Lying Heart

The last person he expected to get in touch with him on New Year's Eve is Flash, but the little invite notification pops up on his Facebook page the next morning: "BLACKOUT" is the title of the event, with the tagline, "Drink until you forget 2012!"

Peter has never been to a party, or at least a party of this standard, where at least half of his class will be wasted and vomiting on someone's floor. It's not that he is trying to be responsible or upstanding, he just genuinely has never been interested in attending. For one thing, it's a long ride to the city, one that only seems longer at ridiculous hours like two in the morning. For another, he is terrible at small talk with the classmates he recognizes but doesn't know as well, and anyone he talks to on a regular basis wouldn't be at a party like that, either.

Today is different. He has a dozen stupid excuses why he wants to go. It's his senior year. He has never done anything crazy. Maybe it will give him a chance to loosen up a little bit. But most of all, he thinks, it might take his mind off Gwen, if only for an hour. Who knows—he might even meet a girl there whose dead father hasn't forbidden them from dating, and they'll hit it off, date for a respectable amount of time, marry on a beach and have three kids.

Somehow, though, he really doubts it.

So with the intent of just working up a happy buzz and socializing with classmates for once, he casually mentions the idea of it to Aunt May at the breakfast table.

"No drinking," she says.

He nods without quite looking at her. He figures at far as white lies go, this is the kind she might be grateful for in the midst of everything else—it doesn't get any more normal, dumb teenager than this.

That night he spends almost a half an hour trying to pick out clothes to wear. He wonders what a guy like Flash would wear to a party like this, but then decides he doesn't want to dress anything like Flash anyway, particularly now that he seems to have invested in the entire sparse line of Spiderman apparel. After three or four rejected combinations, he finally settles on the only nice pair of jeans he owns that hasn't been left on top of a bridge or a rooftop, and pairs it with a button-down shirt he hasn't worn since Aunt May's company picnic.

"Hey, man, you made it!"

Flash is beaming, his face beet red, carrying half-full Solo cups in both hands. He pats Peter on the back a little too hard and sloshes what smells suspiciously like rum all over him.

"Yeah, yeah, I guess I did," Peter says, trying to talk above the wall of noise that is Flash's enormous apartment.

"And Doug was just trying to tell me you were too lame for parties," Flash says, his laughter booming over the crowd, still managing to turn heads in this chaos. "Hey! Hey, Doug, look who I found!"

That is the last time Peter sees Flash that night, which is probably for the best. He rubs his shoulder where Flash accidentally clocked him, trying not to wince. He looks around the room, his first priority to find a drink—not because he really needs one, but because at least standing in a drink line gives him some excuse to look busy, because he can't find a single face in this pulsing crowd he could hold a conversation with.

It probably doesn't help that he expects he is the only sober person here. It's ten-thirty, but he has a suspicion there was a lot of pre-gaming in the earlier hours.

Eventually he finds a keg and pours himself a cup of flat, stale beer. A girl asks him to dance and he laughs, realizes she's serious and says, "Oh, uh, thanks, it's just I'm a terrible dancer, I'm sorry." She pours him another beer and a few sips in he changes his mind. He is right. He is a terrible dancer, so terrible that he has probably broken half the shoelaces of people he has encountered in the crowd, but it doesn't seem to matter. This girl he half-remembers from a semester of gym is clearly on her way to wasted, as is everyone else, and the apartment is so jam-packed that he could start having a seizure and people wouldn't recognize the difference between that and his sad attempt at holding a beat.

They dance until the girl falls over him, says, "I love you, Sam," and tries to kiss him. Peter just barely deflects her, sliding out of the thick of the dancing crowd before she even notices he's gone. When he looks back she is already dancing with another guy, so he doesn't feel that bad about it.

Peter checks his watch. 11:30. Then someone punches him so hard in the face that he falls back into the dance floor, knocking over two or three other people as he thuds to the floor.

Everyone around them gasps in unison, so exaggerated and loud that it sounds like a sound effect. Peter holds a hand to his face in surprise, looking up and seeing Richard looming over him.

"The hell, man—" Peter starts, but Richard has already moved to kick him in the stomach. Peter scrambles out of the way, easily. It's clear that Richard is beyond a few shots of whatever they were serving in the back. His usual confident, assured stature is now heavy and lumbering and undeniably mad.

Richard advances on him because after Peter hits the wall there's really no place else for him to back up. Richard grabs him by the collar of his shirt and pushes him against the wall, hard. Peter can smell the alcohol on his breath and turns his head away, catching a few wide-eyed stares of people who have apparently decided to do nothing to help.

"I'm not gonna fight you," Peter says, trying to squirm out of Richard's grasp.

"What, suddenly Gwen's not worth it?" Richard spits, pushing Peter against the wall harder than before. It occurs to Peter that Richard is significantly bulkier than he is, which wouldn't be an issue if he had his abilities, but without them is quickly becoming one.

"Kick his ass, Parker!" someone in the crowd yells.

Richard lets him fall from the wall and Peter gasps for air, but not before Richard clocks him. "You're gonna stay the hell away from her, I warned you—"

"Stop," says Peter, struggling to his feet, "seriously, this is stupid, Gwen wouldn't want you to—"

Richard throws another punch and Peter manages to duck, sending Richard's fist straight through the wall. People are literally chanting "fight, fight, fight" and Peter imagines himself just sitting with Aunt May on the couch, watching the commotion in Times Square from a safe distance, and sincerely regrets this attempt at being socially competent.

Seeing his fist go through the plaster infuriates Richard even more, and this time when he yanks Peter up again and cocks his fist back, Peter is fairly certain this is the kind of blow that will break his nose and knock him out cold. He tries again to wrench himself out of Richard's grasp without much success. The fist is coming straight toward him when someone, a guy that Peter doesn't recognize, finally intervenes and pulls Richard off of Peter and the three of them all fall to the floor with a painful thud.

"What the hell is going on here?"

All three of them look up to see one outraged, furious Gwen Stacy standing over them.

"Gwen," says Richard, sloppily trying to stand. "I didn't know you were here—"

"You're drunk," she says disgustedly, pushing him away so he falls back to the floor. She looks at Peter. "What is this, huh? What do you think you're doing?"

Peter is shocked beyond speech, his head still reeling from the blows. He stares at her incredulously. "What—what do I think I'm doing?"

She is so angry at him that she is shaking. The entire party has stopped to watch her chew them out, but she doesn't pay them any attention, just looks at Peter disappointedly. "Forget it," she says. "I don't want to know. I don't care."

"Gwen." She's walking away so fast that he has to jog to catch up to her. "Gwen, would you hold on just a second—"

She slams the door of a bedroom in his face, and he twists the knob open before she can think to lock it.

"Go away, Peter, haven't you done enough damage for one night?"

At first Peter is so indignant and furious that he can't even think of what to say to her. How dare she, when he wasn't the one who instigated the fight, and in fact just basically let Richard beat him senseless in an attempt to be the better man?

"Of course you'd take his side," Peter says resentfully, "he's mister freaking perfect, isn't he?"

Gwen juts her chin out. "Oh, what's that supposed to mean?"

"You're dating a Ken doll, a fake, a jerk. He just practically tried to kill me—"

"Jesus, Peter, you're making such an ass of yourself, like you couldn't defend yourself against an ordinary guy like Richard."

"I—" Peter splutters angrily. Of course she doesn't know about his abilities disappearing, he hasn't said a word to her and right now is not the time he wants to discuss something so long-winded and complicated, so instead all that comes out is a less-than-mature, "I saw you kissing him."

"What?"

"I saw you. Christmas Eve. I saw you at your window, kissing him—"

"Oh, and what, that's so impossible for you to deal with?" she says, legitimately raising her voice now, the flush in her cheeks now turning a violent shade of red. "Yes, I kissed Richard, of course I kissed Richard, more than once, in fact, because I'm dating him—"

"Why?" Peter asks petulantly. "What do you even see in him?"

"I see someone who loves me, someone who is there when I need him, someone who isn't going to leave me!" She's borderline hysterical now, her voice raw from exhaustion and alcohol and fury. "This has been, without a doubt, the worst year of my life. My father died, Peter. He died. And as if that wasn't enough—as if I couldn't sink any lower, my life couldn't possibly get any worse, the one person I thought I could depend on ignored me." There are angry tears streaming down her face but they do nothing to deter her speech. "Can you even possibly imagine what that feels like? Being impossibly alone—"

Peter must have unconsciously twitched, because she holds up a hand and says, "No, you don't, because the kind of alone you are is an alone that you chose. I had no choice, Peter, you cut me out without even bothering to tell me why, and when I needed you most." The last words come out in a sob, long and low, like something that is dying in her throat. She covers a hand in front of her face, muffling her next words, but it is still impossible to miss them: "You ruin me, Peter."

Peter can honestly say he has never seen someone cry like this before—not when his mother had to leave him, not even when Aunt May learned that Uncle Ben was dead. She cries like there isn't any air, big, hiccupping sobs that make her shoulders jerk and her jaw tremble. He stands there, wondering why this is such a surprise to him, wondering why he didn't recognize everything she had been holding inside of her all these months. It's his fault. He did this. He is the reason why she is falling apart. He is the only one who can put her back together.

He crosses the room. For a moment he is afraid he has no idea what to do, but once he has reached her he doesn't even have to think. He wraps his arms around her and pulls her in, and for a moment she is so stunned that she relaxes and lets herself sob into his chest, but the moment doesn't last long.

"Don't," she says, wriggling, holding her fists against his chest, doing everything short of pulling away. "Don't, don't."

He ignores her. He isn't going to leave her this time. "I'm sorry," he says.

This only escalates her crying, but she isn't trying to pull away anymore. "I'm sorry," he says again, "I'm so sorry, Gwen."

They stay like that for a long time, her head pressed against his chest until she stops crying and just quakes and stands there in his arms. At some point they hear a drunken, celebratory countdown from the main room. Neither of them moves as the new year descends on them.

Gwen breaks the silence first. "It's always you, Peter," she says, with so much weariness and disillusionment that he knows she doesn't mean it as a good thing. "No matter how hard I try, no matter what I do. I can't stop."

He just stands there and holds her. He is breaking the promise, and if he isn't right now, he is sure that he will later. It's the kind of moment that breathes truth into all the other moments before and after, the kind of moment that defines them and everything they will be. He can't walk away from this. He tries to imagine that if Gwen's father could see her now, that if he truly had loved his daughter, he would have to agree.

Confession time: I wanted to imitate Gwen Stacy so bad that I bought a pair of high boots since she kept wearing them in the movie, and they just came in today, and they are SO BADASS. Like, I feel like a rock star. If anybody else wants a pair they're on sale for twenty five bucks at Old Navy's website, they're the gray faux suede riding boots. This sounds a lot like sneaky product placement (I wish), but I'm not usually a fan of their stuff and right now I'm like PLEASE CAN IT BE COLD SO I CAN WEAR THESE PUPPIES.

I may have also purchased a headband. (I have, however, made enough terrible miscalculations in my life to know that I will never, ever, EVER look good with bangs, so that's out of the question).

This way Andrew Garfield will like me, right?