. “And I know that you try to seem like you don’t care about your father and what he says to you, but I can see in your eyes that it still bothers you. The look on your face when you saw him watching us in my car said it all. It’s like…every time he annoys you, it’s ripping a new wound inside you.”

I bit my lip, trying to hold back my surprise. I never knew how obvious it was, how I felt about my father deep down inside. Even I wasn’t able to identify the feelings, they were buried so deeply in my subconscious. But apparently, I wasn’t hiding them from showing up on my face.

And it definitely had to be obvious, if Puck picked up on it.

“So I guess my advice to you,” he finished, “would be to talk to him. If Garrett said that talking with your dad helped clear up a lot of things, then it probably did. And what you need is someone to explain everything to you. Plus, you never know how things are going to turn out. Maybe your dad will surprise you.”

I drank some more of my latte, letting that settle in for a few minutes. “You have a point,” I allowed, even though he said something different than I wanted him to. I figured he’d tell me to keep avoiding my father because he went beyond forgiving.

But, as usual, Puck surprised me and ended up giving advice that made sense. Unfortunately.

Puck gave me a small smile before reaching across the table and taking my hand. “You don’t have to do it if you don’t want to,” he assured me, sensing my hesitation. “It’s just advice.”

“I know, but I asked you for a reason.” I mulled over the idea for a couple more minutes, the silence in the café thick, punctuated every few seconds by the sound of ceramic clacking together or the hushed discussions of the workers. “I think I’m going to do it. I just don’t know when.”

“Do it when you’re ready,” Puck insisted. “Because if you go home now and talk to your dad, I’m pretty sure you’re going to be uncomfortable being in the same room with him, and you might get sick of hearing him talk and you’ll roll your eyes.”

Just to prove his point right, I rolled my eyes. “I know, I know. Keep the sass on the inside.”

“Exactly.” He leaned back and laughed. “So are you ready for school next week?”

“Absolutely not,” I responded before biting my lip anxiously. “I don’t want to be a senior. I don’t want to have to pick out a college to go to. I don’t want to have to go back to that school, where everyone’s going to be looking at me differently because they know that I left to go to rehab. I don’t want all the stress that’s waiting for me there.”

He caught my gaze, his light brown eyes sparkling with amusement. “Evie, I think you’re blowing everything out of proportion. Kurt will help you with all the college stuff, I’m sure. He has his shit together.”

I let out a soft laugh. “Is that you stepping away from the responsibility before I get the nerve to ask you?”

“Not that I’d be any help,” Puck laughed. “I’m not going to college.”

“Really?” I questioned in what I hoped was a conversational tone and not a judgmental one.

“Really. I just don’t think it’s for me.”

“What are you going to do instead?”

He shrugged dramatically, trying to express how little he cared. “I don’t know. I haven’t figured it out yet. But whatever. I have all year. I’ll figure it out eventually.”

I nodded and got to my feet as I finished my latte. “A year’s a lot shorter than you think it is,” I told him, trying to echo the deep tone he’d been using earlier.

He caught onto my joke and laughed. “It’s a lot longer than you think it is,” he corrected. “And that’s what she said.”

“That joke is so old,” I told him, shaking my head. “No one says that anymore.”

“Sure they do. You just don’t hang out with cool enough people.”

I made a big show of standing back and raking over Puck’s body with my eyes. “You’re right. I hang out with some major losers.”

“Hey, I wasn’t talking about me!” he corrected.

“Too late. You set yourself up for it, and you can’t take it back now.”

He rolled his eyes as we walked out to the parking lot. A quick scan of the place revealed that it was completely deserted.

Puck seemed to arrive at the conclusion the same time I did, his arm snaking around my waist, his mouth at my ear. “So what do you say to fooling around a little bit before I bring you home?”

I drew in a long breath, shrugging. “Hmmm…” I teased, shrugging as he pulled me around so I was pressed right up against him. “I don’t know about that.”

He smirked before closing the distance between us, capturing my lips with his. He didn’t hesitate before poking his tongue into my mouth, cupping a hand around the back of my neck to pull me closer to him so he’d have better access.

My hand rested on his jaw, my pointer finger gently grazing his ear lobe. I pulled back for a second, staying close enough so that he could feel my breath on his lips when I asked, “Can we not do this out in public?”

He got a mischievous grin on his face and pulled away from me. “Of course. We wouldn’t want to be whores about this, would we?” He opened the door of his truck. “Get in. We’ll go somewhere a little more remote.”

I laughed, but did as he suggested, getting into the passenger’s seat and buckling my seatbelt.

“I know just the place,” he assured me as he pulled out of the parking space.