Chapter Text
Peter is fucked.
Colloquially, not literally, like he was hoping.
Felicia expressed a desire for more spontaneity and fun in both their relationship and the bedroom. Peter figured taking an early flight out of Ohio, where he goes every summer to help grade the AP chemistry free response questions, was a good start. He picks up flowers and ridiculously expensive, cheap chocolates at the airport before hailing a cab to take him back to their apartment, hoping to surprise her.
Spoiler alert: he’s the one who’s surprised.
By the naked guy lounging on the couch when he opens the door.
“Ready for round two?” Felicia calls. Peter hears her clearly through the ajar bedroom door.
His suitcase with the broken wheel tips over and onto his big toe. He drops the box of chocolates. (It’s sealed, so they don’t scatter, but later, when Liz helps him open them while he cries on her couch, a few are magically broken. Peter doesn’t know if it’s the universe being cliche or simply an extra sign that he paid far too much for cheap chocolates in cheap packaging.) He crushes the stems of the flowers in his palm and throws them at Felicia. They’re not aerodynamic, and they fall uselessly by his feet.
Peter picks up the chocolates, grabs his suitcase, and leaves.
“Two weeks,” Liz says.
Peter gawks. “Why?”
“You want to sleep on my couch for longer than two weeks?”
He opens his mouth.
“You’re not sleeping in my bed.”
He closes his mouth.
The Ad reads:
ROOMMATE WANTED NEEDED
Four Bedroom, One Bathroom Loft. 1600 Sq. Feet. Non-smoker Preferred. Unless of the Mary Jane Variety, then smoker preferred. No, still not preferred. Clean, courteous, and coherent. Bonus if you have a dog. No pets.
Contact us at [email protected] [email protected].
Rent negotiated at time of offer.
Serious Inquiries only.
Thank you.
Peter’s three potential roommates stare at him.
Flash has a mean wrinkle between his eyebrows, Ned hums and nods semi-encouragingly at everything Peter says, and Michelle folds her hands in her lap, her entire face smooth but reminiscent of the mean wrinkle between Flash’s eyebrows.
In two days it’ll be the two weeks Liz gave Peter.
He’s desperate.
“So, uh, that’s why I really need this, you know? I was cheated on, and she still has the French press I bought, and my back hurts from my friend Liz’s couch, and--”
“Who’s Liz?” Flash interrupts.
“My best friend.” A beat. “And I’m really considerate and will help clean, and this place looks really great. I have good references and--”
“What does this Liz look like?” Flash asks.
Ned elbows him in the side, and Michelle says, “Jar.”
Flash grumbles, shifting to reach into his back pocket, pulling out his wallet and handing a five to Michelle, who reaches over, placing the cash in a half-full mason jar with a piece of cardstock taped to the outside that reads: DOUCHEBAG JAR.
Then, like nothing unusual happened, all three of them refocus on Peter.
Ned offers a thumbs up.
“So, I guess, that’s all,” Peter finishes.
“That’s a yes!” Ned says, nodding an inordinate number of times.
“He’s a little dweeby,” Flash says at the same time.
Both of them look to Michelle. She shrugs. “We should check his references.”
Ned pumps his fist into the air and screams, “Yes!”
Flash says, “Meeting. Now.”
Michelle rolls her eyes but follows both men through the open living room and kitchen as they argue: “Star Wars is not a personality trait.” “Dude! It shows good taste.” “It shows nerd taste, and you two are already filling the quota in this apart-- Ow! MJ!”
Peter hears them scuttle, and it sounds like they’ve knocked something over. He wipes underneath his eyes, and embarrassment warms itself on his face, rolling in his stomach. He cried when Michelle first asked why he was looking for a new place (“If you’re being kicked out of your old apartment for not paying rent or by someone for leaving toenail clippings in the living room, we need to know”).
It’s not the best first impression, especially because that’s what he intended to do, impress them.
Instead, Peter swallowed, blinked in the face of Michelle’s unblinking face, and cried.
God. He scrubs his palms up, over his brow and back through his three-day old hair.
Peter expects a hard no. Flash and Michelle will outvote Ned, and he’ll be stuck begging Liz to give him more time. She will, but there’s a knot forming in Peter’s lower back from her couch, similar to the one in his heart when a song comes on the radio that reminds him of Felicia.
(Every song reminds him of Felicia.)
He’s seen five other places in two weeks. He got rejected from a two-room flat with mold in the bathroom grouting. The tenant explained they couldn’t use the microwave and the oven at the same time, and thirty minutes later gave Peter a pat on the back, kindly telling him he was too depressing.
Michelle comes back first, Ned and Flash following like kindergarten students forming a line behind their teacher on the way to the playground.
“We’ll call you,” she says, and then she turns around, heading back from the direction she came.
“Oh, okay,” Peter says to her hunched, retreating form.
Flash huffs, hands stuffed into his pockets, walking by Peter and slamming a door to another room, but not before depositing a few more bills into the jar.
“I guess I’ll just…” Peter stands, wringing his hands. “...go.”
“The odds are in your favor,” Ned says like a magic 8-ball, slow smile spreading across his face.
Peter gets a text: im about to call u
He picks up. “Hello?”
“Dude!” Ned’s voice rings in Peter’s ear. “You’re in!”
“I’m in?”
“Yeah, as long as you can give MJ your aunt’s vegan lasagna recipe.”
“Um, yeah, totally.” He doesn’t have the recipe, and he almost asks how MJ -- Michelle -- knows about it. But then he remembers May was his first reference, followed by Liz, and then the school’s principal, Mr. Harrington. “I can get it.”
“Awesome!”
“Yeah, awesome. Thanks.”
Peter sprawls on the sofa like a starfish, his skin dry and patchy, bowl of popcorn rising and falling slightly on his stomach as he breathes. He steadies it with one hand and stares at the television, zoning in and out like he’s underwater, only half-hearing and half-seeing Baby and Johnny.
He is too depressing.
In Peter’s defense, the naked guy moved into his old apartment with Felicia, and he really needed to hear “(I’ve had) The Time of My Life” on Flash’s surround sound television.
“This is pathetic,” Flash says.
“I got dumped a few months ago, and I’m fine,” Michelle adds from the table behind the couch. Peter can’t see her, but he hears her laptop keys click clack without pause. She’s pressing too hard.
“No, you’re not,” Ned says, flopping down and jostling Peter’s feet. The popcorn bowl tilts and a kernel rolls out, nudges itself between the back of the couch and the cushion.
Michelle doesn’t say anything, but Peter squints up at Ned flipping her off, so Peter assumes it’s a two-way gesture. He’s been here a week, and he’s learned that Ned can get away with it, but Flash tried once, and the next day his body lotion was replaced with Nair.
“If you’re so fine, then just ask Harry to add us to the guest list,” Flash says.
“No.”
“Exactly.”
Peter turns back to the television, but he can’t hear anything because Flash is blending a smoothie in the food processor. It doesn’t matter. This is Peter’s second pass through the film today.
“Hey,” Ned says, nudging Peter’s legs. “We should all go out tonight.”
Peter blinks, head still foggy.
“No,” Michelle’s voice breaks through.
“Just because you’re not acting like a sad sack the same way Penis is, it doesn’t mean you’re not also being a sad sack,” Flash says.
Penis is a truly juvenile nickname Flash gave him the second he signed the lease. Michelle’s response, “Did you miss nap time today?” made Peter snort. She didn’t smile at him, but it was a near thing, and he figured between her and Ned, well, it wouldn’t be so bad having to share a bathroom with Flash.
“Come on, Peter. You need to get out there. We can get a drink and sing karaoke and have a good time,” Ned says.
“I’m good here,” Peter decides, trying to sink further into the sofa.
“Dude, no, you’re not. If I have to hear ‘(I’ve Had the) Time of My Life’ one more time I’m going to break the TV.”
“Don’t be a loser,” Flash adds. “Your ex is already knocking boots with someone way hotter than you.”
“Wait, what?” Peter scrambles up onto his elbows.
“The guy she’s hooking up with is hotter than you,” Flash says before taking a loud slurp of his smoothie.
“No, he isn’t,” Ned reassures.
“How do you know who he is?”
“MJ retconned you,” Flash says.
“She what?” Peter pulls himself into a full sitting position, eyeing Michelle over the back of the couch.
She shrugs, leaning toward her laptop, not bothering to look at him. “I don’t trust just anybody to share my space.”
“You don’t share space,” Flash argues.
“Not with you.”
Ned claps his hands; one loud slap. “Sounds like we’re all in!”
“Never said that,” MJ says.
“Come on, don’t you want to watch Flash get rejected by everybody he hits on?”
She hums, types and agrees: “Yeah, actually, I do.”
“Peter?” Ned asks, turning to him. His eyes are wide and hopeful, and Peter can already tell saying No to him is going to become a problem.
He says, “Yeah, alright.”
Peter washed his hair, the bar is cozy, and Michelle gets them a 30% employee discount on drinks.
He feels better even before his first sip of the pink, fruity concoction that tastes like a jolly rancher, but he feels really super good after that. He squishes against Ned in a booth, watching Flash hit on a pretty girl, her pierced eyebrow arching, unimpressed.
“And then I’m like, ‘Bada bing, bada boom,’ you know?” Flash asks.
The girls blinks. “No.”
“Okay, so I was in my summer home in Italy,” Flash starts again, speaking slower than before.
Ned groans. “He’s more of an idiot than I thought.”
“Yeah,” Peter laughs.
Flash tells his entire story again, verbatim: “Bada bing, bada boom.”
“Hey,” Ned says.
Peter’s chin rests in his palm as he watches Flash self-destruct.
“Hey,” Ned repeats right when the girl opens her mouth to reject Flash again, likely in a brutal, verbose way that’ll cut to the quick the same way MJ does, if the girl’s squint and tilting mouth is anything to go by.
“What?” Peter asks, shaking his head.
MJ slides into the booth on the opposite side of Peter, says, “That guy over there is totally checking you out.”
“Huh?”
“Four o’clock.” Peter turns his head. “Your other four o’clock.”
The guy is cute, leaning against the bar with a beer from the tap, foam melting against the side of the glass the same way his gaze melts over Peter.
Peter feels his own drink swirl warm and strong in his stomach. He takes another sip, slurping up the dregs of the fruity concoction and praying for the liquid to turn into courage or charm or some other word that feels less like the dread and anxiety sparking at the idea of having to flirt with somebody, of putting himself out there again after Felicia pierced his heart with her stiletto and the air drained from his balloon.
He’s mixing his metaphors.
The alcohol must be working.
“How do I look?” he asks.
MJ says, “Ehhhhh.”
Ned frowns, reaching out to try and fix his hair. He leans back, cocks his head and closes one eye. “Good.” Thumbs up.
“Okay,” Peter says. “Okay, Okay, Okay, I got this.”
“You got this, dude.”
“I got this.” He slides out of the booth, stands and wipes his palms against his jeans.
“You got this,” Ned repeats.
“I got this.”
“You got this.”
“I got--”
“I will disembowel you both if you don’t go over there immediately,” MJ says, flat and serious.
“Okay.”
Ned nods, shooting him two thumbs up this time.
Peter approaches the cute guy and stumbles when he tries to lean against the bar. He holds out his hand. “Hi, I’m Peter.”
“Cam.” He shakes Peter’s hand.
It’s warm and nice, and Peter feels emboldened by the contact. “Like from Modern Family.”
“I’ve never watched that.”
“God, sorry.”
“It’s okay, Peter.” Cam says his name like some sort of seductive slam poetry, emphasized, soft and smooth and almost rehearsed. “What’re you drinking?”
He doesn’t know.
“I don’t know.”
Cam laughs, and it’s warm and nice and rehearsed just like everything else, but Peter doesn’t mind. He’s not looking for true love, or a soulmate, or anything else inherently romantic. It’s hard for him to disconnect those things from sidling up next to someone at a bar, from flirting and from dating. His mind naturally rolls down the road, a tumbleweed picking up sticks and dirt, taking something small and turning it into something large. But his wound is still fresh, so he tries to temper it, stop the wind from blowing and stay in the present.
Even if the present is a bar that smells a little bit like weed and axe body spray.
Cam buys him a frozen margarita that Peter sips too quickly, causing brain-freeze. They exchange numbers, and before Peter falls asleep, alone in his own bed, lovingly tucked in by Ned with a kiss to his forehead, Peter and Cam set up a date at a nice restaurant.
The tumbleweed collects some more dust.
When Peter tells Ned, Michelle, and Flash about the date the next day over a too strong cup of coffee, Flash laughs, exaggerated, throwing his head back.
Peter frowns. “What?”
“Cam is a total player.”
“What? No. He’s nice.”
“Those things aren’t mutually exclusive,” Michelle says. She slathers a concerning amount of butter onto her toast. It can’t be good for her arteries.
“You all encouraged me to find a rebound, so I don’t know why I’m being judged.”
“Not judged.”
Ned scrolls through Peter’s phone. “You sent like … 20 texts in a row.”
“So?
Michelle snorts.
“Only serial killers do that,” Flash says.
“Really?” Peter scrunches his eyebrows together. “I was just trying not to censor myself.”
Flash says, “Always censor yourself.”
Ned says, “Flash actually has a point.”
“I think it’s kind of nice,” Michelle counters. “Pretending to be less interested than you are, or lying just so you appeal to somebody? Waiting thirty minutes to reply? It’s stupid.”
“Thank you.” Peter tosses her a smile, the ceramic in his palms warm as he brings the cup to his mouth to take another sip of coffee.
She rolls her eyes, and Peter’s teeth clink against the mug as his grin widens.
“I wouldn’t take MJ’s word for it. She got dumped months ago, but won’t ask her ex to get us into the party we go to every year despite claiming she’s over it.”
“Correction: you go every year.”
“You and Harry went last year.”
MJ’s jaw clenches. “You know what? Fine.”
“What?”
“I’ll text him.”
“Really?” Flash’s eyes go wide and hopeful. He slaps his palms together like he’s praying. “Oh, god, MJ, thank you so much. You don’t know how embarrassing it would be if all my friends went and then I wasn't there and the stories I would miss and the girls in bikinis and guys in briefs and--”
“You’re not allowed to give me shit about Harry ever again,” she says.
“You have my word, oh my god, I promise to never even speak of him, MJ. You are a goddess.” Flash jumps up, reaching across the counter and trying to grab at MJ’s face, lips puckered.
“Ew, get off me, Eugene,” she drops her toast, buttered side down, onto the counter and pushes Flash away.
“Jar?” Peter offers.
“No,” Ned and MJ say.
Flash says, “Fuck off, Parker.”
“Hold on!” Peter calls, two shirts folded over his forearm, suit jacket hanging off one shoulder, hair damp from his shower and dripping onto said suit jacket.
Fuck.
Liz knocks with impatience.
Peter pulls open the loft’s front door and heaves a grateful exhale. “Thank god you’re here.”
Liz quirks an eyebrow, leaning around Peter to get her first view of his new place. “Looks cozy.”
“Yeah, sure, it’s fine. I have to leave in 30 minutes, and I realized I don’t know what is appropriate first date …” Peter trails off, searching for the word when Michelle exits her room, shutting the door behind her and stepping into the living space. Her skirt swishes around her knees like waves lapping at a beach. “... clothes.”
“What?” Michelle asks.
Peter swallows. “You look nice.”
She shrugs, rolling her eyes in a way he is slowly but surely becoming accustomed. One day, he thinks, he might be able to read all the different meanings, the nuances in her seemingly similar gestures. “Flash told me if he’s going to be seen with me, I have to look acceptable. Ned said, and I quote, ‘Make Harry eat shit.’”
“Well, uh, I think he will.”
“Thanks.”
“Hi, I’m Liz,” she introduces herself and holds out her hand.
“MJ.”
“Sorry,” Peter apologizes with one shake of his head. He remakes the introduction despite it being unnecessary. “Liz is my best friend.”
“The one who evicted you,” Michelle says.
“Tough love,” Liz clarifies. She thumbs at the shirts dangling over Peter’s arm. “You shouldn’t wear a suit jacket. It’s too formal. Also, this pattern is disgusting.” She pulls the first button-down away. “And you’ll spill something on it if you wear the white one. It’s like, a law.”
“Right.” Peter nods.
“Let’s see if there’s anything else in your closet.” She grabs Peter’s hand, tugging him by Michelle with a nod. “Nice to meet you.”
Liz tosses the two shirts Peter waffled between onto his desk chair, and he tugs the jacket off his shoulder, adding it to the pile. Liz opens his closet door with flair, and with her back to him, says: “You should’ve told me MJ was attracted to you. That’s like, the first thing you should have said about this apartment. Not that your door sticks sometimes and you’re afraid you’ll be locked in your room forever.”
“What?” Peter blinks.
“This is perfect.” Liz pulls a navy dress shirt Peter hasn’t worn in months off a hanger before tossing it at him.
Peter fumbles the catch. “I’m sorry. Michelle what?”
“Put that on, and then we’ll deal with your hair.”
“Liz,” Peter says, more confused than stern.
“What? We both know you feel bad not using your teacher discount at the gym.”
“I can’t even tell if Michelle doesn’t hate me half the time, how can you say she likes me? You said maybe five words to each other.”
“I didn’t say she likes you. I said she’s attracted to you. But yeah, she likes you, too.”
“What?”
“Women’s intuition.”
Peter huffs. “That’s not even a real thing.”
“Sure it is.” Liz shrugs. “You’re wasting time arguing with me when I’m right.”
“You’re wrong.”
Liz tuts, raising both her eyebrows, so Peter works open the buttons on the ill-fitting top he tried on underneath the suit jacket earlier.
“Are you trying to get me kicked out or something? I haven’t even lived here a month, and you’re creating weird gossipy lies.” Peter shucks the shirt off his shoulders, widens his eyes, and makes an emphasizing gesture with his hand. It causes the sleeve to get caught when he tries to tug if off. “I’m about to go on a date. This is the worst time to tell me someone else thinks I’m attractive.”
“Or maybe I’m just trying to remind you that you are attractive.” Peter opens his mouth. “Shut up. Confidence is key.”
He shakes his head, pulling on the Liz-approved shirt. “You’re increasing my anxiety. You know I overthink stuff like this.”
One side of her mouth lifts up into that soft, closed-mouth smile that used to give Peter butterflies. “I’m sorry. But you’ll be fine. This will be good for you.”
“Or I could cancel and we could watch Dirty Dancing?”
“Nice try, but no.”
Liz fixes Peter’s hair, sets it with spray that he guesses she steals from Flash’s bathroom cabinet. It holds everything in place but doesn’t make the strands clump together, dry and crusty. Peter prays Flash doesn't somehow notice; he’d definitely charge for it.
Liz gives him a tight hug and sends him on his way with a kiss on the cheek, standing on the F train platform, like when he was little and May sent him off to school by himself for the first time.
Peter’s stomach flip flops, and he waits just inside the restaurant's door, sending Cam a text. When Cam doesn’t respond, Peter gets a table.
Sends eight … nine more texts.
Ten, a nice even number.
Thirty minutes later, when the waitress is filling up his water glass for the second time, the once fresh bread going cold on the table, she gives him a pitying look. “Did you want to order?”
“No, I’ll wait.”
The look she sends him now is even worse.
Peter believes Cam is coming. If he wasn't, he would at least reply, so Peter sends another message asking if he’s okay.
Eleven.
That’s supposed to be good luck, right? Make a wish.
Another twenty minutes pass, and Peter levels up on Candy Crush even though he hasn’t touched the game in over a year.
The waitress clears her throat.
Peter looks up.
“I’m sorry, sir,” she says, embarrassed frown gracing her mouth. “But we have other reservations, tonight, so if you want to order now, or we can make you food to go…”
“Oh, my date’s just running late. He’s on his way. I promise.”
“Right, but we’re booked solid tonight.”
“I’ll just wait a little longer.”
The dread in Peter’s stomach grows, webbing up his arms and down his legs, causing his foot to tap incessantly underneath the table. He wants to believe that Cam isn’t standing him up, but it’s getting harder and harder to curb his doubts.
He hates thinking it, especially if something bad did happen to Cam.
Peter opens Instagram, just to waste time.
Cam’s posted a story. Peter’s checked his page enough times over the last 24 hours that it’s right up top, not first, but there. He clicks: Cam’s at the party Flash, Ned and Michelle are at.
Peter blinks, and his next breath sounds too shaky among the clanking silverware and idle chat of the tables around him.
He accidentally makes eye contact with the waitress before ducking his head.
“Sir,” she says, thin, her patience clearly waning.
“Right. I’m sorry, I’ll--”
“--Wait!”
Ned.
It’s Ned.
He stumbles as he rounds the corner, knocking into a man’s chair and apologizing.
Flash and Michelle are behind him. Flash stuffs his hands into the pockets of the worst pair of leather pants Peter has ever seen, shoulders hunched and head down, a respectable distance between him and the other two, like he doesn’t want anyone to think they’re all together.
Michelle catches Peter’s eye, lifting her hand in a halfhearted wave before turning her palm and flipping him off.
He smiles.
“So, so, so sorry we’re late, Peter,” Ned rushes, skidding to a stop at Peter’s table for two. He looks at the waitress, saying, “MTA,” by way of explanation.
“‘Sup,” Flash says, nodding at her.
“Um.” She frowns. “Who are you?”
“We’re his dates,” Ned answers, straightening up and beaming.
Peter’s heart does a weird, warm flip in his stomach.
“All of you?” she asks, eyebrows folding.
Flash says, “No.”
Ned says, “Yeah!”
Michelle says, “You have a problem with that?”
The poor waitress blinks. “We don’t have a bigger table.”
“You have any chairs?” Michelle gestures to the empty one, still tucked in.
“Um.”
“It’s fine. We can eat somewhere else.” Michelle nods her head toward the door.
“I’m sorry for the misunderstanding, but he booked a two-person reservation, and you’re all over an hour late.”
“I get it.”
Michelle elbows Flash. He pulls his wallet out of his back pocket and hands the waitress a tip. Peter is about to protest, but Michelle cuts him off: “Shut it, nerd.” Definitive and flat.
When they get back to the apartment after a trip to Shake Shack -- where Flash reached into his wallet again, this time to buy fries and shakes for everyone, along with a burger for Peter -- Peter notices the Douchebag Jar has noticeably less money in it.
Huh.
*
Peter has heard a lot about Harry Osborn.
Correction: he’s heard a lot about Harry Osborn breaking up with Michelle and her subsequent meltdown.
He cannot imagine it.
He cannot imagine someone as put together and self-assured as Michelle spending a weekend in bed, eating nothing but ice cream and watching nothing but Gone Girl. He knows she’s human because she spilled hot coffee on herself last Tuesday, shrieking and swearing up a storm. Her hair frizzes when it gets humid outside. Her smiles are mostly small, close-lipped things, but her eyes go bright if she’s really happy, and sometimes she laughs so hard she snorts at Ned’s jokes.
But even still, the idea of someone managing to break her heart sits weird in Peter’s stomach, like a lie he’s telling, even if he’s not the one telling it.
Which is why it shocks him when she says, “I need you to pretend to be my boyfriend.”
“What?”
“At Cindy and Sally’s wedding this Saturday.”
“Can’t Flash or Ned do it? I have lesson plans to review and a coupon for five dollars off on pizza, so ...”
“Harry knows Ned and Flash.”
Peter can feel his eyes bug out of his head like some Saturday morning cartoon character. “Harry?”
She huffs, wringing her hands as she stands in front of him. “Yeah. He’s going with his new girlfriend, and I don’t need him getting the wrong idea.”
“Which is?”
“That I’m hung up on him, or pathetic, or that nobody wants to date me.”
“Why would he think that?” Michelle is competent and confident, as previously stated, and like, incredibly pretty, even with frizzy, humidity hair.
She rolls her eyes, but Peter can’t place it. “Because he’s an asshole.”
“Okay.”
“Okay? Okay like you agree he’s an asshole, or okay like you’re going to be my wedding date? The plate is already paid for, so.”
“Okay, I’ll go. I like weddings.”
Michelle appraises him, and he sits up, pulling his shoulder blades back and down. “You would,” she decides.
“I do,” Peter says, baffled. “I just said that.”
“Harry is awesome,” Flash says, fingers catching in Peter’s tie as he attempts a Windsor knot. “I don’t know why he dated MJ for two years, but he definitely won the break up.”
“Jar,” Peter tries.
“You’re not there yet, Penis,” Flash says. “Besides, Ned!?”
“Yeah?” Ned peeks his head around the corner.
“Harry won the break up, right?”
“Oh, totally.”
Flash’s answering grin is all teeth and all smug. “Told you.”
Peter wipes his palms against his dress pants. He tugs on the lapels of his suit jacket and halts the urge to run his hands through the hair that Flash helped him style.
“Wow,” Ned says, connecting his thumb and pointer finger into a circle before resting them against his bottom lip and whistling. “You clean up nice.”
Peter high-fives him. “You, too.”
“I thought navy would help me stand out,” Ned says.
“Flash is wearing maroon with a zebra-print dress shirt.”
“Dude,” Ned laughs, elbowing Peter in the side. “That’s the wrong kind of standing out.”
“I tried to tell him, but he said he wouldn’t take fashion advice from someone who wears a shirt that says Geometry keeps me in shape to the gym.”
“That’s the only place to wear that shirt!”
“Yeah!” Peter agrees, and then: “Wait, what?”
He wears that shirt all the time.
Ned ignores him in favor of bringing his fingers to his mouth again, whistling at Michelle as she steps out from the hallway.
“Thanks, Leeds,” she says, brushing at her curls. “But jar.”
“Why?”
“Wolf-whistling is like cat-calling, degrading and dehumanizing.”
“The jar’s for Flash,” Ned protests.
“The jar’s for when any dude I live with decides to be an asshole.”
“It was a compliment. I whistled for Peter, too.”
“So?” Michelle makes eye contact with Peter. “Did you feel dehumanized when Ned wolf-whistled at you?”
“Uh, no?”
“Your lucky day,” Michelle tuts. “Only one dollar owed to the jar.”
Peter says, “Well, actually...”
Ned says, “Peter! No!”
Michelle grins -- actually grins -- and Peter knows better than to say it looks good on her, the implication of women and smiling and all that, but the smile does look good, proud and delighted.
It makes Peter smile back.
“You heard him,” Michelle says. “Two dollars.”
Ned grumbles but does as he’s told.
“You look nice,” Peter tells her.
The yellow of her dress pops against her glowing skin, and her curls are tighter and more voluminous than usual, her mouth glossy with something that looks sheer, lashes long and curled up. Michelle almost doesn’t look like herself, if Peter’s being honest. But she also looks exactly like herself.
It’s a contradiction he can’t parse. Maybe because it boils down to Michelle looks nice, and she always looks nice, and something about that feels larger than it should.
“Thanks.” Her smile goes small and then drops. “Now, where’s Eugene?”
When he emerges from the bathroom, he immediately has to put a twenty in the jar.
Peter watches Michelle scan the seats set up on the venue’s lawn. Her mouth is flat and thin, and her eyes are narrow, shoulders back and chin up. “Okay,” she exhales.
“Okay?”
She grabs Peter’s hand, lacing their fingers together and pushing through the doors, leading him to two seats somewhere in the middle of the white, wooden chairs. She leans over. “Put your arm around me.”
“What?”
“You’re my boyfriend,” she reminds him, one eyebrow moving like it wants to arch but doesn’t quite know how.
Peter opens his mouth, closes it, and sighs. He does what she says, stretching his arm into the air and slowly bringing it down around her shoulders, letting his wrist hang off her body instead of brushing against her with his hand.
Pretending to be her date is weird, and he’s been doing it for less than a minute.
She leans in again. “Laugh.”
Peter does, high-pitched and awkward. He kind of wants the floor to open up and swallow him.
“Harry’s coming over.”
“What?” Peter does a double take, looking between Michelle and the man walking their way. He’s rail thin, pale with dark hair, and tall. “Him? Is he a vampire or something?”
Michelle throws her head back, and he can feel her neck curve against his arm, a laugh-like sound that sounds nothing like her laugh pouring out of her mouth. She reaches up, grabs his hand and threads their fingers together. “Be cool, Parker,” she whispers, voice low and nice and kind of threatening.
“What do I do?” he hisses.
“Follow my lead.”
“MJ?” Harry greets, his voice going up at the end like it wants to crack in half.
That’s good, right? Peter hopes that’s good. Hey jealousy, or whatever.
“Hi, Harry.” Her voice is flat. Also good. Unaffected. Uncaring.
Peter looks between the two of them, and Michelle squeezes his hand. She might be good, but Peter wishes she had taken him more seriously when he asked to flesh out their characters, figure out their motivations and their greatest wishes, decide on which brunch place is their favorite, and which one they just pretend is their favorite because it seems cooler.
Harry and Michelle simply stare at each other, so Peter clears his throat. “Hi, I’m Peter. Michelle’s boyfriend.”
“Michelle?” Harry repeats, eyebrows furrowing as he looks at Peter.
“Yep. Michelle. Chelle, Chelley, Emmy, babe. You know: her.” Peter points at Michelle with his thumb. “And you are?”
“He’s my ex,” Michelle jumps in.
“Oh. Nice to meet you.” Peter holds out his hand. “Was it Huey?”
“Harry,” Harry corrects.
“Henry?”
He frowns, and it makes Peter want to laugh. “Harry.”
“Hilbert?”
“Harry.”
“Haroldine?”
“Harry.”
“Oh. Okay, Hans, well, Mich doesn’t talk about you too much, you know. We’re usually too busy, you know,” Peter clears his throat. “Having the sex.”
“The what?”
Peter can feel his face burn, but Michelle squeezes his hand again, reassuring and soft, so he continues: “There’s so much sex, you know? All the time. Crazy amounts. Can’t keep our hands off each other, sex in public bathrooms amounts. We were almost late today because of all the sex happening. She’s like, so vocal, you know?”
“Vocal,” Harry drawls out, the word slow and languid and confused, like it’s not the first thing that comes to mind when he plays word association with sex and Michelle.
“Well, it was nice talking to you,” Michelle says, leaning her head down and shifting to rest it awkwardly against Peter’s shoulder. Peter lays his head on top of hers. “See you later, Harry.”
“Yeah. Later.”
“Bye, Henrik!” Peter calls.
Michelle tilts her head so her laugh muffles against Peter’s suit jacket. He can feel the warmth of her breath floating against his jaw. “Oh my god,” she groans.
“You think he bought it?” Peter asks.
“Not at all.”
He tries to extract his arm from around Michelle’s shoulder when the wedding starts, but she tugs it back, cutting him a sideways look that promises physical pain if he doesn’t cooperate.
Peter smiles a shaky thing at her, heart doing one solid flip in his stomach before he looks at Harry, sitting a few rows up and across the aisle. Harry twists his neck to glance at them.
Peter chooses to focus on the ceremony and not the heavy and hot feeling of his arm around Michelle, her knee bumping against his as she wiggles her foot, or the press of her along his side, warm and dependable like a favorite blanket.
He smiles and tears up at the appropriate times.
Peter’s heart swells with the idea of love and the reality of it standing before everyone gathered here today. Peter believes in it. Still. Otherwise, he wouldn’t be here pretending to be Michelle’s boyfriend, and he wouldn’t keep glancing at Harry, catching him turning his head and trying to get a better look at Peter and Michelle.
“Hey,” Peter whispers, leaning into Michelle’s space. He’s so close now, and she smells like vanilla and strawberries and something that reminds him of home. He figures that’s what living together does. “Harry keeps looking back here.”
“I know.” She tilts her head like she’s granting him access.
Peter presses a kiss to her cheek.
Michelle blinks slow, and it accompanies a soft, long exhale.
Peter squeezes her shoulder, trails his hand up and down her arm, and sees Harry’s head jerk forward.
He doesn’t look back for the rest of the ceremony.
“You and MJ really committed to this, huh?” Ned asks through a mouthful of appetizer.
“Does MJ ever do anything halfway?”
“That’s the only way she does things.”
“She spent an entire week making omelets for all of us so she could perfect the art of folding them.” Peter frowns. “She read a 900 page book in a day because Flash told her she wouldn’t be able to do it.”
Ned makes this aborted, scoffing noise, as though he thinks Peter is being dense purely to annoy him. “You’re like, emotionally available, Peter. It’s why we’re already best friends.” Peter nods, and he and Ned do the entire handshake they created while drunk on wine coolers one Friday night during their Star Wars marathon. “You share yourself with people. You’re the kind of person to dive into something. You say I love you on the first date.”
“Did I tell you about that?” Peter asks, mortified. He doesn’t know if U-Haul lesbians are actually a thing, but Ricardo was definitely not a U-Haul, cis gay man.
Ned hums, the sound somehow bordering on wise. “MJ is like ... it took me three years to learn her middle name, you know?”
“She has a middle name?”
Ned narrows his eyes.
“Right, don’t want you to turn up dead.”
“Exactly. That’s my point.”
“Well, I mean, this isn’t even real. It’s not like she’s telling me any childhood stories.” Peter scratches at the back of his neck, eyes drifting to where MJ is propped over their table. She looks around the room, face blank, and when she makes eye contact with Peter, she sits up, smile clenched and artificial, and he knows, instinctively, that she’s trying to convey he’s taking too long getting her vodka martini.
“Sure,” Ned says, picking up another hor d'oeuvre.
Peter shakes his head. “You didn’t say anything.”
“I said sure in a condescending way, Peter. Now get back to MJ before Harry realizes she’s not telling you her favorite color used to be pink.”
Peter stares at Ned, trying to discern if that’s true or not. He decides it is. Ned’s never been a particularly good liar, at least as long as Peter has known him, and he figures usually that’s the kind of thing you get better at over time, especially because Ned’s failure doesn’t stop him from trying.
It’s kind of inspirational, actually.
“Two different guys asked me to dance,” Michelle says when Peter hands over her drink. It sounds like a formal complaint.
Peter says, “Sorry,” even though he’s not. “Hey, what’s your favorite color?”
Michelle snorts. “How old am I? Six?”
“Mine’s red.”
“Angry, aggressive, bold. How masculine.”
Okay, so Ned was definitely telling the truth.
“Or,” Peter counters, “The color of passion and love.”
Michelle takes a sip of her martini and eyes him over the rim of her glass. “You’re such a loser.”
“Thanks.”
“Wasn’t a compliment.”
“It sounded like one.”
“I’ll work on my inflection,” she says before tipping her head back and gulping down the rest of her drink. It should probably be, at best, mildly concerning.
Michelle wipes at her mouth with a napkin, her eyes settling on something on the dancefloor behind Peter’s head.
Peter twists in his chair and finds Harry slow dancing with the girl he’s been with all night -- his date; his girlfriend. He’s a head taller than her, and as she curls into his chest, Peter realizes Harry’s staring at Michelle.
Shit.
“You wanna dance?” Peter asks, turning to face her again.
She blinks like she’s waking up from an overly long nap, slow and hazy and disoriented. “I don’t dance.”
“Awesome! Me neither.”
Her mouth quirks up. “Okay.”
Peter stands, holding out his hand.
Michelle sits back and crosses her arms over her chest. “You just said you don’t dance.”
“Harry’s watching.”
She stares at him in the same slow and hazy way as before. Peter watches her swallow, and her eyes drift over his face so he feels exposed, self-conscious, completely unsure of what she’s thinking. Maybe he did something wrong, crossed some invisible line, because just as she refused to create a narrative for their relationship, she refused to discuss boundaries.
Peter drops his hand.
This time, Michelle’s blink contains something that Peter misses, can’t place, has never seen flitting across her face before, too quick to analyze. It makes the scientist in him itch to recreate it, hypothesize and experiment, but he doesn’t know where he’d begin.
She stands. “Just this once,” she says, voice quiet.
She grabs Peter’s hand and leads him onto the dancefloor.
She drops his hand.
They stand still, looking at each other while some slow, romantic song floats through the speakers, curling around swaying bodies and forming some sort of wall between them. Michelle chews on the corner of her lip, and Peter stretches his fingers by his sides.
“You look really pretty,” he says.
“You look pretty, too.” Her chest rises and falls with her next breath.
Peter feels like he watches her lift her hands to brush her hair out of her face in slow motion. The space between that action and those same fingers curling around his neck, playing with the collar of his shirt, is another breath, inhale and exhale.
He settles his hands on her waist, feather-light.
Michelle smiles a tight-lipped thing that Peter can’t read, which sucks, because he thought he was getting better at figuring her out.
He still smiles back.
They shift around awkwardly as the song fades.
Into “The Chicken Dance.”
Peter laughs.
Michelle turns, and he stops her with the hand still on her hip. “Where are you going?”
“To sit down.” Charades: Sounds like: You’re an idiot.
“You promised me a dance,” Peter says. He starts wiggling around. His hands become beaks, then get tucked underneath his armpits to flap his elbows like wings.
Michelle appraises him, face blank. Peter keeps dancing, maintaining eye contact and committing to the part the same way he committed to being her fake boyfriend. She presses her mouth together like she’s afraid of something spilling out, and as Peter dances, bobbing his head like a chicken pecking for seed, she lets the laugh escape.
It’s a breathless, exasperated thing. Her eye roll is halfhearted at best.
And then.
The most marvelous thing happens: Michelle tucks her thumbs underneath her armpits, flaps her arms and bends her legs to the insidious omp-pah rhythm of the song.
Peter’s grin overtakes him. “You’re a natural!” he says, bending his knees deeper to get lower to the floor, to try and coax out the smile he can see beginning anew at the corner of her mouth.
“Toddlers can do this,” she deflects.
“I’m on theme, then.”
Michelle shakes her head like she finds him as annoying as the song, but her smile blossoms, a wonderful, shy thing Peter has never seen directed at him before. It lives in the crinkles around her eyes and the barely there scrunch of her nose.
Her movements are still small and abrupt, almost embarrassed, so Peter exaggerates his until she laughs, a quiet sound he only hears because he’s listening for it.
“MJ’s dancing!” Ned hollers, artfully sliding his way past the crowd until he can elbow Michelle in the side.
“I knew loser was contagious,” Flash says from over Peter’s shoulder. He swivels his hips until the four of them have formed a polygon on the dance floor. In lieu of doing the chicken dance, Flash is just gyrating like an idiot, which makes Peter laugh.
MJ scoffs, eyes chin tilted up. “You’re not doing the dance correctly, and if you think being the only one humping the air like you do your mattress in the morning makes you cooler than the rest of us, then you’re even dumber than I thought. Which shouldn’t be humanly possible.”
“Yeah, MJ!” Ned says, throwing his hand into the air for a high-five.
She says, “No.”
She keeps dancing, and Peter keeps smiling.
Putting her shoes back on, Michelle buckles her heel’s ankle strap. Half of her hair is still curled, and the other half has slackened into her more usual waves; her makeup has faded except for the black curl of her eyelashes.
Goosebumps pimple her arms, so Peter grabs his suit jacket from around his chair. “Here,” he offers.
“Thanks.” Her answering smile is soft and hesitant. Her fingers wrinkle the material as she throws it around her shoulders.
“Hey MJ,” Harry says. He rests his hand on the back of her chair.
“Hi.” Michelle presses her mouth together, a facsimile of a smile.
“I’m really happy for you,” Harry says.
“Okay.”
“And Peter, I don’t know, man. I couldn’t even tell that MJ liked me until we broke up. It’s good, though. I didn’t believe it at first, but it’s good that she’s capable of opening herself up and being an actual person and all that. I really am happy for you guys.” He rests his hand over Peter’s shoulder, the other moving to squeeze Michelle’s. “Have a good night.”
He leaves.
Michelle’s shoulders are stiff underneath Peter’s jacket, hitched up too high, and the color drains from her face. She turns to see Harry sling his arm around his date’s waist and head toward the exit.
“That’s good, right?” Peter asks. “That he bought it?”
“Sure,” Michelle says. “Let’s go home.”
Peter brushes his teeth, up and down and side to side like May taught him -- he tries to do small circles, but he’s not good at it, always forgets.
He brushes until the paste foams up in his mouth, threatening to leak out the corners, and he thinks about MJ.
About what Harry said.
She was quiet on the ride back to the apartment, letting Flash control the radio with no fuss and staring out the window with her hands clenched in her lap.
Peter can’t shake Harry’s words. He hates the truth he finds in them, of what it says about himself, wondering whether Michelle would allow anyone to even break her heart, whether she liked him at all or not.
She does.
Peter knows that now.
He didn’t always.
He spits into the sink, rinses his mouth, and runs a hand through his hair.
He pauses outside his bedroom, looking at Michelle’s closed door across the hall. She always keeps it closed. Peter keeps his open when he’s home, sitting at his desk revising lesson plans or lying on his bed and flipping through the latest comic book he picked up. It’s a habit from his first year of college that helped him make friends with the students in his dorm. It’s inviting and encourages people walking by to look in and say hello.
Peter shuffles across the hall and knocks on Michelle’s door.
“Who is it?” she calls.
“It’s me.”
“One second.”
He hears rustling, and then she peeps her head out. “Did your closet door stick shut again?”
“No.” Peter smiles, wringing his hands. “No, um. I just wanted to say that I had a lot of fun tonight. Thanks for inviting me. Cindy and Sally seem really in love.”
“You don’t have to do that, Peter.”
“Do what?”
“Lie to make me feel better.” She swallows. There are dark circles underneath her eyes, and it looks like she tried to take her makeup off, but some mascara is still smudged underneath her lower lashes.
Peter’s heart aches. “I’m not.”
“Okay.” She presses her mouth into a thin line. “Goodnight, Peter.”
“Goodnight.”
He turns around and hears the click of her door closing.
He pivots, knocking again.
She pulls the door open further this time. “Yeah?”
“It’s not your fault.”
“What?” she asks, a lick of annoyance now.
“If he couldn’t tell you liked him after two years, he wasn’t paying any attention.”
Michelle blinks, her face crumpling for a moment, and then she exhales. Her eyes swim with unshed tears. “Thanks.”
Peter shrugs. “Goodnight, MJ.”
Her mouth is a soft, moonlit curve. “Night, dork.”
*
Peter fumbles with his keys as he attempts to wiggle the handle the right way so the door unlocks and opens up.
“One day that won’t work and you’ll be locked out,” Liz tells him.
“It’s fine.” Peter tries again.
Fails again.
“You need to get it fixed,” Liz repeats.
“What you can do for your country!” echoes from inside the apartment.
“What was that?” Liz asks as Peter successfully jiggles the doorknob so his key clicks in the lock, allowing him to pull the door open.
“You’re playing True American without me?” Peter asks.
MJ stands on the coffee table, beer in hand. Flash is on a dining chair, making his way toward the castle of alcohol in the middle of the room, and Ned sits on the kitchen counter, legs dangling over the edge, reaching for a pot holder he can throw to the ground and stand on.
MJ says, “Yes.”
Ned says, “Sorry, dude.”
Flash says, “I’m winning.”
Liz asks, “What’s True American?”
“I can’t believe you guys are playing without me.” Peter pouts.
“You were out with Liz,” Ned consoles. “We didn’t know when you’d be home, and MJ has to leave for the bar in thirty minutes.”
“You’re all standing on furniture,” Liz remarks.
The rest of them: “The floor is lava.”
MJ adds, “Ned is sitting.”
“Like a loser,” Flash says. “He’s stuck.”
Liz shakes her head, baffled. “I’m so confused.”
“True American is 50% drinking game, 50% Candyland,” Peter explains. “And it’s the best game ever created.”
“60% drinking game and 40% Candyland,” Flash corrects. “There are four quadrants--”
“Quad means four,” MJ interrupts.
“You need to work your way through the quadrants to reach the castle,” Peter says, pointing to the tower of beers in the center of the apartment, a bottle of tequila raised in the middle. “You take a swig of the hard liquor to win the game.”
“It’s 75% drinking game and 25% Candyland,” Ned says. “You earn moves by answering a question correctly, guessing what things have in common, or completing a quote. You must drink when you answer correctly. Also, when you feel like it.”
“It’s 85% drinking game and 15% Candyland,” MJ corrects. “When someone yells, ‘JFK,’ everyone must yell, ‘FDR,’ and finish their beer. The floor is molten lava, and everything you hear in True American is a lie. Kind of like how history class frames the European invasion of this country.”
Liz frowns. “Sounds complicated.”
“It’s actually really fun,” Peter says.
Flash shakes his head. “You can’t play. We already started, and I’m winning.”
MJ finishes her beer, crushes the can between her fingers, and throws the aluminum at Flash’s head. She misses by a wide margin.
They restart the game, inducting Liz by making her shotgun a beer as the traditional kickoff.
MJ leaves halfway through to go to work, and Liz wins, eyes glassy and speech slurring as she pumps her fists into the air.
“Beginners luck,” Peter says, hopping down from the sofa and nudging his shoulder against hers.
“You’re killer,” Ned adds, coming over to give Liz a high-five.
Flash just grumbles about how they shouldn’t have started over at all.
*
The apartment is nice.
Really.
Peter just has a few small, minuscule complaints: the sliding door to his closet sticks, and it takes an inhuman amount of effort to pull it open sometimes, and when it gets off its track, putting it back is near impossible. The kitchen faucet leaks if you don’t set it back just so, and the other day Peter spent a solid minute trying to stop the dripping. There’s a gap between the window and its ledge in the living area, even when shut, and New York is starting to turn chilly, October bleeding into November.
“I think the super’s in the office today,” Peter says on the first Saturday of the month.
Flash says, “No.”
MJ says, “No.”
Ned slams the refrigerator closed and says, “No.”
“Why not? Maybe she could do something about my closet.”
“Or,” Ned says, “Just hear me out. You could leave your closet open all the time.”
“It’s her job to fix things like that,” Peter argues.
Ned twists the cap off the grapefruit juice he always labels even though everybody else agrees it’s bitter and gross. Peter wouldn’t drink it for less than a dollar.
He’s not rich. He could use a dollar.
“She doesn’t do her job,” Flash says.
“Maybe because none of you ever ask her to,” Peter counters.
“We’ve learned the hard way not to, dude,” Ned says. “Trust us.”
Peter thinks about it.
He really, really does. Because all three of them are in agreement, which is rare and beautiful like a blue moon.
But then he thinks about how Flash treats him, and if he were the superintendent, he wouldn’t want to help Flash out, either. MJ is great, but she’s critical. Ned gives him pause, because he’s so easy to please, a dog with a bone or a kid in a toy store.
Peter swallows down another spoonful of Cocoa Pebbles and watches Ned pour himself a glass of juice, his name printed in big block letters over the label: PROPERTY OF NED LEEDS. DON’T DRINK!!! (Unless Ned.)
Peter finishes his breakfast and stops by the gym. He really does like to use that teacher membership thingy. His pay is decent, and he feels good about shaping future generations, but the odd discounts at various restaurants and stores burn in the back of his mind. Not using them feels like failing himself, and it makes him feel weirdly ungrateful.
On his way toward the elevator, he pauses by the superintendent's office, the door ajar.
Well.
He knocks. “Hey? Miss Pryde?”
“Hello?” She swivels her chair around.
“I’m Peter Parker. I live in 3B?”
“You live in 3B?” she asks, one eyebrow arching as she takes him in. “Statement or question?”
“Statement.” The gym is always crowded on Saturday mornings, so Peter’s still in the basketball shorts and stupid, geometry pun T-shirt he worked out in. He feels self-conscious, runs a hand through his hair and doesn’t take a step closer.
“And what can I do for you, Peter Parker of 3B?”
“My closet door sticks?”
“Is that a question?” she asks again, amusement bleeding through.
Peter shifts his weight. “No. Um, it does. Can I put in a work order?”
“No need. I can be up there in an hour. Sound good?”
“Wait, really?”
“Yeah, really,” she laughs, a lilting song that rings pleasantly.
“That’d be great. Thanks.”
She says, “See you in an hour.”
Peter showers, picks up his room so Miss Pryde doesn’t have to see a pile of unopened credit cards offers he’s been pre-approved for, empty Doritos bags, and a thin layer of dust on his dresser.
He hears a knock on the door as he’s straightening out his stack of chemistry textbooks. Peter hollers, “I’ve got it,” and practically sprints to answer it before Ned or MJ can exhume themselves from their rooms. Flash is out having a “social life.” Quotes because he uses air quotes whenever he says it, which always makes MJ snort, because, obviously.
None of them ever ask what Flash’s “social life” consists of. Seems safer that way.
“Hey, Miss Pryde.”
“Kitty,” she corrects, looking up through her eyelashes.
“Kitty, right. Thank you for coming.”
“Happy to.”
“Can I get you anything to drink?” Peter asks.
“Let’s work up a sweat first.” She winks, brushing against him as she pushes into the apartment. Her auburn hair is pulled back into a ponytail that bounces between her shoulder blades with each step. “Which room is yours?”
“Oh, it’s uh, down the hall.” Peter gestures with his arm. “On the left.”
Peter feels like she’s a stranger in his home, but Kitty walks with purpose, glancing left and right as she takes inventory of the place. “The decoration is a bit … eclectic,” she notes, pausing with her had on his doorknob.
“My roommates decorated the place, and I guess their tastes are all different.”
“Only your roommates?”
“It was already set up when I moved in.” Peter shrugs. “And I didn’t have much furniture to contribute.”
Felicia kept most of it.
“Well,” Kitty drawls, turning the handle and opening the door. “At least you have a bed. When’s the last time you flipped the mattress?”
Peter blinks and scratches at the back of his neck. “I don’t know.”
“I could help you flip it after we fix your closet?”
“Yeah, sure, that’d be great, actually.”
Kitty looks at the closet door, the track it sits on, and moves it back and forth a few times. It jams. She hums. “I don’t know how to fix this, but I’ll figure it out and get back to you.”
“Yeah, of course. Thanks.”
“Please tell me you’ve washed your sheets recently,” Kitty says, turning toward his bed, hands on her hips.
“Yes?”
Last weekend is recent, right? Peter’s fairly certain May said he should wash them every two weeks, but that was years ago when he went off to undergrad, and it’s possible he forgot, or mixed up her advice about how often to wash his sheets with how often to do laundry or some other household chore he forgot about completely and thus hasn’t been doing something he should be doing every two weeks, well, ever.
Kitty bites around a smile. “Let’s just put clean ones on after we flip it.”
Peter agrees, pulling up one corner of the fitted sheet while Kitty pulls up another. When they’re done, Peter rolling everything up into a lumpy ball and shoving the pile into his hamper, Kitty makes a comment about his hands and being good at stripping things: “I wonder what else those hands can strip,” she says, all suggestive.
Peter know she’s flirting; he’s not stupid. She makes a few more comments and jokes as they flip the mattress to the other side and then turn it 180 degrees. He figures it’s just Kitty’s personality. The winking tone to her words charming rather than uncomfortable, her smile sly, eyes bright and mischievous. Peter feels like he’s in on the joke rather than the butt of it. Kitty would probably have something to say about his butt if he said that outloud, so he keeps the thought firmly in his head.
She sighs when they’re done, folding the top sheet down as she finishes making Peter’s bed. “Wow, that was exhausting.”
“Yeah,” Peter agrees. He’s not tired, and Kitty doesn’t look particularly winded, either. He just doesn't know what else to say.
“Really worked up an appetite.”
“Do you want to come over for dinner?” Peter asks.
Kitty beams. “Yes.”
“Cool. Um. I think there are a few other things--”
“Make a list,” Kitty says, stepping forward and resting a hand on Peter’s arm. “I think I’ve done enough today.” A beat. “And I need to rest up for tonight.”
Peter laughs. “I know I didn’t go through the proper channels, but I really appreciate your help.”
“Save it for dinner, Peter,” she says, running her hand down his arm and brushing past him. “I’m sure you’ll show me just how much you appreciate me.”
Another wink.
Peter chuckles, vaguely uncomfortable, and follows her out of his room and to the front door.
MJ sits at the table, laptop open. Peter watches her glance up, and then he watches her look again. “Hey, Pryde.”
“Oh, hi!” Kitty’s mouth pulls up. “Michelle, right?”
“Yeah.”
MJ’s eyes cut to Peter, eyebrows moving up for one quick, judgmental moment. He shrugs, hands out and open, and attempts to communicate that he was right this entire time without saying anything in front of Kitty.
“While you’re here, the garbage disposal is acting up,” Michelle says.
“Oh, sorry, you know what? I have to get going. But if you put in a request, I’m sure I’ll get to it.”
MJ hums like she has been right this entire time.
“I’ll see you tonight,” Kitty says to Peter, soft and low, almost like a secret.
When the door closes behind her, Peter turns to Michelle.
He says, “So.”
“You realized you made a mistake ignoring our advice.” Michelle nods, but she doesn’t bother looking up from whatever she’s doing. Could be writing her novel or budgeting or playing hearts against her computer. “Happens to the best of us.”
“Uh, no. Kitty was very helpful.”
“Kitty,” MJ mocks, the name a scoff out of her mouth, “wants to sleep with you.”
“That’s-- What?-- No.”
“That’s-- What?-- Yes,” MJ says, dry as sauvignon blanc.
“She’s a little flirty, okay, but some people are just friendly. I know that’s a foreign concept to you.”
MJ does scoff this time.
“I’m a tenant, and she’s our super. She’s doing her job. That’s all.”
“Coming over for dinner is part of the job description?” MJ asks.
“I invited her as thanks for helping with my closest.”
Michelle falters. “She fixed your closet?”
“She looked at it. She said she’ll figure out what the problem is and fix it later.”
A slow, knowing blink. Peter didn’t know blinks could be anything, but MJ does it with such precision, eyelashing dark and curled, that Peter can actually see the affirmation of her intelligence. “She wants to sleep with you.”
“No, she doesn’t,” he protests.
“Yes, she does.”
“Can you stop doing that?”
MJ smirks. “Doing what?”
“You should come to dinner tonight. Then you’ll see what I’m talking about. Kitty is nice. And you have the wrong idea”
“You’re inviting me on your date?”
“It’s not a date,” Peter sighs.
MJ’s face says she very much doubts that. Her mouth says, “I’ll be there.”
“Here.”
“You’re inviting me on your first date, and you’re not even taking her out to dinner?” MJ’s eyes are wide, and her voice is all sarcasm. “Wow.”
Peter ignores her and relays that Kitty will be back at 6:30 for dinner before heading to his room and flopping onto his recently flipped mattress.
He can’t tell if it actually made a difference.
Kitty arrives with a bottle of wine, smoky eye shadow, and a cock of her when MJ asks if she likes spaghetti.
“She made cheesy garlic bread,” Peter offers.
Kitty rolls her shoulders back. “Sounds good.”
The three of them sit around the table.
Peter belatedly invited Ned, but he’s on a date with a woman named Betty who texts like a newspaper article: introductory sentence with the who, what, when and where. Peter knows because Ned shoved his phone under Peter’s nose repeatedly to exclaim about how awesome she is as he was trying on various Hawaiian shirts for tonight. He extended an offer to Flash, but Flash said he’d rather be caught dead than hanging at home with his roommates on a Saturday night.
So, it’s just the three of them.
Sitting around the table.
Peter feels nerves begin to pulse underneath his skin, and he fumbles reaching for the wine when he feels the brush of Kitty’s toes against his shin. He uncorks the bottle and offers some to Kitty before pouring his own. He tilts the neck toward MJ’s glass.
“I’m not drinking that.”
“Why not?”
“Because I want to have full control of my body and mind tonight.” She smirks and takes a large, crunchy bite of garlic bread, all smug satisfaction.
Kitty leans over to brush her elbow against Peter’s arm. “It’s okay, we’ll just split it and let Michelle be the designated driver.”
Peter says, “We’re not driving anywhere.”
“No, we’re not,” she agrees, smile sly.
This time, the person who hits his shin with their foot is MJ, and it’s less of a gentle caress and more of an I told you so kick.
Peter knows he lost whatever battle they were having about Kitty being a helpful superintendent, or not flirting with him, or whatever. He doesn’t actually know what the argument was anymore. He could probably figure out how those two threads are related if he wasn’t focused on surviving dinner with any ounce of his dignity left in tact.
He spills red sauce on his shirt, knocks his fork onto the ground, and spits wine back into his glass when MJ says he’s always going at it until 3 AM, apparently having decided to encourage Kitty instead of helping Peter redirect her comments toward the PG.
He sputters and attempts to clarify that thing he is “going at” is video games.
Peter can’t even blame Kitty for the misunderstanding. Looking back, her intentions were clear.
To retract his previous statement: Peter feels pretty stupid.
After dinner, Kitty excuses herself to the bathroom.
Peter gathers the dishes from the table, making a pile of plates, forks clattering on top like a clock with too many hands, smearing the sauce and cheese in the process. He lifts his head and finds Michelle sitting with her hands folded on the table, eyeing him with more amusement than he’s ever seen on her face.
“Please don’t,” he groans.
“If you wanted to get laid, loser, you could have just said so.”
“I don’t,” Peter stresses, picking up the stack he made and walking it to the sink. “That’s not what this is.”
“She only agreed to half-help you because she wants to have sex with you. Don’t get me wrong, Pryde’s not a bad superintendent. I like being left alone. The old super was always sticking his nose in everybody’s business. If something is going to destroy her property, she’ll get someone to fix it. But come on, you have to admit I was right.” MJ’s chair scrapes against the hardwood.
“You’re not, though.”
MJ huffs, “Okay.”
“She’s a good person and a good super. You just think the worst of people.”
“I’m a realist.” She leans against the counter, next to the sink, arms crossed over her chest.
“Pessimist.”
“You just said you didn’t want to get laid, so only one of us is lying.”
“Must be you.”
“Funny,” MJ droles. “You’d make a better case about her being helpful if you said you came onto her and wanted to get laid, but…”
Peter’s mouth twitches up at the corners, but he does his best to push down the abashed smile.
Kitty reenters the living space, reaching behind her head to tug her hair out of her ponytail. She says, “I know this is unbelievable, but I’ve never had a threesome before.”
Peter feels his face go hot. “Uh.”
“You guys ready, or are we going to skate around this a little more?” Kitty asks.
Michelle laughs, a quick, brash sound caught in the back of her throat. “Peter?”
He should probably fess up.
No, he should definitely fess up.
He should apologize for the misunderstanding and own up to misreading her obvious flirting as friendly, because he never wants to assume a woman is into him when she’s just being nice. Michelle’s complained about it many times after coming home from a long shift at the bar, exhausted and smelling like spilled liquor.
He glances at her and the sparkling smugness all over her face. He says, “I’m ready.”
Kitty says, “Awesome.”
MJ says, “What?”
“Unless MJ isn’t game,” Peter challenges.
MJ stares at him, and he feels it bristle at the back of his neck. He swears a question blooms in her eyes, but it’s too marred by competition to pull apart. “I’m ready,” she decides.
And Peter knows what they’re doing now. They’re playing some weird game of chicken because neither of them want to lose. Peter already lost, so he doesn’t know why it’s important that MJ caves first. He doesn’t want to sleep with Kitty, and he doesn’t want to have a threesome with Kitty and MJ, and MJ knows that.
But Peter likes the skeptical surprise in the crease between her eyebrows as he nods his head toward the hallway. “After you.”
They end up in Peter’s bedroom after MJ refuses to let Kitty and Peter into hers, blocking the door with her body. Kitty helps Michelle’s case by saying she and Peter flipped his mattress earlier, and it feels like another relevant tally in Peter’s loss column.
He rocks on the balls of his feet, hands stuffed into the pockets of his jeans. “So, um, what now?”
“You two should kiss first,” Kitty hums. “Yeah. I’d like to see that.”
“Oh, um, actually--” Peter starts to protest.
“What?” MJ asks evenly. “Are you backing out?”
Peter swallows. “No.”
“Just kiss each other,” Kitty says, moving to rest a nudging hand against both of their shoulders. “We’ll all ease into it. Like I said, this is new to me, too.”
“Who said it’s new to me?” MJ spits.
She’s nervous. Peter can tell by the quick cut of her eyes from Kitty to Peter, the quick bite to the corner of her mouth, one thumb pushing at the quick of her nails.
“Sorry,” Kitty says. Peter watches her rub MJ’s shoulder, but it only serves to make MJ more tense.
She shoves Kitty’s hand away and looks at Peter again. “Come on. Kiss me, nerd.”
Peter blinks. Her eyes are wide and golden brown, but closed off. Her words a challenge, because that’s all this is.
He can do this. He can keep surprising her, beat her at whatever moronic, convoluted game they’re playing. Some twisted version of truth or dare, rolling the dice and getting snake eyes, the beer going to his head in True American and stepping off his chair to push it when he can’t seem to reach anything to scoot himself along, everyone yelling at him that he’s dead.
He can do this.
Her hands move to his shoulders, her thumbs warm against the curve at the base of his neck. Peter shivers, more from fear than anticipation. MJ is taller than him, always has been, but Peter has never thought about it much until now, even though she’s in her socks and she towered over him in heels during the wedding. He’s aware of her, like she could consume him.
Peter looks at MJ’s mouth, a tight, flat line on her face.
He’s never thought about kissing her before, either.
She huffs, exasperated. Her thumbs press into his skin, and she leans forward, down an inch.
Peter leans, too. Eyes screwed shut.
He can do this, he can do this, he can do this.
Fuck.
He can’t do this.
He pushes her back gently, just enough force to stop her slow movements. “You win.”
He opens his eyes, finds hers.
She’s beautiful, and her eyes are wide and just as terrified as he feels, but her mouth slides into a smug little smirk that looks almost out of place on her face. She blinks, shoves him back a little bit more, hands dropping.
She says, “I knew it,” half arrogant and half breathless.
“I’m sorry, what?” Kitty asks.
Looking at Kitty seems to break the spell, because MJ laughs, and Peter feels a new flush in his cheeks, creeping down his neck.
He does his best to apologize.
Turns out, despite being sure he doesn’t actually want to kiss MJ, now that his brain has considered it, sometimes, when he’s asleep, his mind trudges the idea up, bringing it to the forefront and playing out weird scenarios to make it happen.
Kitty’s usually there when it begins, physically forcing them together with icy palms stretching between shoulder blades.
But she always dissolves, disappears, as the dream continues.
As long as it’s just happening when he’s asleep, Peter elects to ignore it. Chalks it up to Boy Brain.
Liz tells him that’s not a thing.
He asks why boy brain isn’t real but women’s intuition is.
She shakes her head and says, “Everybody has intuition, but women and minorities are more in touch with theirs because society teaches us that if we’re not, we’ll get murdered, and even if we are, we might get murdered.”
“That’s … dark.”
“MJ explained it to me, and it actually does make a lot of sense.”
Peter sighs.
He admits that it does.