More Than Amazing
Chapter 8 - The Night Gwen Stacy Cried
Gwen Stacy sat cross-legged on her bed, glaring at nothing in particular. That was a lie. She was glaring at her phone, which was still face-down on the comforter where she'd thrown it twenty minutes ago, after reading Liz's latest text for the fourth time.
She still hadn't replied to the message, however that didn't stop her from walking back over to her phone. Gwen picked it up, if only to have something to grip that wasn't her own sweaty hands.
Liz: gwennnn hes still messaging me! omg
Liz: even sally is complaining to me! sally of all people!
Liz: just unblock him at this point
Her thumb hovered over the screen before she glared at all the other notifications still blowing up her phone!
@gwennplzforg1veme has sent a friend request!
@itspet3rplzunblock has sent a friend request!
@parkerpeter111111119 has sent a friend request!
Then she set it face-down again with more force than necessary.
Stupid.
Stupid, stupid, stupid.
That fool had even made a bunch of new accounts on social media—each one with an even more annoying username than the last!
….Although she still sneaked one 'last' peak after it buzzed in her hand once more.
@xXxparkerpeter69xXx has sent a friend request!
Idiot!
She hated this.
She hated how awfully her heart still stuttered in her chest every time his name showed up on her screen.
She hated that some small, humiliating part of her had spent the last hour replaying their conversation in the hallway outside the cafeteria on a loop—the way his voice had cracked… and the way his arms had felt around her.
She hated that she'd cried into his shirt without any pride.
Gwen flopped backward onto her bed, staring at the ceiling like it owed her a twenty.
"…I thought I was protecting you," she whispered to herself under her breath in confusion.
Protecting her? From what? From homework? From gossip? From the horrifying tragedy of being seen talking to Peter Parker in a hallway?
Nobody even cared!
She sat back up, dragging her hands over her face. That was the part that gnawed at her the worst—not the years of silence, not even the worrying flinching that he always tried so hard to hide.
It was that he'd apparently had a reason. A real one that lived behind his eyes, the thing that made his voice shake and his hands tremble—something big enough that he genuinely believed cutting her out of his life was the kinder option.
And he still wouldn't tell her what it was.
She wanted to be furious about it. She was furious about it.
Three years of being quietly, thoroughly erased from someone's life didn't just dissolve because he showed up one day looking wrecked and sorry. She'd earned the right to be angry; she'd paid for that right in lonely lunch periods and countless nights locked away crying in her bedroom.
So why did some traitorous part of her keep circling back to how mournful he'd looked? It just didn't make sense.
Gwen pulled her knees up to her chest and wrapped her arms around them.
She thought of the boy who used to trade her half his lunch because her busy dad forgot to pack one. Who was so smart that her younger self treated him like a living encyclopedia, always asking him the most outlandish and silly questions.
That boy didn't just disappear because he stopped caring. She knew that boy. She had known that boy, better than practically anyone, right up until the day he'd started looking at her like she was a broken plate he'd already dropped.
Maybe three years of best-friendship hadn't been enough to earn an explanation, and five minutes in a hallway probably wasn't going to change that.
Maybe she was an idiot for even considering forgiving someone who still, after everything, hadn't given her a single real answer.
Gwen grabbed a pillow and pressed it over her face, muffling a frustrated scream into it.
The worst part—the actual worst part—was that some ruined, stubborn corner of her heart didn't care about the answer nearly as much as it should have.
She hated how much she just wanted him back in her life.
How much she wanted the version of Peter who used to make her laugh so hard she'd get sent to the principal's office for disrupting the class. The Peter who wasn't afraid to look at her.
She hated that about herself so much.
Forgiving him would mean admitting he'd hurt her that badly in the first place—that the last three years had actually cost her something, instead of just being some phase she'd shrugged off. And not forgiving him meant... what? Continuing to sit two tables away, writing every laugh she wasn't part of in an imaginary revenge manifesto?
She didn't know which one frustrated her more.
Gwen then glanced at a small dent in her wall above her desk—from years ago, because of a thrown book from an argument with her dad about something she couldn't even remember now.
Would all this be the same way in the end?
Were all her tears worth nothing?
Then her phone buzzed, and she growled at the noise. Idiot! But she still couldn't resist snatching it up before staring at the lockscreen.
…An unknown number?
???: open ur window — pp
Gwen stared at the message for a solid five seconds, convinced her brain had simply stopped working correctly. There was no way. No way he actually—!
She scrambled off her bed so fast she nearly took the comforter down with her, feet skidding across her floor as she yanked the curtain aside. And there, standing on her lawn like the most deranged person alive, was Peter Parker. Holding an actual, honest-to-God boombox over his head!
It was enormous. An ancient looking, chunky thing with two scuffed-up speakers the size of dinner plates and an antenna bent at an angle that suggested he'd found it in someone's trash—which, knowing him, he probably had.
His arms were visibly shaking from the weight of it, with his glasses slid halfway down his nose. Gwen yanked the window open and immediately leaned out with her mouth hung open in shock.
Then the music started playing—blaring across the lawn loudly enough to draw the eyes of everyone outside. He didn't seem to care, even as he began to sweat from the strain of holding up the speaker.
But she sure did—it was so embarrassing! Did he have to do w-whatever this was in front of everyone?!
And why this song?!
"What," she started, very slowly, almost forcing the words out, before it ended in a screech that quickly tore from her lips, "are you doing!?"
"You won't talk to me!" Peter called up, wincing as the boombox slipped an inch in his grip. He readjusted with a grunt. "You're supposed to—supposed to just know what this means! That's the whole point! It's literally cliche! I'm sorry! Please forgive me!"
"W-what it means?! What are you talking about?!" She shouted back with a red face, her cold demeanor gone.
"It means you should unblock me already!"
"That's not for you to decide!"
"That's why I'm here!"
"Why?!"
"To talk to you!"
Everyone was staring at them. It was horrifying. Her neighbors looked on in shock and amusement and her pale face couldn't get any redder!
She could only thank God that her dad wasn't home.
He was still on shift, which meant she had at least a few hours before she had to explain why there was a boombox blasting on their front lawn in broad daylight.
Her neighbor hollered over, cheering for her, "Get it, Gwen!"
"Mrs. Feldman, go back to your house!" Gwen shrieked, ducking half behind her curtain.
Peter, meanwhile, still didn't seem the least bit bothered.
If anything, the growing audience only seemed to embolden him. He straightened up under the boombox's weight, chin lifted, "You hear that! Come get me, Gwen!"
"Idiot! Shut up!" She screeched.
"Not until you unblock me!"
"I'm going to call the police to arrest you!"
"That's fine, I'll just ask your dad to drive me back!"
"Ugh!" Gwen pressed both hands to her burning face, dragging them down slowly, hoping she could physically peel the embarrassment off her skin.
It didn't work.
"You're impossible." She called down, voice cracking somewhere between a helpless laugh and an ugly cry.
She wanted to be furious. She really did. She'd spent the last couple hours moping around in three years of justified anger—and here he was, undoing all of it with a busted boombox and his stupid antics that still made her want to break out in a smile.
Then he slowly lowered the volume and she couldn't tear her eyes away from the sorrowful gaze he gave her.
"Please, Gwen." He spoke seriously to her, with a soft, sad voice.
She couldn't do it.
Gwen slammed the window shut and slowly lowered herself to the floor as she fought the tears in her eyes. She failed, and soon pressed both hands over her face, angrily wiping at her tears.
She hated it.
A minute later, Gwen's phone buzzed face up against the carpet beside her.
???: I'm sorry for bothering, i'll leave u alone
???: But I won't give up
Gwen stared at the two messages until the words blurred together. It should have felt like relief. So why did it feel like the floor had been pulled out from under her?
She scrambled back up to the window, fisting the curtain in one hand before she yanked it open just in time to see him already walking away—boombox dragged under both arms, shoulders hunched, with the confidence from before completely gone.
He just looked sad.
"Wait—!" The word tore out of her before she'd even decided to think about doing it, causing Peter to freeze mid-step on the sidewalk in response.
Gwen's hands were shaking. She looked down at her phone, at the two texts still glowing on the screen.
She thought of Peter's voice in the classroom, from days ago, when she mustered the courage to talk to him. The soft grin he gave as he spoke to her for the first time in forever.
…I'm trying to do better.
She remembered the anxiety that twisted her insides at that smile. She hadn't slept that night just thinking about it.
Who had done it? Who had finally pulled Peter out from beneath that blanket of misery he'd spent years drowning in?
Gwen hated how jealous the question made her.
Because it hadn't been her.
Someone had gotten through to him. Someone had made him want to change. Someone had made Peter Parker smile again. And a selfish part of Gwen desperately wished that she were the person who had done it.
The one that made him smile like that.
But no, it was someone else—it had to have been.
She wanted that. She wanted to be that person. The person he clearly didn't think she could be. She wanted to show him that she was more than a glass vase that needed protection.
She wanted him to trust and confide in her. She wanted it more desperately than she had ever wanted anything.
Gwen's thumb found the settings of her contacts list as her resolve hardened.
Blocked Contacts
> Peter Parker
Unblock?
Her finger hovered there, trembling, the whole weight of the last three years freezing her from tapping the small button.
She thought of every time she'd opened this exact screen just to stare at his name and talk herself out of it. Dozens of times. Maybe hundreds.
She thought of the pain she had gone through, the heartache spent wondering what she'd done wrong. Then she thought of Peter's suffering—the sorrow that clouded him every moment of every day.
She had lost him, true, but he had not only lost her but also had to deal with whatever had caused it. She thought he was just shutting her out, but now she knew it was different.
The grief he felt over their fractured relationship wasn't fake. He cared just as much as she had—but still pushed her away regardless.
He even had a reason, as mysterious as it was.
He was clearly trying to reach out, no matter how clumsy it may have been. He wanted to fix things. It was all she had dreamed of the past couple years, and now it was here. Her heart was hammering so hard she thought she might actually be sick.
So how could she just throw it away out of anger and pride?!
Unblock Confirmed.
She looked with tears streaking down her face at him staring up at her from below. Then she shouted her answer to his previous text—the words she'd wanted to scream at him for years.
"Don't you dare give up on us again!"
The words echoed down the quiet street, raw, unguarded, and full of youthful passion, nothing like the words of the bitter girl who'd ducked away a minute prior.
Down on the sidewalk, Peter went utterly still. Then his face broke, and the expression he responded with wasn't anything like the grin from days before.
It was a smile that looked like it hurt to wear. Like relief and grief had gotten tangled up together inside him and this was the only way either of them knew how to get out. His eyes were just as teary as her own, his smile just as heartfelt as the feeling behind her words.
Gwen's breath caught at the sight. She had never once seen him smile like this before.
Then a piercing wolf whistle cut straight through the moment like a knife in butter. Gwen's whole body seized with mortification as she whipped her head toward the sound.
…And all the people watching.
"Oh, isn't that just precious—!"
The window was closed before she could hear the end of the sentence. She then stood there frozen with indescribable emotions—joy, embarrassment, and relief.
Then her phone buzzed.
Peter Parker: Never
Gwen then slid down against the wall beneath her window, phone clutched to her chest, face still burning, as her heart tried to beat out of it.
And as she cried herself to sleep that night—whether from relief or joy—all she could think about was his smile.
Along with the selfish, wonderful feeling that this one belonged to her.
Author's Notes:
If you like my stories, please support me on Patreon, at Patreon.com/theMadLad, where you can find one advanced chapter early right now!
This chapter is probably the shortest one yet, but I feel that it shouldn't be longer and ends pretty well.
◝(ᵔᗜᵔ)◜
Leave a like and tell what you think!
Don't forget to join the discord! https://discord.gg/AMyqBN2