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Before you turned the shower faucet to ready your shower, your eyes darted wide open at the palm-sized eight-legged creature hanging from the ceiling above the shower head.
“Holy fuck,” you squealed as you stepped back and gripped onto the bathroom sink.
I am not capable of killing that, you thought to yourself. Your heart was pounding in your ears, while your mind was flashing through all the possibilities in order to combat against the invader.
Vacuum? Just my luck- it broke last week.
Is anyone home to kill it for me? Nope.
Spray it with something? What if the spider evolves into a man-eating spider and wants revenge and eats me alive?!
You deduced that your only option was to knock on your neighbor’s door from across the hall. You assumed that the older pretty lady, May, would be home to help you out. She seemed like she could take on this situation well. At the very least, she’d probably handle it better than you.
To your surprise, her nephew, the always MIA brown-haired boy from your high school opened the door instead. He stood at the door with one earphone hanging from his ear, the other hanging from the neckline of his sweater, and emitted a warm smile to you.
Peter, you think his name is. Parker is surely his last name as Flash always screams “Penis Parker” or some other stupid nickname at him. Flash being a dick was always the usual, but what did Peter do to deserve such harassment?
The two of you only knew each other as neighbors and classmates, and acknowledged each other’s presence. You always gave Peter a soft smile and nod when you saw each other around the apartment and school, and he would return them as well, but you never talked to each other before. It’s not like you didn’t want to get to know him. There were several times you wanted to strike up a conversation, but it was difficult. Either a frog was in your throat or you simply never saw him. Seeing Peter at home in the middle of a weekday afternoon was rare. You overheard the rumor mill in school that he had an internship with Stark Industries, on top of his extracurriculars and being one of the smartest in your grade.
From what you could gather, he seemed like a nice guy. When you did see him around the apartment, he would often be with May, keeping her company. If he wasn’t with May, he would be coming home late with groceries in hand.
“Hey,” you heard your heart pound in your ears while you stared at Peter’s brown eyes. You never realized he was kind of cute; this was the longest time you’ve ever looked at him.
“Sorry to bother, but there is this super freaking huge spider in my bathtub, and I’d like to take a shower, but I can’t do that unless it’s out, so do you think you can help me out?” you spewed your words out in a matter of seconds, unsure if Peter understood what you just said.
At first, Peter didn’t respond at all. You were about to repeat what you just said after a moment of silence, but soon enough, Peter nodded fervently in response. “Yeah, of course! Lead the way,” he said as he closed his apartment door behind him. You were grateful that he was so willing to help you out. The two of you quickly went back into your apartment and stared at the spider still hanging in the exact same spot moments ago.
“Oh shit,” Peter stared at the spider on the ceiling. “That really is a freaking huge spider,”
“Tell me about it,” your sarcasm echoed slightly in your bathroom while your stare held still on the spider. “Please, just get rid of it. I don’t care what your methods are,”
Peter looked around the bathroom hastily. “Is there a magazine or a newspaper or something?”
You ran out into your living room, grabbed the morning paper that your dad normally read, and handed it to Peter.
“Thanks,” Peter’s hands were shaking as he held the newspaper up, hoping the spider would crawl onto the sheets.
“C’mon spidey,” Peter coaxed the spider as if it could understand him. You couldn’t help but giggle. He was a little lame, yet adorable. The spider cautiously began to climb its way down onto the newspaper and when it successfully settled onto the newspaper, you and Peter sighed in relief.
“Okay, now just to get the little guy out of here,” Peter flashed you a smile and walked a few steps towards the bathroom window, hoping to set it free. However, the spider would never make it out of the bathroom since only moments later, Peter jinxed his own words. As he lost balance, the newspaper angled downward and the spider fell onto the bathroom floor.
“Oh my, God!” you shrieked as you held onto Peter’s arm. “Parker, what the hell?!”
Peter glanced at you for a second, both surprised and flattered that you knew his name, but shook his head and directed his attention back to the spider, which was now sprinting with all its might across your apartment floor, into your living room, faster than both of you expected. Your reaction was to shriek more in fear, knowing that you might lose the spider in your apartment.
Not wanting to disappoint you, without thinking, Peter turned his wrist upward and sprayed some sort of sticky substance onto the spider. His action immediately triggered you to cease your shrieking. Your jaw opened at the scene that had taken place.
Peter stepped forward into your living room. “Sorry little guy…” he whispered as he bundled the spider with the substance in his hand.
You stood still in the bathroom, still shocked at the scene that just took place. Peter placed the ball of the presumably dead spider into the toilet and flushed its remains.
“What just happened?” you asked as Peter washed his hands next to you. You saw his eyes widen and his lips curl together in the reflection of the mirror. “What did you just shoot from your hands?!”
“Uh, well, you see,” Peter began. “I have this thing that helps me do stuff. It’s a really long story and it’s really boring and you probably don’t want to hear it all…” Peter trailed on as he tried his best to talk out of the situation. You squinted at him while he wiped his hands on your hand towel.
The cute boy decided to change topics to distract you. “I think the better question is how do you know my name?” Your eyes widened this time. “We’ve never talked before,”
“Well, I, uh,” the spider may have been gone, but your heart was still pounding in your ears. “I don’t know. Flash calls you by those stupid names all the time so that’s how I picked it up, I guess,”
You shrugged as you led Peter into your living room and the two of you sat, facing each other on your couch.
“Your name is Peter, right?” you confirmed with the boy in front of your eyes. He nodded in response and asked confirmation with your name. You nodded as well. The two of you laughed lightly. In that moment, you knew that you wanted to know more about Peter. Your mouth gaped open, ready to ask something else, but suddenly, Peter’s phone was vibrating in his pants. His facial expression immediately turned more serious as he felt the phone vibrate within his jean pocket. He got up from the couch hurriedly and you followed.
“I’m sorry to leave you like this, but I hope there won’t be any more visitors in your shower,” he said standing in the hallway, grabbing his keys from his pocket. He turned to face away from you as he unlocked his apartment door.
“Thanks for the help,” you watched him open his way into his apartment and something in you didn’t want him to go. As if on cue, Peter turned around. “You have to explain to me what happened sometime soon,” you commented before glancing down at his wrists. Peter tugged at his jacket’s sleeves nervously.
“We’ll see,” Peter flushed a little as he looked down towards the floor. “I’ll see you around,” he lingered a little longer, holding his gaze steady towards you, granting you a sweet, genuine smile, right before he closed the door to his apartment.
A glimmer in his eye made it seem like that was a promise.
You definitely hoped he meant it.