Marvel – I am Spiderman

The guest room didn't look like a guest room anymore.

Peter saw it on the way to the bathroom. The door was open and the lamplight was on and the bed had been made with a quilt that wasn't May's. MJ's books were on the nightstand in a stack that leaned. Her phone charger was plugged into the wall, the cable coiled on the floor. A hoodie was draped over the desk chair. His hoodie. The grey one with the bleach stain on the sleeve from the time he'd helped Ben clean the gutters. He hadn't seen it in weeks and it had been hanging in her temporary closet the whole time.

She had a toothbrush in the bathroom. She had her cereal in the pantry. Ben had put a hook by the back door for her jacket and hadn't mentioned it and she'd hung her jacket on it without mentioning it either and neither of them had discussed the fact that the hook existed and the jacket lived there now.

She was downstairs. He could hear music. A guitar, low, coming through the kitchen speakers.

He went down.

The kitchen was warm. MJ was at the counter with her back to him. She had her hair down and she was wearing leggings and a tank top and she was barefoot on the tile and the kitchen light caught the red of her hair and Peter had a thought he didn't finish about the color and the light and the bare feet and the fact that she looked like she lived here because she did.

Her sketchbook was on the counter. Open.

She was at the stove. Heating something. The microwave was running and a pot was on the burner and she was doing two things at once and humming along with the guitar and she hadn't heard him come down. The stairs creaked and she hadn't heard it and the music was covering him.

The sketchbook was open to a page of fashion sketches. Dresses. Three of them, each one a different cut, clean lines, proportions that looked professional. She'd been working on the middle one, erasing and redrawing the neckline. A smudge of graphite on the page where her hand had rested.

He should have closed it. He should have walked past it and said hey and she would have closed it herself and he would never have seen what was on the next page.

He turned the page.

More fashion. A coat with structured shoulders. A jumpsuit with a note about fabric weight in her handwriting. A pair of boots drawn from three angles. She was good. The proportions were right and the details were specific and the designs looked like they belonged in a magazine, not a high schooler's notebook.

He turned the page.

City sketches. The view from the Parker backyard fence. The fire escape across the alley. A street vendor on Roosevelt Avenue with the steam rising from his cart. Quick sketches, looser than the fashion work.

He turned the page.

Peter.

Him. At the fence. The backyard fence where they'd talked a hundred times. She'd drawn him leaning on the top rail with his arms crossed and his head tilted and the light was coming from the left, late afternoon. She'd drawn his jaw and his hair and the line of his shoulders and the collar of his shirt and the detail was careful. She'd spent time on it.

He turned the page.

Him doing homework. At the kitchen table. His pen in his mouth, chewing the cap. She'd gotten the pen-chewing right. He did that. He didn't know she'd noticed.

Next page. Him laughing. At school, from the angle. Harry must have said something because Peter was looking to his left and his eyes were crinkled and his mouth was open mid-laugh and she'd captured the exact second before the laugh finished when the face is at its most unguarded. She'd been watching him from across the cafeteria. She'd been watching and she'd drawn it later from memory. She'd gotten the eyes exactly right.

He turned the page.

Him sleeping.

The couch in the living room. The throw blanket May kept on the armrest. He was on his back with one arm across his stomach and the other hanging off the edge and his mouth was slightly open and his hair was falling across his forehead and he looked younger than he felt. She'd drawn it carefully. Every line deliberate. The shading on his jaw. The crease of the pillow against his cheek. The fold of the blanket across his chest. She'd sat across from him while he slept and she'd studied him and she'd drawn him and the drawing was more honest than anything she'd ever said to him out loud.

The music played. The pot bubbled on the stove. His hands were on the edges of the sketchbook and his thumbs were on the paper and the drawing was looking back at him with his own sleeping face.

"You weren't supposed to see that."

He looked up.

MJ was in the doorway between the kitchen and the hall. She'd come around the other way, through the dining room. Her hands were at her sides. Her face was blank. The deciding-blank, the one where she hadn't picked which version of herself to be yet. Her eyes were on the sketchbook.

"MJ-"

"Those are private." Her voice was light. The party-girl lightness, the one she used when she was working hard to sound like it didn't matter. "I draw tons of stuff. The city, clothes, whatever. That's just-"

He held the page up. The sleeping one.

She stopped talking. Her jaw shifted. Her eyes went to the drawing and stayed there and her lips pressed together and she was standing in the doorway with her bare feet on the tile and her hair down and she looked eighteen and scared.

"You drew me," he said.

"I draw lots of things."

"You drew me sleeping."

"It was a good angle."

The kitchen was quiet. The pot was still bubbling. The music had moved to a slower song, acoustic, a woman's voice. MJ's hands moved to her elbows. She crossed her arms. Uncrossed them. Crossed them again. She was looking at the drawing and her throat moved when she swallowed.

He put the sketchbook down on the counter. Closed it gently. Kept his hand on the cover.

"You're really talented, MJ."

Her face cracked. He watched it happen. Her eyebrows drew together and her mouth opened a fraction and her eyes went wet and she was looking at him like he'd hit her.

"Don't," she said.

"Don't what?"

"Don't be the person who sees me." Her voice was small. Smaller than he'd ever heard it. The banter was gone and the "Tiger" was gone and what was left was MJ Watson standing barefoot in a doorway with wet eyes and her arms wrapped around herself. "I can't handle that from you."

"Too late."

She stared at him. Her chin was shaking. She'd left the sketchbook open on the counter. Maybe on purpose. Maybe she'd wanted him to find it. And now he had.

"Everyone says nice things," she said. "Boys say nice things. Teachers say nice things. My mom says nice things on the phone twice a year. Nice things are how people fill the space between hello and goodbye so they don't have to actually look at you." She wiped her eyes with the back of her hand. "You didn't say a nice thing. You said a true thing. And I can't-" Her voice broke. "I don't know what to do with that."

"You don't have to do anything."

"I draw you because you're the only place I feel safe."

Her eyes were red. Her arms were tight around herself. The kitchen light was warm and the music was playing and the pot was bubbling.

He put the sketchbook down. Took his hand off the cover.

He didn't say anything. He stood up from the counter and opened his arms.

She didn't move. She looked at his arms. She looked at his face. Her chin was trembling and her eyes were wet and she was measuring how much it would cost to cross those eight feet of kitchen floor.

She crossed them.

She walked into him and put her face in his chest and her arms went around his ribs and she held on. Tight. Her hands fisted in the back of his shirt and her face pressed into his collarbone and her breathing was ragged and uneven against his skin.

He put his arms around her. One hand on her back. The other in her hair. The red of it was soft against his fingers and she smelled like the kitchen and coffee and the lavender soap May kept in the guest bathroom.

She was shaking.

He held her. She shook. The music played. The pot bubbled. The kitchen was warm and the house was quiet and MJ Watson was in his arms for the first time.

The hug lasted a long time.

When she pulled back her face was wrecked. Her eyes were swollen and red and her nose was running and she wiped it on the back of her hand and then wiped her hand on her leggings and made a sound that was almost a laugh.

"If you ever tell anyone about this-"

"I won't."

"I mean it. I have a reputation."

"Your reputation is safe."

She punched his shoulder. Lightly. Then she looked at her hand and her hand was shaking and she looked at it like it belonged to someone else.

"Your hands are shaking," he said.

She looked at both hands. They were. She stared at them and her mouth pulled to one side and she said "Shut up" but it came out cracked and she turned around and went back to the stove and stirred the pot and the pot didn't need stirring.

"I'm making soup," she said. Her back was to him. "May left ingredients. It's probably going to be terrible."

"I like terrible soup."

"Good. Because that's what you're getting."

She stirred. He stood at the counter. The sketchbook sat between them, closed. Her hands were still shaking around the spoon. The guitar played on the speakers. The kitchen smelled like soup that hadn't been cooked long enough and coffee that had been sitting too long.

She didn't turn around for a while. When she did, her eyes were dry and her chin was steady and she was putting herself back together. But there were gaps. Around the mouth. Around the eyes. Places where it didn't quite fit anymore.

"Tiger?"

"Yeah."

"You should put something on that bite. It looks infected."

He touched his neck. The bite. He'd forgotten about it. She'd seen it this morning and her pencil had pressed harder and she hadn't said anything and now she was pointing at it while her hands shook.

"It's fine," he said.

"It's not fine. It's purple."

"I'll put something on it."

"Good."

She went back to the soup. He stayed at the counter. The sketchbook between them, closed.

The soup was terrible. They ate it anyway.