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It’s not just his upstairs neighbour slamming his front door shut that does the trick. The 6am E train rushing past the back of the apartment building – fast and loud enough to shake the floor and windows – is just as effective. And Goblin’s cackle. An echo from not too long ago, hateful and deranged and so close to Peter’s ears that he wakes with a start and a disoriented yelp stuck in his throat.
He's out of it until he hits the shower and that first stuttering spurt of ice cold water – the communal boiler’s been broken since last Thursday but it doesn’t look like Mr Vendrell is in a hurry to fix it any time soon – punches a string of curse words out of him.
He doesn’t have breakfast afterwards. His fridge is empty anyways save for two protein bars, a can of some discount energy drink and a small collection of wound gels and burn ointments he sometimes needs after a particularly rough night of patrolling, so he slips into his clothes instead – baggy jeans, a white t-shirt and a pair of second-hand sneakers he bought from his first pay cheque a few months ago – and snags his backpack from the desk chair.
When he catches a quick glimpse of the little Lego figure sitting atop his GED prep books his stomach drops only half as hard as it used to and he doesn’t spend a solid 5 minutes wondering if Ned ever takes a look at his Death Star set and struggles to remember when and how an essential piece of the set went missing. He’s done after 4 minutes and 36 seconds. It’s progress on his part, he assumes.
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Ever since that one time he unexpectedly ran into Happy he’s made a point going to the cemetery at the most ungodly hours so that he can’t run into him again on purpose and do something rash like bare his soul to a man who doesn’t remember him.
He frowns and sucks in a breath.
“Hey, you.”
It’s probably normal that the lump in his throat hasn’t really subsided since May’s eyes went glassy and lifeless, and it’s probably normal that he hates this, too. Coming here and talking to himself because May’s grave – the tombstone and the early crocus that’s scattered over the ground – is a real, palpable, devastating thing.
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Out of all the places he’s worked at so far – and there’ve been quite a few because only a small number of managers were willing to put up with his flakiness for longer than a week – Brubeck’s Bagels is by far his favourite.
The shop’s been around for ages. It’s run by Rudy – fit as a fiddle despite his impending 72nd birthday – and his son Asa – he invented the Frosted Flakes Funfetti Bagel, which sounds like an abomination but actually doesn’t taste that bad. The two are mad baking geniuses. They keep long hours in the back of the shop, kneading and rolling and boiling and baking and brainstorming new recipe ideas while Earth, Wind & Fire is blasting from the dusty portable CD player that’s set up on top of one of the dented equipment cabinets next to the backdoor. The rest of the staff is made up of Asa’s wife Jocelyn, and Yetide and Drew who, like Peter, are responsible for waiting the tables, manning the cash register and taste-testing new toppings.
“You’re getting thinner by the day, son,” Rudy comments when Peter is checking the change rolls roughly 10 minutes before opening time. He’s carrying a tray of freshly baked poppyseed bagels and all but one make it into the display counter, “Breakfast,” he says, holding the tray up to Peter’s nose, “It’s on the house.”
Peter holds back a sigh.
“Thank you,” he says, plucking the lonely bagel from the tray and taking a demonstrative bite out of it.
There’s no use in arguing with Rudy. The man is as stubborn as a mule. He once gave Yetide 200 bucks when he got wind that she couldn’t afford all the reading material that was required for her Civil Litigation course and he refused to have her pay him back by the time she was liquid again, insisting that he gave her the money because he wanted to, not because he’s the type of guy that gets off of people owing him stuff.
“You got your GED class today?”
Peter nods.
“Then take a cup of coffee with you before you go.”
He’s back in the kitchen before Peter has the chance to object – and the lump in his throat grows a bit because Rudy doesn’t have to be nice to Peter, he doesn’t have to care about him. But he does. Not like an asshole who’s actually just worried that one of his employees might call in sick. Rudy cares about him like he genuinely wants him to be okay for some reason – and that’s something Peter hasn’t had in a while.
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He didn’t attend May’s funeral. He was there but not like her family or her friends or her colleagues from F.E.A.S.T. He wasn’t close enough to watch her coffin be lowered into the ground but he heard May’s cousin Gina sobbing quietly while Father Wilkerson tried his best not to sound bored as he recited the Our Father.
He wasn’t close. He was five or six rows away, eyes burning and fixed on the tombstone before him, silently apologizing to Mrs Baker for using her resting place as a vantage point. He wasn’t part of the funeral party. He was a stranger, sniffling and wringing his hands, trembling with guilt. He was alone but thankfully May wasn’t.
At some point in the past she had stopped talking to her parents for a while. To this day Peter doesn’t know if it had anything to do with Ben or May’s refusal to give them a biological grandson or something entirely different. He didn’t think it was any of his business when he was a kid, so he never asked.
He didn’t get to meet Mr and Mrs Martinelli until his 13th birthday. They brought him a chemistry set as a birthday gift and they were very nice to him but the tension between them and May was tangible. The smiles and exchanged pleasantries – it all seemed a bit strained to him and when he voiced his concerns to Ben, his uncle put on a strained smile of his own and explained to him that sometimes being a family can be difficult.
Apparently being a family stopped being difficult the very moment May stopped breathing because out of all the funeral guests, May’s parents wept the hardest. They were heartbroken, and Peter – well, there are moments when he thinks he should’ve been enraged. There are moments when he thinks he should’ve walked up to them and told them that they never should’ve given May a reason to stop talking to them. That they never should’ve let being a family become difficult because maybe, if they had been better parents, if they had been more understanding, this – burying their only child after years of fragile peace – would hurt a little less.
There are moments when he thinks that disrupting the funeral and screaming at a group of people who had no idea who he was would’ve been the right thing to do, and then there are moments when he thinks that doing so would’ve only added to the pile of regret he’s going to carry around with him for the rest of his life, which May – and this is something he knows – wouldn’t want for him.
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Tanner is the epitome of a gentle giant. He’s 6´2” and built like an offensive tackle but he has the kindest eyes and a natural calmness about him that sometimes puts even a walking, talking stress magnet like Peter at ease.
“Hey, man.”
His greeting is wrapped up in a cloud of cigarette smoke that weaves right past Peter’s face, and his lips spread into a happy smile. Tanner is always happy. It’s a miracle considering the circumstances that have brought him here.
“Hey,” Peter says, “You good?”
Tanner’s smile grows a little wider, exposing his teeth, “I think I’m ready.”
Peter laughs.
“Yeah?”
“Ms Rivera says she has a good feeling about me passing the tests.”
“That’s awesome.”
Peter laughs again because it really is. If anyone deserves to get this over with and move on with his life it’s Tanner. He’s a great guy who’s been passed over from one foster family to the next, always ending up with people who were more interested in the financial benefits that came with taking in as many children as possible than giving them the love and attention they needed and deserved. It’s precisely why Tanner wants to go to college, become a social worker and help other kids who have to grow up in the system.
“We could do the tests together,” Tanner says then, his tone encouraging, “You’re, like, a total genius. You just have to stop skipping classes all the time.”
The sheepishness that comes over Peter is painfully familiar. It was a constant companion of his until his bad luck left him no choice but to bring Ned – and eventually May – into the loop. He bites his lip.
“I’m on a tight schedule,” he says, almost flinching at how the words make his chest constrict, “I’ve got – uh – I’ve got things … ”
He doesn’t know how to finish his sentence. Hell, even back in school he never really did. He usually just kept talking, often wondering what bullshit excuse he’d come up with this time. There was an absurd thrill to it – the lies, the fibbing, the feeling of walking a tightrope every time he interacted with anyone, even the pangs of remorse that flared up whenever he got away with it – and at the end of the day the big question always remained the same: was being Spider-Man really worth all of this?
The answer to that question is always the same, even now after everything that has happened, because it has to be. It can never be anything but a clear, resounding Yes – no matter if it tends to crush him from time to time.
“Woah, you okay, dude?”
He blinks.
Shit.
He’s got his sad face on. The thing his brows and mouth do whenever he’s sucked into dwelling on how his life used to be. He’s got a vague idea of what it must look like because Yetide described it to him once. She told him he looked like a kicked puppy, lost and vulnerable, and he was shocked into dismissive laughter, waving her off while his chest filled with stones and all kinds of rubble and sank until he was sure the weight of it all was going to drag him to his knees and keep him there.
He thinks about Ben and May and their strained smiles. The smile he must have sent in MJ’s direction when she –
He doesn’t get very far. He’s saved by the sound of sirens going off six or seven blocks away and he can’t remember what he told Tanner by the time he’s tailing a fleet of police cars headed east because there’s a hostage situation going on in Long Island City and there are children are involved, so time is pressing.
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He passes Peter Pan’s occasionally when he’s on his way back home from another bizarre late afternoon of being yelled at by the very person who once accused him of killing his own aunt on live TV.
Initially, when he started out as a freelance photographer for the Bugle in early January, the impulse to punch a hole in Jameson’s face whenever he saw him at the office was hard to resist. Two months later working for the man almost makes him laugh because for someone who’s so incredibly hellbent on exposing Spider-Man, Jameson seems rather slow on the uptake. Or maybe Peter’s just a lot better at pretending to be an awkward, incapable nerd these days.
Anyway. He passes Peter Pan’s occasionally but he never dares to go inside – not after that one time, he knows better now – and after a quick stop at his apartment for dinner and a 15-minute study session he’s chasing down a hijacked security van, the wind whipping him in the face, a salve of bullets missing him by an inch or two and his heart thumping where the stones and the rubble once used to be.
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There was never any thrill in lying to MJ because she already knew – 67 per cent or not, she knew – and he tried to gaslight her anyway. But she didn’t let him and for that he was grateful. He still is, despite the heartbreak.
Coming to see her at the bakery had been a mistake. He realized that as soon as she wiped back that strand of hair, revealing what fleeting evidence of what had happened on Liberty Island was left.
He remembers everything. The moment she fell, the unbridled rage that took over when he had Goblin kneeling before him and the sheer exhaustion that came down upon him when it was done. He remembers the sense of loss he felt when it was time to send them back home. Peter-Two with his endless compassion and Peter-Three, haunted by what being Spider-Man means in a way he almost got to experience, too.
He remembers Ned’s face falling in on itself, his body shaking as they held on to each other. And MJ. He remembers the cut on her forehead, the tears in her eyes. He remembers smiling at them even though deep down he already knew that he wasn’t going to keep his promise.
They’re his family. They always will be but they’re out of his reach now. They’re safe and secure, free to move on with their lives and – as impossible as it is to mourn someone who’s not really gone – he’s happy for them because he loves them.
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Once he’s managed to patch himself up he falls into his bed with a grunt and waits for the pain to subside. He took a bullet to the shoulder. Another grazed his left temple, so it hurts like a bitch but he takes comfort in knowing that he’ll be all good tomorrow, and when his eyes flutter shut he thinks about May.
He imagines talking to her, right here in his crappy excuse for a home. He imagines her sitting at his bedside, telling him about her day like he does every morning at the cemetery, and all he does is listen. All he does is listen and miss her and when imagining her becomes unbearable – when the burning behind his eyelids becomes too much – he stops imagining things altogether and starts looking for memories instead.
Ned adjusting his hat with a proud grin back when they were about to leave for Liz’ party. The first time he and MJ shared a not-so-chaste kiss, roughly 35,000 feet in the air while everyone else was sleeping. May and her unshakable belief in second chances. Burnt dinner and pep talks, Legos and stale donuts and sketches upon sketches of people in crisis.
They’re not painful memories. They keep him sane most of the time because they’re real. They have a history, they have meaning. And they stick with him, even if nothing else does these days.
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He’s not sure if he’s ever really gotten over anyone. His parents, Ben, Tony, May. Ned and MJ and Happy. Everyone he’s ever loved or talked to, and he’s not sure if he’s supposed to get over them because every time he tries it feels wrong, like he’s taking a step back.
“I’m thinking about volunteering at F.E.A.S.T.,” he tells her, grimacing, “I know I’m late but – um – I needed some time to – you know.”
He bows his head, wrenching his gaze from her tombstone and directing it to the tips of his shoes. The ground beneath them is wet from the rain, tiny rivulets making their way through gravel and soil. He wouldn’t mind a bit of sunshine.
Swallowing as always, he recalls how ecstatic she used to get during this time of the year. How she used to pull her sandals and colourful dresses out from the back of her closet because winter was officially over. She always got impatient after the final snowfall, insisting that the height of spring – and therefore by extension, summer – was right around the corner with a gleeful stubbornness that almost rivalled his when it came to experimental mathematics, and he always played along, agreeing with her that March was the most torturous month of all and accompanying her when she’d go and buy new plants for the balcony. He’d carry bags of potting soil and boxes of daffodils and primroses, grinning to himself as he’d follow her across the parking lot. She’d pretend not to shiver, the seam of her bright orange maxi skirt flowing with every breeze that’d hit them and her fingers curled around a pair of sunglasses that had proven to be useless since the sky was still grey and cluttered with clouds.
“I’ll see you tomorrow,” he says then, and there’s a tremor in his voice he’s too tired to suppress when he squats down at the flowerbed.
He takes a breath, brings two fingers to his lips and places them against her name on the tombstone. It’s cold and too sleek – and he hates it but he can’t dwell on it. He can’t get lost in it because doing so would kill her all over again and he doesn’t want that. He wants to make her proud somehow. Help people as best as he can.
He gets back on his feet and manages a half-smile. He looks up at the sky. Soon it’ll be powdery blue and the clouds will be gone for a while, allowing the sun to poke through and warm him up for the first time in what feels like an eternity.
May’s favourite season, he thinks, still smiling.
The perfect time to follow her footsteps.