XIII
“Hey, AJ, can you come here really quick?” I heard my dad call out from his room. I set down the stack of clothing hangers I was trying to pack. I groaned as I stood up and started making my way through the hallway that was now adorned with beige boxes.
“What's up?” I asked, standing in the doorway of his room. He was holding a cardboard box with torn corners and frayed edges. “What's that?”
He then pulled out a stack of pictures that had weird stains on the back part of them. He held one up and I felt my heart melt. It was me after my first ever ballet recital, grinning in my pink leotard and ballet flats. I remember getting on pointe only a month after that picture was taken.
“Look how little you were,” my dad said, holding the picture out to me as he went through the rest of the photos. I took it from him as I went to sit next to him. “Back when you used to like pink.”
I scoffed in response and smiled at the little curly fly-aways around my face. My hair used to be curly, just like my moms, before I hit puberty. It was always a nightmare for them to deal with before recitals seeing as our hair had to perfectly slicked back and in a bun. By the end of the performance, the heavily gelled edges at the front of my face were out and free.
I looked at the other pictures in my dad's hands and saw that he had stopped at one of me and my mother. I sucked in a breath and took a good look at her face. It looked like it was taken later that night at Mrs. Guo's restaurant. My mom had a large smile on my face that matched mine. Both of our eyes were closed shut and the grins on our faces looked identical. We looked identical.
My dad then held the picture out to me. “You should keep it,” he said. I grabbed it from him silently. “Actually, you should keep all of these. Remember your mom for how she really was.”
I nodded, staying silent as I peered into the box. I leaned my head on my dads shoulder and took a deep breath. “Thank you. For everything, I mean.
“You did your best and that's all I could ask for. I know it was hard, but I think I turned out alright.” I laughed, nudging him softly. “And you're gonna be fine on your own. I know that's what's really bothering you here.”
“Okay, fuck off,” He said, shoving me playfully. I laughed at that, getting up and taking the box with me.
“Did you still want Peter to come help us move this into storage?” I asked, stopping in the doorway.
“Yeah,” he said with a strained voice from him getting up off the floor. “If he doesn't mind.”
“Nah, I think he wants to say bye to the apartment too,” I told him as I walked back to my room to continue packing.
I watched Peter stack up the three boxes of my clothes into one stack. I looked at him skeptically as he bent over and lifted all three of them with ease. I crossed my arms and watched him smile at me when he walked by, making his way back out to the hallway. His nose was red from the cold he was just starting to get over. I picked up a box from the kitchen and followed behind him.
“What happened to you hiding your abilities?” I asked, shakily walking down the stairs.
“I am,” He said, making his way down a lot easier than I was. I rolled my eyes and followed him carefully out to the U-Haul truck we rented for this.
“Shit, I forgot to ask, how was dimsum?” I asked, setting down the box with a thud. I looked at Peter when he didn't say anything. His face told me everything. “Again?”
“Nah… she dumped me this time…” He said, sniffling but I wasn't sure if it was because of his cold, or because he was getting emotional. “I mean, it's all good. I'm just… gonna focus on helpin' out.”
“Right…” I muttered, following him out of the truck and back into the apartment. “You haven't talked to her since?”
Peter shook his head, stuffing his hands into his pockets and pursing his lips. I nodded, examining his face before looking around at the mostly empty apartment. His eyes were so hurt, even the way his shoulders curled up told me he was stressed. But it wasn't just Spider-Stress, he needed Gwen.
“Shit, did you finish your room already?” My dad asked as he came down the hallway with another box.
I hummed, “And the kitchen.” My dad looked between the two of us annoyed. I laughed. “We can help with your room.”
“No, you don't have to-”
Peter and I sighed, starting our way down to his room. “Well, we wouldn't have to if you finished packing earlier this week.”
“Up your ass!”
Peter and I snickered as we walked into my dad's room. It looked like he had been packing his clothes up one box at a time. He had two large suitcases packed up and off to the side. I sighed and began packing up the rest of the clothes with Peter.
We were silent when my dad came back into the room. He looked at us silently before walking back out, presumably to make sure the rest of the kitchen was packed up. Divide and conquer as he said when Peter got here.
“Oh, May was asking about your internship,” Peter said, closing up a box and moving onto another. “Where did you say it was again?”
“Horizon Labs,” I told him, opening the bottom drawer of my dad's dresser and finding nothing. “With Michael Morbius.”
“Right,” Peter trailed off. I glanced at him before going back to my spot on the floor.
“You're still working with Jameson?” I asked, stretching my legs out in front of me. Peter just looked at me with a tired look.
“I'm not even working with him. I send him shit, he pays me, and he forgets I exist until he wants another Spider-Man headline,” Peter sighed. “You know how much he hates me?”
“You or Spider-Man?”
“Both!” He sighed exasperatedly. “Me defending myself makes him think I’m some sort of delinquent! He doesn't listen to me!”
“He's a bitter old man. One of those people you can't really change the mind of,” I told him, leaning forward to touch my toes. “At least he puts your work on the front page. You work hard for that shit.”
And he truly does. The elaborate contraptions he has to come up with to get a shot of himself ‘in action’. It's like taking a picture of just a single bee in the middle of a hive. But he managed to do it every time.
“If only he paid me enough,” Peter said. “It's not the 70's!”
I snorted and came back up to a sitting position. “Work somewhere else. Somewhere they'll actually appreciate your work.”
Peter shrugged, “I don't know where that would even be.”
“You gave up on the science route?” He shrugged. “Start there, then. Cause I can't have my best friend broke and unhappy.”
“Wouldn't you be unhappy if you were broke,” He asked, looking at me weirdly.
I rolled my eyes, “Entirely depends on the person.”
Peter and I layed on the floor of my new apartment, tired and spread out. The hardwood floors were a big difference from the old apartment and it was cooling after the labour of making our way up and down flights of stairs.
We had finished putting the things my dad wasn't going to bring to San Francisco into storage and dreaded having to bring in my things. But we did it and after all three of us were sitting on the floor of the kitchen silently, my dad announced that he was going to get food from Mrs. Guo.
That was one of the things about the location of my apartment that I didn't like. It was a 20 minute drive away from Mrs. Guo and I didnt happen to have a car. And I most likely wouldn't have the time to go there as often. To new beginnings I guess .
“I can't believe you're living on your own now,” Peter said quietly, breaking the silence. I turned my head and looked at him as he gazed up at the overhead kitchen lights. His chest rose and fell slowly, his hands by his sides.
I hummed, closing my eyes once I turned my head back towards the ceiling. “I know, right. I don’t know how I’m gonna do it.”
Peter made a sound of disagreement, “No, no, I think you’re gonna do great.” I heard him sit up. I cracked open my eye to see him hugging his knees to his chest. “You actually know how to do things, Eddie’s been preparing you for this your whole life. I’m just surprised we actually got to this point.”
I let out an amused breath, “Yeah, how did we go from baby freshmen scared of the lunchroom, to living alone and saving the city?”
He laughed, “No! I mean- Well, yeah,” I snorted as he laughed again. “Just… I always knew you were gonna be more prepared for the real world than me. It’s just actually, ya know, happening now.”
“Yeah…” I trailed off, thinking back to just a few months ago. It felt like a lifetime ago that I was trying to find a source for my journalism class. Now, I’m going to NYU and my dad is moving to San Francisco... I got into NYU. “How about you Mr. Spider-Man? When are you gonna live on your own?”
He let out a breath as I sat up, “I don’t know if I even want… to go to college. But I don’t know what the plan would be, cause I can’t keep working for the Bugle. But what else is there?”
“Work for a different newspaper?” I suggested. “Work at a coffee shop. Find an internship, like me? Oh wait! Start getting a commission as Spider-Man.”
He glared at me for that last suggestion. ‘Right, cause Peter Parker is gonna cash in checks for Spider-Man,” He shook his head. “I just think I’m screwed.”
I shook my head and pushed him, “You’ll figure it out. Don’t give up so soon.” He looked at me as if he was thinking about what I said. I looked away, knowing that if I looked at him for a moment longer, my heart would have exploded.
Then him moving closer to me caught my attention. He wrapped an arm around me and pulled me into his chest. I froze, forgetting that he was simply just a friend who I was having a hard conversation with. Nothing more to this.
I hugged him back, feeling him rest his chin on my shoulder. “Thank you for being with me for so long. I feel like I don’t deserve you sometimes.”
My eyebrows furrowed judgmentally, “What do you mean, ‘Thank you’? You’re stuck with me whether you want me or not.”
He laughed solemnly. The the sound of a key entering the lock on the front door. We pulled away from the hug and I got up to help my dad with the multiple bags he had in his hands.
“You haven’t unpacked anything?” He asked, setting down the chinese food on the kitchen island.
“We were tired,” I told him as I pulled out the containers of food. I looked at him strangely as he pulled out a bottle of champagne and set it on the counter. Peter got off the floor and picked up the bottle, looking at my dad suspiciously.
“What’s the occasion?” He joked as my dad looked at all the labeled boxes scattered around my living room. He found the one labeled kitchenware and used his eyes to cut open the brown tape.
“My baby girl’s moving out! Living on her own,” He said, moving around the packing peanuts and wrapping tissue paper. He pulled out a few cups, shrugging and setting them down on the island.
“I’m still eighteen…” I said, watching him grab the bottle from Peter and pop the cork off with ease.
My dad waved me off, picking up the glass cups and pouring the champagne into them. “I give you permission.”
He set two cups in front of me and Peter. It was as if he was giving us glasses of apple juice when we were in middle school. But now it was alcohol. The very obvious next sequence in events.
“To Alina,” Peter said, raising the glass of pale alcohol up. I raised my own glass, trying to hide the smile growing on my face. My dad raised his glass up, clinking it against ours.
“To Alina,” My dad repeated, smiling fondly at me. I smiled and took a small sip of the dry drink, feeling it warm through my chest. Or maybe it was because I was with the two people I love the most in my life.