Page 43 of Chasing the Puck

I roll my lips. “Yes.”

She sighs, sinking back into the couch cushion. “Honestly, I get it. Swiping your keys like that, making such a big gesture when you’ve only just started to be friendly …”

“Who says we’re friendly?” I interject.

Summer waves my protest away, like she knows even I can’t deny that Tuck and I have been on a different footing than we were last semester. “I get how it could come across as sort of a violation of your privacy,” she finishes.

I take a sip of my wine. Somehow, the alcohol already flowing through me helps me put into words one major reason I’m upset with Tuck. “I don’t like feeling like someone who needs saving.”

“I don’t think Tuck thinks that about you,” Summer says. Ever since I first made my distaste for Tuck McCoy clear—the very first night we met—Summer’s chimed in with words of defense for him.

As a roommate of her boyfriend, she knows him better than I do. She likes him and thinks he’s a good guy despite the cocky playboy act. I guess she has good reason to. I heard about the way he drove out late at night to help her and Hudson look for a bracelet that she dropped that has a lot of sentimental value to her, when she and Hudson were on a hike in the middle of a forest trail.

“Needing help isn’t the same thing as needing saving,” Summer continues. “No one who knows you even a little bit could ever dream that you need saving from anything. But you actually did need help. You know what? You didn’t even need help. Missing out on those second-round auditions wouldn’t have killed you. But why should you have missed out on them?”

My eyebrows draw together as I take a thoughtful sip of my wine. Summer is making too much sense. She’s making me think I should soften my stance towards Tuck. I’m not sure how I feel about that right now.

After all, I did end up using my car to go to those next auditions in Burlington. I mean, not doing so would have been a level of petty that I haven’t quite reached.

And they went well. Great, really. I’m still waiting for them to call me back, but I have a good feeling. Even if I don’t land the lead role, just being chosen as an understudy for a role like Lady Macbeth by an organization like the Champlain Theatre Company would be a major feather in my cap at this stage of my career.

“Know what I’m kind of looking forward to?” I say, changing the topic. Summer’s given me thoughts to ponder, and right now I just want to move on to a Tuck-free conversation. “That gala in New Hampshire the department asked me to go to.”

There’s this fancy event that the organization of New England colleges that Brumehill is a part of throws every year. Each school sends a couple of their students each year, and this year Brumehill is really banging the drum about its drama department because an alumnus of ours recently starred in a super successful production run of a play on Broadway that got national attention. They asked me to attend the gala as a student representative of the department.

“Yeah?” Summer replies.

“Mhm. I mean, it’s not like a night in Concord, New Hampshire is a weekend in Paris or anything, but I feel like it’ll be nice to just, you know … get away from it all.”

“I hear you,” my friend says. “Sometimes it’s nice to just take a step away for a little while. Recharge your batteries while you have some distance between you and your day-to-day life.”

“Exactly. I don’t expect the gala will be all that fun, but it’s supposed to be fancy, so the catering should be good at least. Have a nice dinner, get a little buzzed on free champagne, maybe order room service dessert when I get back to the hotel room they’re paying for. And just be a state away from everything that’s been stressing me out.” I take another sip of my wine and nod slowly. “Yeah, it sounds pretty nice.”

Plus, it’s a guaranteed Tuck McCoy-free weekend.

Here, even when I go days without seeing him, the possibility always exists that I’ll walk out of a building on campus and see him right there strolling towards me on one of the walkways, or that he’ll end up behind me in line at a local store, or sitting at the table next to me at a café.

Next weekend, I’ll have the time and the distance to just relax and let my brain slowly work out the knot that’s been pulled way too tightly in my mind where Tuck is concerned. I’ll come back with a clearer head, recharged.

It’s exactly what I need.

19

TUCK

“Whatcha laughin’ about?” I ask when I come home after classes to find Summer curled up against Hudson on the couch, laughing at something on her phone.

“Oh, hey, Tuck,” Summer says, glancing over the couch towards me, her lips still tilted up in laughter. “Just a TikTok video Olivia sent me. It’s an edit about a character in a book we just read together.”

“Olivia roped you into reading one of those thousand-page tomes she’s into, huh? Was it some Russian novel?” I ask after slinging off my book bag and plopping down on the second couch in the living room.

She giggles. “No, it’s a romance.”

My brow lifts. “Olivia reads romance books?”

“Mhm,” Summer nods, typing something on her phone. “I’ve made a devotee of her.”

“Wow,” I say, the exclamation coming out as a breath. “That’s really cool.”

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