Reckless
Peter stares at the building for another few seconds without a word, until they both see telltale smoke emerging from under the crack of the door they just burst through.
"Peter," says Gwen cautiously. As much as she sympathizes for him, she wants to get out of her now.
He nods, snapping himself out of his daze. In a calculated fashion he glances up around the street, then back at her, looking her up and down.
"We can't stay here," he says.
"I know. Let's go," says Gwen impatiently.
Peter shakes his head. "No, no. I mean Manhattan. We can't stay in Manhattan, at least you can't."
Gwen freezes. "What's that supposed to mean?"
He looks down at her and toward a subway stop and says, "You're not wearing any shoes."
"What's that supposed to mean, Peter?"
He knocks one of his shoes off from the heel and leans down to pry the other one off, then takes a shoe in both of his hands and extends them to Gwen. "Put these on, if you tie the laces really tight—"
She pushes the shoes out of her line of vision. "I can't leave Manhattan."
"You're going to have to," says Peter, with a brand of unrelenting certainty that she has never heard from him before. He sets the shoes on the ground by her feet. "If that man was willing to kidnap you because of one little stint in the media with Spiderman, god only knows what else could happen."
Gwen shakes her head and starts walking down the street barefoot. She has no idea where they are but it looks like Manhattan and she will walk until night falls to find a sign for the subway if she has to.
"Gwen," says Peter, jogging to catch up with her. "I just don't think it's safe for you here anymore—"
"No," Gwen says. Her head is splitting and her body is aching and she feels like she might just combust at any moment. "I go to school here, Peter, I have a joband my family, I'm not going to drop everything just because of one nutjob, who is dead, according to you!"
Peter flinches as if she has smacked him and she feels a small twinge of remorse. For a moment she's afraid she has paralyzed him, that he's just going to stand there like some kicked puppy, but it's worse: his features contort and his voice gets so low and stern that she can't even summon the indignation to interrupt him.
"I don't know that for sure," he says, "and even without him, there are a hundred—a thousand other 'nutjobs' in this city, and you have become a target, Gwen. There is something else going on here—I can't believe that he's the only one, that this isn't over, my dad's still missing and I just have this feeling—"
"Oh, you and your senses again," says Gwen, "your impeccable sense for danger, of course, you must know everything."
"What are you—" Peter stammers. "What are you getting at here, are you even listening to me?"
"Are you listening to yourself?" asks Gwen. Her knees are shaking and she's so bewildered and disappointed and exhausted that she's afraid she might laugh. "I bet you're glad this happened," she says accusatorily, knowing how crazy she sounds but completely unable to stop herself. Before Peter can interject, she elaborates, "I bet you're glad, this worked out so perfectly, hasn't it every time before? You and I, we take some major step in the right direction, I actually trick myself into thinking it's okay to get close to you again, and then you—"
"Jesus, Gwen," says Peter, "are you serious? You can't be—this is my worst nightmare, I never thought—if I ever thought for a second that something like this would happen, I never would have—"
"Shown up at my apartment like some crazed, lovesick lunatic in the middle of the night?" Gwen finishes, throwing the words at him like a whip.
Peter looks visibly upset but he takes a breath, trying to be calm, trying to be rational, trying to be everything she cannot be right now and she almost hates him for it. "This isn't about that and you know it," says Peter. "This is—your safety, your life, Gwen, this has nothing to do with that, this is so much bigger."
"Because last night wasn't a big deal," says Gwen caustically.
"Of course it was," says Peter, sounding impatient, "Gwen—" He stops himself, shaking his head, as if he has thought the better of saying something. "You're upset. You're hurt, your forehead's bleeding, we should really just get out of here and get some rest and then we can talk about it when—"
"Oh, don't treat me like some kind of invalid, I'm perfectly capable of having this discussion now," says Gwen heatedly, although she is slowly becoming aware of the spectacle she is making of herself barefoot in the middle of a sidewalk to the few people who have walked by.
"There's nothing to discuss. You have to get out of here. If anything ever happened to you, I could never forgive myself—"
"Oh, just stop," says Gwen holding a hand to her head. She hisses, grazing the sticky gash, but it doesn't shake her resolve. "I know this act, Peter. You do this every time. You reel me in and we do something crazy and you're such a masochist that you have to punish yourself by staying away from me, but what about me, Peter? Why don't you ever think about how I feel, what I want?"
"I do," he says, sounding miserable but determined, "of course I do, Gwen. I feel the same things, I want the same things, but that doesn't change what just happened, what could happen if we just sit here and let it. I've never wanted to hurt you," he says, the same way he has said it a thousand times, and even though she believes him, of course she believes him, she turns her back on him, she can't watch. "This isn't—you know this isn't some reaction to what happened last night. You have to understand that. If I'd had any idea that this freak would come after you, I never would have shown up at your apartment last night—I swear to god, I wasn't trying to reopen old wounds, or—"
"You're right," says Gwen, cutting him off. "Last night was a mistake."
Peter's face pales. "No, no. That's not what I said, could you just give me a chance to—"
"Forget it," says Gwen, blinking hard, because she doesn't want to start blubbering on the sidewalk on top of everything else. She's so embarrassed. She maybe has never hated herself more than this, not just for exposing herself and making herself so vulnerable to him last night after they both should have known better, but for using it to hurt him now.
She just can't think of any other way to make a clean break, any other way to make it any less humiliating than it already is. She tries to walk away, but of course he keeps up with her easily, falling into step with her without even trying.
"At least put some shoes on," he says, offering his sneakers to her again.
This time she knocks them straight out of his hands and they hit the cement with a thud. "Leave me alone."
"Gwen—"
"Just go!" she screams, loud enough that people are starting to turn around, even though she has figured out they must be as far as Harlem and she is sure nobody is too shocked to see a barefoot girl shrieking at a boy in the middle of the day. Peter is staring at her, looking nervous and hesitant so she decides to help him out by adding, "I swear to god, Peter. Leave."
He keeps walking next to her, keeping a few feet of distance between them, apparently undeterred by her attempts to shake him off through public embarrassment. Unsurprisingly, nobody watching bothers to come to her aid, either. She decides she can't yell at him again, that she'll just have to let him walk with her until they find a way home and even though she feels like her chest is about to cave in she will endure this. She has to.
Peter whistles and waves his arm out and Gwen looks at him as if he has completely lost his mind, but then she sees the taxi pull up to the curb. Peter opens the back door for her and rattles off her home address to the driver.
"Are you coming, too?" she asks, trying to sound like she doesn't care.
He stares at her meaningfully. "Only if you want me to."
Gwen can't look him in the eye. She levels herself with the taxi and slides inside, forces herself to look up, and says, "I don't."
At first she can't fathom why Peter would send a taxi to her family's apartment instead of hers, but she doesn't make any move to tell the driver to take her someplace else. She feels like her own apartment is haunted. The sheets are still tangled, her clothes are still hanging and wet from running home in the rain—there are too many reminders, and right now she doesn't want to think about Peter, or the grim acceptance on his face as the taxi drove away.
The driver stares at her curiously through the rearview mirror and Gwen knows she must look like a wreck. She touches a tentative hand to her head and feels that her bangs are sticky with dried blood, but the source of the bleeding is relatively small and she doubts it will need stitches. The skin of her legs is an unsightly collection of dirt and fresh bruises. She can't go home like this.
She can't go anywhere else, either.
She pays the driver with a credit card she had shoved into her pocket with the original intention of paying for breakfast that morning and heads up to her apartment building. The doorman stares at her and he might even say something, but Gwen just smiles at him briefly and ducks her head down and lets the elevator swallow her up before anyone else can try to ask questions.
It's so quiet as she shoots up those twenty floors. She wishes she could stay in here forever. Alone, warm, safe. Nobody to complicate things.
The elevator dings and the doors slide open and Gwen leaves it behind, numbly walking over to her front door. It's unlocked, so she walks in as quietly as she can, hoping she can maybe sneak into the bathroom and at least wash her face and change her clothes before facing anyone, but as soon as she walks into the apartment her eyes lock on her mother's and she knows she is completely out of luck.
At first Gwen freezes and so does her mother. She had almost forgotten that they were upset with each other, that they hadn't really even spoken since that afternoon she walked in on her with Captain Johnson. Now it all seems so unimportant and far from her mind.
"Gwendolyn," says her mother, sounding a little surprised, and then Gwen steps forward and her mother gets a better look at her and gasps. "What on earth happened to you?"
The sight of her mother rushing over to her makes her throat feel tight and her eyes sting and without meaning to she feels like a little kid, young and stupid and way in over her head. She can't think of an excuse, she doesn't want to, she just wants to stand here and cry and have someone tell her it will be okay.
But her mother looks terrified. Gwen can't possibly put the burden of any of this on her—she can't ever know the truth, can't know about Peter or the danger she has put herself in or the unresolved questions that keep her up all night. Gwen used to be able to tell her mother everything, she was never the type of girl to keep secrets from her parents, but this is the kind of secret that changes everything.
She wishes her father were alive. She clings to the idea that none of this would have happened if he were. He would eventually come to see how much Peter and Gwen cared for each other and change his mind. He would stop the police from shooting at Peter and maybe let Spiderman cooperate with them to actually change the face of crime in this city instead of giving it a constant advantage by going after the wrong person. He would be here for Gwen to talk to, because for those brief minutes that he was alive and he knew the truth about Peter, he was the only person in the world who would ever understand.
"Your forehead—are you alright? Come here, let me look at it," says her mother.
Gwen obediently levels her chin so that her mom can get a view of it. After a few seconds she says, "Go sit on the couch, I'll get the first aid kit."
Gwen sits on the couch. The apartment is uncharacteristically quiet and she wonders where her brothers are, wonders what time it is. She bites the inside of her lip in an effort not to cry and by the time her mother has retrieved the first aid kit and is rushing back toward her she thinks she might have herself under control.
Her mother stops short and looks her up and down—the grim, the bruises, the bare feet.
"Jesus, Gwen," she says, "what happened to you?"
"I—" She hasn't thought this far ahead, and why would she? She never thought something like this would happen. The words that come out of her are absurd. "I was skateboarding, and I fell," she says, imagining that Peter might laugh if he could hear her now.
Her mother looks at her in disbelief. "Skate … boarding?"
Gwen nods. She might as well commit to this. "In flip flops," she says, "Without a helmet."
Her mother's face looks pinched, like she doesn't quite understand, but she doesn't look at all suspicious—as far as she knows, Gwen has never lied to her before.
"Why were you skateboarding?" asks her mother, with a tone that is slightly stern but mostly relieved, as if she is glad it was something so minor and not her initial worst fear, which Gwen supposes would involve a mugging.
"It was, uh—Peter's skateboard, I was playing with it and I slipped and fell and my … flip flops broke," says Gwen, feeling more ridiculous than she has ever felt in her life.
"Peter? Peter Parker?" says her mother, finishing cleaning off the blood on Gwen's forehead with a worried sounding laugh. "What in the world was he doing letting you ride his skateboard like that, doesn't he know better?"
"I—uh—" It feels weird having to defend him for something that didn't happen when she is furious at him for something else that did. "He was taking pictures, he likes to take pictures, you know, and I was goofing off and just—fell."
For some reason the lying soothes her and she doesn't feel like she's going to cry now that she has something to distract herself.
Her mother shakes her head sadly. "I wish you were more careful. Look at you. You're all banged up."
Gwen has to fiddle with the couch cushion to keep herself from getting emotional again. She has missed her mother in these past few weeks and she didn't understand how much until just now.
"Why didn't he at least bring you home?" asks her mother, always a fan of chivalry.
"He tried to," says Gwen, burrowing deeper into the lie. "He wanted to. But he had work so I wouldn't let him."
It's an unsettling thing, defending him like this. It feels like a knee-jerk reaction, something that she can't help. Even now, when she is angrier and more frustrated than she has ever been, she doesn't want her mother to think badly of him. It shouldn't be important to her what her mother thinks of Peter, not unless she ever plans for her mother to see Peter again, and that would involve a level of relationship she will probably never reach with him—it's an empty lie, one that betrays the false hope she still can't stop holding for Peter.
"Well, I'm glad it wasn't any worse than this," says her mother. She clicks the first aid shit closed and says, "Why don't you go take a shower? We'll watch a movie or something. Your brothers are out with your uncle for the night."
Gwen nods. The idea of it is so comforting and familiar it feels like her heart might burst with relief.
"I'm sorry," she blurts. "About the thing with—with you and Johnson."
Her mother takes a breath. "I'm sorry, too. I wish you hadn't found out the way you did."
Gwen leaves to go take a shower and it's the last that they speak of the issue for the rest of the night. She stands under the water for a long time, trying to calm herself down, but it's difficult not to replay the day's events in her mind. Waking up next to Peter in some sun-soaked, movie-like fantasy, then waking up in that cold, cemented room. The look on his face the few times she kissed him this morning and the look on his face as he stood shaking outside the building and confessed to killing a man. The way she was almost certain that their captor's lips were curled into a smile when he said the words, You're a pretty girl. I'd hate for that to change.
She rubs soap on her face, rubs it too hard. She knows that she can't just wash everything down the drain but it doesn't stop her from trying. Eventually she shuts the water off and leaves the safe harbor of the fogged up bathroom behind; she sees her mother in the hallway and smiles. She won't talk to Peter again. She won't get involved anymore. She'll just live her life the way everybody already thinks she does, orderly and intelligent and fine. She sits on the couch with her mother and tucks her knees into her chest as the opening credits for the movie starts and lets herself believe she can go back to this imagined place where everything was perfect, lets herself believe that she can go on as if nothing happened, lets herself believe she can, once and for all, leave Peter Parker behind.
I'm officially the most awkward person on the planet. Among the examples this week are spilling hot tea in a crowded lecture hall, and taking what looked like a fun free thing from someone handing out fliers near our lawn that turned out to be a condom, but it's like, what do you do? Give them back their condom and draw MORE attention to yourself? Or just sit there, with a condom burning a hole in your pocket, making you irrationally feel like a complete and total slut? Well, I chose option B, and yes, it DID fall out of my pocket. Pulled a Zac Efron in class. Naturally I just kept walking like it happened all the time.
To top it all off, my one successful interaction this week with a guy I like went like this. Me: "Hey, how was your day?" Him: "Holy crap, what happened to your voice?!" Me: "Um ... nothing. That's, um. The way I talk."
I'm going to crawl under a rock.