Dancing Around // peter parker

26

It felt like I didn't sleep at all during the weekend. I spend most of my time sitting on different surfaces during the day while scrolling through answer posts on my phone. I asked the public what I should do, and a lot of people had different answers.

Someone said I should pretend nothing happened. Someone else told me to flirt with him openly now that he knew. Someone said to touch his arm because apparently that drove all the men crazy. Someone suggested moving to Alaska. User 27367492k answered with a link that promised me inappropriate things and the person right below them wrote three paragraphs about how, when they told their friend that they like them, they stopped talking to them. That one scared me.

One user simply suggested asking him out on a date. That was the only advice that made any kind of sense to me. It seemed like the only logical choice, mainly because I had no way of getting to Alaska. Also, because it didn't seem that scary. That was until I walked out of my apartment and saw him there. He looked up at me and anything that I had rehearsed before abandoned my mind.

The first thing that I thought when my eyes traced his face was: oh god. The second thing was: he was right. All the bruises he had Friday night were mostly gone. I leaned close to his face, trying to see if he was using makeup to cover them. There was no way that he could heal that fast. It was impossible.

"What are you doing?" he asked.

I quickly jumped back, realizing just how close I got to him. "I-uh, I was just looking at your bruises or lack of."

He placed his chin in between his thumb and finger. "I told you I healed fast." I was surprised by how easily he joked around. I felt like a complete mess standing in front of him, my feelings were all over the place. I felt like two sides of me conflicted with themselves. One of them being the Marina that never got nervous, that could go upstairs at parties with a guy she barely knew. The other Marina, though, could hear the drumming of her heartbeat pick up every time she kept eye contact with Peter for a little too long.

It really took me hours to decide to let my hair down this morning, yet Peter seemed unaffected by my words. Did this mean he wasn't interested in me? I tried hard to remind myself that that was perfectly fine. That he didn't need to like me back. It didn't mean anything bad; it just was what it was. It still wounded me though, even if I didn't want it to. He dropped his hand when I looked away, getting lost in my thoughts.

"Marina?" I looked up at him, forcing a smile. I didn't want to make him feel guilty. If he didn't like me that way, fine, we could still be friends. I could get over him somehow. There was plenty of pretty fish in the sea. Plenty that would love to be with me. "About what you said last time..." He looked away. He did that thing again when he rubbed the back of his neck. And I did that thing again, where my heart swoon for him. "I...I-"

"It's okay if you don't feel the same way," I said.

He met my eyes. "It's not like that."

"It's not?"

"No, it's just, well, to be honest, I've never really thought about it before. I never thought that someone like you could be interested in someone like me, so I didn't even consider it." He looked away again, his hand still rubbing away on his neck.

I knitted my eyebrows together. I was seeing so many different sides of him lately. Sides I had no idea existed. He was mainly made out of friendliness, nerdiness, and goodness, but he also seemed to have a lot of insecurities buried within him. "How could I not be interested in you, Peter?"

He looked at me again. I smiled at him as I gather my hair to put into a ponytail. "Listen, do you want to hang out with me tonight? We can go eat burgers again or maybe pizza or we can watch a movie," I said.