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Margo’s room was so cluttered she couldn’t think.
She’d been letting clothes and unfinished gadgets pile up on the floor and around her desk until you couldn’t even open the door all the way. The realization hit her when she lost a piece of the old vintage radio that Gwen had gifted her to tinker with, and it took her an hour to finally locate it by the foot of her bed.
Margo sat at its edge, re-organizing her gadgets into boxes by size. It made more sense to her than by type or function; when she was restoring an old iPod or laptop, she wouldn’t think, “Where’s the box for tools dedicated to x, y, and z,” she’d be thinking, “Where the fuck is that tiny thing that you need to turn on this other thing?”
At the bottom of one of her hot pink organizers, beneath a tangle of extension cords, Margo felt a round piece of metal. Her fingers brushed over what felt like buttons, and they closed around the mystery device to free it.
It was…oh.
Margo could’ve sworn she had put all of her polaroids and souvenirs in the ‘memories’ box. The memory in question was only a few months old, sure, but it was a memory nonetheless. After Spider Society dissolved, there was no reason for her to use it. At any rate, she had cyber-crimes to stop right here, at her own computer.
Still, she did miss Gwen bringing her old smartphones and wired headphones.
And him.
Margo didn’t like to think about him. Not by any fault of his, but because if she visualized the look he gave her as she tried to send him home, then suddenly those owlish eyes would appear in places they were not supposed to. Then, she would begin to imagine that she saw someone with the same afro pass her on the street, or swear that she heard his voice and wonder if he took his watch with him and kept it.
Margo’s watch was off, but it remained largely intact after The Spot. She stared at it for a moment, before gingerly snapping it around her wrist. She turned it this way and that, letting it catch the dim light of her desk lamp.
E-1610.
Margo had the right dimension this time, all she had to do was just–
She shook her head, hastily taking it off and tossing it back into the box. Now she remembered why the watch had been left there in the first place.
But it was too late, and the image of him grinning at her returned. As she knelt on the floor and resumed her organizing, her mind had begun to weave together a conversation.
Miles would greet her with a “hey”, and she’d “hey” back. Ask him how his parents took the news after everything went back to normal. He’d say he’s grounded, and it’d sound like the funniest thing in the world coming from him. She’d ask him about his hobbies (Miles looked like a gamer), and he would ask about hers. She’d lie and say she didn’t have time for any, and he’d laugh.
“I hear that,” he’d say.
She wondered if her imagination had conjured him up when that familiar flash of blinding light appeared where her closet was and became a spinning portal.
Margo almost didn’t recognize him when he pulled back his hoodie and took the mask off. The high-top fade was gone, replaced by a head of shoulder-length locs that coiled at the ends. But she’d recognize those eyes anywhere.
Her mouth opened and closed as she struggled to locate her words, which made Miles stifle a laugh.
“Miles?”
“Don’t know who else I’d be. Got a minute?”
Slowly reaching back into that same box, Margo breathed,
“Yeah, I…I got a minute.”
“So you’re only Spider-Man when you got the VR thing on?”
Miles called out as he shot another web and catapulted himself off of the roof of a moving truck, and Margo did the same. They landed right on top of Lenny’s Deli, from which they could see a bit of the horizon dotted with skyscrapers in the distance, right where the setting sun started to roll back some of its orange and give way to a wash of coral.
“Pretty much,” Margo answered, catching her breath. “You smell that?”
“Beef patties.”
“I haven’t had one of those in months.”
Miles’ mask squinted mischievously at the eyes. “You want me to get you one, huh?”
“Oh, it’s fine, you don’t have to–”
“I insist!”
Miles was already in the process of swinging down to street level. She shook her head and smiled, sitting with her legs crossed in the meantime.
He was back in a matter of minutes, mask rolled up halfway so that he could carry the brown paper bag from the deli between his teeth as he hauled himself over the ledge where Margo sat.
He opened it and removed his portion before handing the bag to her, but stopped short.
“Hol’ on, can you even eat?”
She threw her head back and laughed.
“You didn’t think about that before you spent your money there?”
“Well, you can take it back with you, probably,” he said as he let her take the bag from him.
“Thanks.”
They sat in silence as only Miles ate his food, watching the world below. Nobody appeared to be committing a robbery at the moment, so Margo eventually broke the silence first.
“So why’d you bring me over here, new guy?”
Miles snorted, “You know I’ve been doing this for almost two years now, right?”
“Well, you’re new to me.”
He leaned back on his elbows and hummed thoughtfully.
“Maybe I’d like to not be so new to you.”
“Sounds like a plan.”