The bus picks them up near Hamilton with their arms laden with grocery bags. Mary Jane makes a suggestion about buying some new sweaters for the coming winter but Peter is trying to find them a seat so he doesn't hear her. She doesn't know that he has skipped more than one class to be with her for the day. If she did she wouldn't have suggested buying sweaters.

A week ago she got sick after some asshole at the bar she works at tried to grab her skirt and pull her into an alley. He was drunk enough that Mary Jane managed to twist out of his reach and knee him right in his family jewels. The man toppled into a heap next to a dumpster and she felt really good about herself. But then she slipped on her stiletto work heels and landed on his collapsed body. She vomited right there.

Peter remembers finding her at the local clinic with a twisted ankle, a bruised knee, and smelling like unwashed laundry. He knows she didn't have any friends in the city so he wasn't all that surprised to answer her phone call. He felt a bit foolish for having taken the time to dress up in his best clothes though. She had been so calm over the phone that he'd failed to gauge the urgency of the situation she was in.

He took her home in a cab and she stayed quiet for the whole journey. He found this very off-putting and had a whole debate inside himself whether he was supposed to extend the sympathy card and try to console her. She was usually the one to fill up their space with empty talk, he found that part of her soothing even if he wasn't listening to her all the time. In the end, they arrived at her home, and not a word passed between them.

"Fuck sweaters. I want a scarf instead." Mary Jane said shifting the weight of the bag from one leg to another.

"If you're cold I could lend you mine," Peter said.

"No, I'm not cold. I just see you wearing a scarf all the time and it makes me wish I had one for myself."

"I'm hardly the person to model your fashion tastes after."

"Why not? I always like your scarves. It makes me jealous that I don't have one myself."

"Hm, maybe you're still sick. Should we get an appointment?"

Mary Jane sits up in her seat "You always exercise your closed-off nature whenever I have some idea."

"How come that's your default answer whenever I don't agree on some subject with you."

"I'm just suspicious that the reason you don't appreciate my input on anything is that you just like to keep me guessing all the time."

"It's a good theory and I appreciate you well enough. But I'm just a bit distracted."

Mary Jane unwraps a chocolate bar from the grocery bag and sticks it in her mouth. She looks at Peter staring out of the front of the bus with a serious look etched across his face and wonders what he's thinking at the moment. He's such a mystery to her. He's always there when she needs him and yet she never knows what he's thinking. She wants to ask him why he likes to be around her but she worries that asking him that will drive him away from her. She knows so few people in her life. She can't risk it.

She still remembers that night after the cab ride to her home, when she was cold and blood was running down her ankle bandage. He'd been so gentle with her as he helped her up the stairs. When she asked him to take her to her bed, he didn't hesitate, not even for a second. She also remembers how he'd frozen in that brief instant when she'd asked him to turn around so that she could change out of her clothes.

The picture remains vividly etched in Peter's mind as well. It was the sorry state of her that had evoked a feeling of pure sadism in him that he had never known lurked within him. She was naked, rib cage poking out from the pale skin underneath her breasts, huge welts over her knee with those big green eyes directed at him. Right then he had an uncontrollable urge to hurt her. She looked so much like a defenseless child, so vulnerable, so akin to wolf prey that he knew he could do anything to her almost as easily as he could to a wounded puppy.

Then she slipped under the covers of her bed and reason found him again. But he was loathed to forget just how easily those urges had momentarily overridden every sensation in his body. The intensity of his impulse to hurt her had been so raw in his mind that he felt guilty from just being there. He was ready to leave when Mary Jane called out to him.

"Hey, do you think that guy would have really hurt me?"

"Uh, who?"

"The drunk outside the bar, stupid."

"Oh. I don't know," he says. "I'm just glad he didn't. I mean not any more than he did."

"For a second I was sure he would, you know. That he would drag me down the alley and do things to me and I wouldn't have the strength to shout for help"

"Were you scared?"

Mary Jane slid the covers from her face to look at him.

"Sorry, that was a stupid question," Peter said scraping his feet on the floor.

"No, I don't think I was scared. That's what terrifies me now. That I wasn't even for a second."

He looks at her and realizes there are small tear-shaped drops on the edges of her eyes.

"It isn't the first time something like this has happened to me."

"What do you mean?" he said.

"When I was small, sometimes my father's friends would do things to me when he wasn't there. They would get drunk and…"

"Jesus"

Peter had always felt that she had a rough time growing up. It was just something he'd noticed in the way she talked about things. She always kept putting herself down or making in-jokes that had a morbid sense of humor attached to them. But he could have never guessed it was this bad.

Mary Jane on the other hand never talked about her life when she didn't need to. She has spent a lot of time with Peter and in that time she's learned to accept that he doesn't always remember everything she says. In fact, half the time she's certain he's tuning her out completely because there are a million other things worth talking about. Somehow she doesn't mind that.

At school, people hated her for it. They labeled her an "air-head" because she was always seeking attention. During the final years of high school, some boys even mistook these things as cues to fulfill their own gratification, and when she told them no, they spread rumors about her that were impossible to live down. "Blowqueen" they called her. She never talked to them again.

In the city, people were a lot more forgiving. But it wasn't until Peter that she felt comfortable in bringing back the side of her she'd hidden away. She'd been with a lot of people, but with him, it felt like she didn't have to live by anyone's stupid rules. Just her own. Even in that moment when she told him about those things that had happened to her she felt safe. It felt right to tell him. It felt even better when she told him to stay with her for the night. She wasn't ready to be left alone after what had just happened.

"You want me to sit by your bed or something?" he said.

"No," she whispered. "I think I need someone to hold me. Just for a while."

"Oh."

She looked at him and saw him rooted to the spot, his hands bunched up in his pockets.

"Are you going to come or do you want me to freeze to death?" she said, holding up the edge of the blanket so that he could slide in with her.

Her voice seemed to stir him out of a deep slumber and he grunted before slipping out of his shoes. He threw his scarf and jacket down and then he looked at a loss for what else to take off. He froze again.

"Well?"

"I uh… I guess I'm ready," he said.

"Great," she said.

She felt him climb into the bed and snuggle against her back. She dropped the blanket cover over them.

"Um, whatever you do try not to move too much," he whispered into her ear.

She turned out the lights and let herself rest as comfortably as she could in the space between the wiry muscles of his shoulders and the wide berth of his chest. There was so much power in him. She felt he could snap her in two if he so wanted. But he wouldn't and it felt good to trust someone that much.

When she woke up in the morning, she was amazed to find that Peter was still there with her. She had fully expected him to disappear now that he knew just how damaged, how irreparably broken she was, and yet, there he was pressed against her back, his clothes warm to the touch, his strong shoulders just as solid as they were the night before. She was glad that he wasn't awake to see how she wept on her side of the pillow for hours after. That kind of ugliness was better resolved in the dark.

"What are you thinking?" Mary Jane finally gathers the courage to ask as they both leave the bus and walk towards her apartment.

"What?"

"What are you thinking?"

Peter makes a show of turning his head around to look at his surroundings. Like he's just noticing they've left the bus. "I'm thinking that these bags are heavy"

"Huh, I don't believe you. Try again."

He scrunches up his face, "Let's see, what was I thinking? I don't know what I was thinking."

"Well, what are you thinking now?"

"Now? I don't know what I'm thinking now either."

"Bullshit. How can someone not know what they're thinking? You'd have to be a ghost for that. My nana doesn't know what she's thinking and that's because she died five years ago."

Peter walks her up the steps to her apartment door and hands her the bags. Afterward, when he's in his room by himself he wonders if she doesn't want to see him anymore. He'd understand completely. After all, he wasn't a nice person. She doesn't know how much he wants to hurt her sometimes. He crumples up the eviction notice waiting under his doorstep and throws it into the bin from the other side of the room. Then he lies awake on his bed for the rest of the evening.

The next day he's hungry but he skips breakfast. He goes straight to work and gets yelled at for being behind on his deadline by Jonah. He hands him a few pictures of Spiderman from the last batch of rejected material. They barely cover the bus fare to college. Once upon a time, he'd argue about his pay but he doesn't do that. The quality of his work has been steadily declining for some time so he knows he doesn't deserve anything more.

He has no one to talk to in class. He either sits in them not really listening to anybody or he goes to the library and repeats the same thing but in relative silence. He doesn't attend the after-college parties, the fests, the drink-a-thons, the nights go away elsewhere for him. The days are spent at home, a little here, a little there, then home again. He's so unenthusiastic about everything that he sometimes worries he's clinically depressed. But this way he also knows other people are safe. He gets that mad urge to hurt someone only when he's around Mary Jane these days. If he tells her then she'll want to leave him too and then he'll know everybody is safe. He takes great pleasure in that thought.

On Sunday, he stops by his uncle and Gwen's gravestones. The gesture has started meaning less and less to him. This is his first visit in he can't remember how long. He stands over their graves in silence, then treks halfway across town to the Salvation Army Community Center. He goes to the chapel at the back looking for May but she's not there today. There are two people sitting on different aisles hanging their heads in prayer and since neither of them looks anything like her, Peter leaves them to it.

He wanders around the place for a bit because he has nothing else to do. When he leaves, the man standing at the entrance asks him to write down his feelings on a square piece of paper and put it in the community box. It's called the cleansing box. He writes - "I don't know my feelings but sometimes I have a terrible desire to hurt people. Those are the only times I'm sure I'm not empty inside." He wants to continue but his hands have started shaking. He crumples the paper and goes home.

It's nearly a month later that he's on the subway with Mary Jane. She's heading to an audition in Yorkville and although she usually does them alone, sometimes she asks him to come with her. He tells her it's a good thing because when Mary Jane gets rejected at these things she goes to the nearest Starbucks where she orders an extra cream latte, locks herself in the washroom, and cries. At least this way he can clear her dues while she takes her time.

"You think people are weak and brittle. You think they aren't worthy of your presence. You think you're above the rest of us." Mary Jane says scrolling through her Instagram feed.

"Just because I don't say everything all the time doesn't mean I'm judging everyone as feeble and not worth my time."

They'd been arguing since yesterday about him not sharing more in their conversations. He had told her there wasn't much he ever wanted to say and she took it as proof that he hated other people. He realized later she was drunk.

"Then you think I'm weak. You think I'm not worth your time. You regret ever being nice to me" she said, placing her phone on her lap and redoing her bun for the third time.

"I don't regret anything I've ever done with you."

"You regret coming with me today. You could have been doing so many other things. Better things."

"You're blowing things out of proportion. I can see you're upset and now you're taking it out on me."

"So you admit you didn't want to come today? I knew it."

"Did you hear me say that? Don't just say things I didn't say and act as if I said them."

She takes out the hairpin keeping her bun in place. The fourth time Peter has seen her do this. "I don't have to act anything. You never say a thing anyways. You're always so mysterious."

When Mary Jane disappears down the hallway to her audition room, Peter sits in the lobby with her things and worries that he's fundamentally a bad person. On the one hand, it validates his desire to distance himself from other people but on the other, he wonders if accepting that as a fact is making him even worse. Maybe that sadistic pleasure that grips him from time to time in Mary Jane's presence is the same one making him push her away even if it's not always deliberate. He feels tainted for giving in to that sensation rather than allowing himself to be emotionally empty the rest of the time.

Because he has nothing to do, he starts thinking about what he'll tell her once she comes back. He sits there staring into space for a bit until he remembers this odd habit of hers that's been annoying him recently. He always remembers them when she has gotten the better of him in an argument. It probably says something about him though he doesn't like to think what.

The first time this habit manifested in real life, he was sitting in class when he received a message on his phone that said - Your least favorite person wants to talk to you. What's up? - and he replied - You're not my least favorite person. She told him she was only joking. Another time she sent him a greeting in the morning that read - You don't hate me after last night do you? - and he couldn't even remember what they did the previous night. She also regularly sends him a gif that says "Hate me yet?" over an animated panda and he almost always never responds back to that.

For a person who needs constant reaffirmation about herself, he's sometimes confused why she wants to take up acting as a profession. He won't tell her this but he secretly believes she doesn't have the wherewithal to succeed long term. If she's always pestering him for approval then how can she live through the years of rejection and disapproval that's inevitably going to come crashing down upon her in time?

Ten meters away from him and down the hall, Mary Jane is wondering the same thing. She has no idea why she always subjects herself to such anxious environments when she's clearly not cut out for these things. The casting agent gives her a smile from the end of the room and then tells her, "Thank you for sharing that with us. We'll let you know the results in a week." She slides out of her chair and opens the door unsure of how much time has passed. She finds Peter sitting right where she left him.

As soon as he sees her, she waves at him stupidly and he gets up and hands her things over.

"That was quick," he says.

"Was it? I couldn't tell while I was inside"

"Yeah it was," he says. "How did it go?"

When she doesn't say anything, he gives her a pat on the shoulder.

"Let's go find that Starbucks washroom"

They walk there and he waits for her outside while she cleans herself in the mirror. There's another person inside with her so she refrains from bawling too hard. The tissue paper punctures in her hand as she wipes her nose, so she uses two new ones. She feels alright by the time she's sitting opposite Peter on their ironwood table sipping through the creaminess of her coffee.

"What happened to your ankle?" he says clasping and unclasping his fingers.

"I thought I told you several times already. It's ninety-nine percent healed."

He seems to nod his head as he stares out of the shop window but she could be mistaken. She sometimes reads too much into people's barest movements. "You know I don't always remember what you say."

She expects to be chafed by that answer. But she's actually amused. "That's probably for the best. Even I don't remember half the nonsense I say."

There are small decorative lights hanging off one side of the shop's interior walls. They have been newly put up since she was last here. They make her feel happy for a second. Then she feels depressed that she doesn't know why.

"Your comment about me being a ghost the other day. I think it got to me," he says.

She realizes he's being serious now. "How so?"

"I've been feeling like that for a while. That I don't know what I want or how I feel."

"Oh"

"It's really odd. I don't know if it's just a phase or if it's just me."

She sees him bending over his coffee, his eyes unfocused as they stare into the milky foam swimming to the surface. She waits until some time has passed.

"What else do you feel?"

"Hm?"

"What else?"

He stirs on his seat, "Sometimes when I'm around you I feel like hurting you."

"Why?"

"I don't know. I just want to that's all. When it's gone I don't know why. Then I'm afraid I'm going mad or I already have."

Mary Jane realizes that she doesn't know what to make of this. She can see him watching her intently but she doesn't know what to do. To be truthful, she doesn't want to say anything. Not until she's thought long and hard about it. It's not what she usually does but she feels afraid that she's about to blow everything wide open by opening her mouth to say another one of her stupid things.

But then she realizes that's a silly notion because people don't just leave one another over the things they say. People say a lot of bad things to people they care about even when they don't mean to say those things - Parents, wives, brothers, friends. Often it's that leap of faith where you have to bare your soul to the other person when they bare theirs that scares people.

Mary Jane realizes she is very scared.

"I'd let you hurt me if it meant you'd stay with me," she says.

Peter doesn't believe he's ever felt a larger gush of gratitude rush through his body than when he hears her say those words. Then when he has calmed down he feels a fear unlike anything course through his veins and fill the bottom of his heart. It grips him so viciously that he's sure he's having a panic attack. His fingers feel like they've been sun-dried and bleached with ice at the same time. Then when he's sure he's only imagining these things he grips the handle of the coffee mug and stirs it in his hand. He sips the last dregs of sugar floating at the bottom and leans over its empty pit.

"Do you really like me that much?" he says.

"Why?" she says. "What's there not to like about you?"

On the ride back home, he remembers to tell her that May had invited her over for Christmas. She'd spent the last one alone in the city and when his aunt had learned that from him she had made him promise to offer her another option.

"You mean like a visit?" she says.

"No, to stay"

"For how long?"

"However long you want"

"But my theater rehearsals start around New Year"

"Great. Then you can stay till New Year"

The train stops at Columbus. The doors hiss open to let in new passengers and disgorge a waiting few. Then it resumes its journey.

"So you'll come?"

She knows what her answer is but she waits to say it. When Peter looks away she wipes away the tear building under her eye with the hem of her sleeve.

"Yes, I'll come."

Peter is relieved to hear it. Then he's a little confused at why she's crying. It reminds him of that night he slept with her after the man attacked her and he'd found her sobbing against his chest in the early hours of the morning. He doesn't think she knows he was listening. He thinks of her naked body crushed against his as it quietly broke into those fit of tears. He remembers just how much he'd felt a danger to her that night. Now, he feels a strange pleasure at the thought, not sexual, something entirely different. Something more.

"Hey, listen," he says, unsure about how to do this. He's always been bad at soothing other people's tears. "If it's any consolation you'll have other ones in the future. Who knows maybe this one was for a shitty commercial."

At first, he thinks she's groaning but then he realizes he's made her laugh. "No, it's not that."

"What then?"

"It'd take forever to explain"

"Oh"

"But don't worry," she says. "I have a feeling I'll finally get this one."