Chapter 1: Tutoring Takes a Turn
The pizza box was a monument to their failure. Grease-stained cardboard, one lone crust curled like a fossil. It sat on the floor of Flash’s bedroom amid a landslide of textbooks and rumpled laundry. The only light came from a single desk lamp, throwing the rest of the room into deep blue shadow and painting everything in a warm, intimate glow that felt at odds with the subject at hand.
“No, Flash. You’re mixing up your stoichiometry with your thermodynamics. Again.” Gwen Stacy tapped a finger on his notebook, the chipped black polish on her nails a stark contrast against the white paper. “It’s like you’re trying to build a car engine with pastry recipes.”
Flash Thompson slumped back in his chair, running a hand through his hair. “It all looks like pastry recipes to me. A bunch of random numbers that are supposed to make a cake but I always get a doorstop.”
“A delicious, carbon-based doorstop,” Gwen said, a faint smile playing on her lips. She leaned over his shoulder again, her blonde hair brushing his arm. She pointed to a particularly egregious equation. “See? Right here. You can’t just ignore the law of conservation of mass. The universe gets really pissy about that.”
“The universe and I aren’t on speaking terms right now.” He caught her scent then—not just her shampoo, but the faint, clean smell of her skin. It was distracting. Everything about her was distracting. The way she drummed her fingers on the desk to a rhythm only she could hear, the effortless way she untangled concepts that left him feeling like his brain was full of static.
He watched her hand, the same one that could probably web-sling across the city with impossible grace, now patiently circling his mistake with a red pen. His tutor. His friend. The one person who didn’t treat him like the punchline to a joke he’d started writing for himself in high school.
“Just think of the atoms like… like band members,” she said, her voice pulling him back. “You can’t have the drummer suddenly decide to be the lead singer in the middle of a reaction without telling the bassist. Everyone has to be accounted for.”
“You and your band analogies.” He shook his head, but he was smiling. It was working, though. The image stuck.
For a moment, there was just the sound of the old house settling and the soft scratch of her pen. This was their routine. Twice a week. She’d show up, he’d have pizza, and she’d patiently try to hammer basic chemistry into his head. It was the most stable thing in his life, this weird, guarded friendship. He was constantly waiting for the other shoe to drop, for her to realize he was a lost cause.
Gwen straightened up, stretching her arms over her head with a soft groan. The movement pulled her t-shirt taut. “Okay, try it from the top. Balance this one.”
He stared at the new equation she’d written. The numbers swam. All he could focus on was the space she’d occupied, the warmth still lingering in the air beside him. A reckless, nervous energy buzzed under his skin. This was it. This was the comfortable, familiar pattern. The jock needing help from the smart girl. He was so tired of that pattern. He wanted to tear it up.
In one fluid, sudden motion, he planted his foot and spun his chair around. The movement was so abrupt Gwen took a half-step back, but the bed was right behind her. She was trapped between his knees.
The air changed. The comfortable academic haze evaporated, replaced by something charged and silent.
“Flash,” she said, her voice a low warning. It wasn’t a question.
His hands, moving on their own volition, slid from the arms of the chair to her thighs. The denim of her skirt was rough under his palms. He could feel the firm muscle of her legs beneath. He looked up at her, his heart hammering a frantic beat against his ribs. Her expression was unreadable, a mask of calm that didn’t quite reach her eyes.
“I think we’ve studied enough,” he murmured, his voice lower than he intended. His thumbs stroked small, slow circles on her skin. He tugged gently at the hem of her skirt. “Wanna teach me something else?”
The silence that followed was absolute. He watched her face, searching for any sign—a smile, a blush, anything. He found nothing but a cool, assessing stillness. It was like looking at a statue.
Then, her hand closed over his. Her grip wasn’t harsh, but it was absolute. It stopped his movement completely.
“No,” she said. The word was quiet, final. It wasn’t angry. It was worse. It was disappointed.
She didn’t shove him away. She simply removed his hand from her leg, placing it back on the arm of his chair with a deliberate precision that felt like a sentence. The space between them yawned, suddenly vast and cold.
“I’m your tutor, Flash. Not a… extra credit project.” She grabbed her backpack from the floor, the movement sharp. “We’re done for tonight.”
“Gwen, wait. I’m sorry. That was stupid.” The words tumbled out, pathetic and weak. He was on his feet now, but she was already at the door.
She paused, her hand on the knob, and looked back at him. For a split second, he saw something else in her eyes—not anger, but a profound weariness, as if he was just one more weight she had to carry.
“Yeah,” she said softly. “It was.”
The door clicked shut behind her.
Flash stood alone in the center of his cluttered room, the ghost of her touch still burning on his hands. The silence was deafening. He’d wanted to change the pattern, and he had. He had just no idea if he could ever fix it.
Out on the street, Gwen walked fast, her breath misting in the cool night air. She shoved her hands deep into her jacket pockets, trying to ignore the tremble in her fingers. Idiot. She liked him. Against her better judgment, she genuinely liked the knucklehead. And he had to go and do that.
Her phone buzzed in her pocket. A specific, patterned vibration. Not a text. An alert.
She ducked into a nearby alley, the shadows swallowing her whole. In the concealing darkness, she slipped off her jacket, revealing the sleek, black and white fabric of her suit beneath. The world outside, with its complicated friendships and stupid, handsome boys, faded away. There was only the mission, the swing, the fight.
Another problem to solve. This one, at least, she could punch.