I call Gayle as I'm walking to aunt Anna's, she was home again so I just decided to tutor flash away from my house. I fill her in on everything Curt told me and I wince as she begins to cry. "Gayle? Hey Gayle are you ok?" She sniffles for a few moments longer before taking in a deep breath.
"I'm fine and moms gonna be fine ok? She's been through this before and she pulled out fine, better than fine. So don't you worry about this ok? You just live your life like mom wants, you focus on school and only school." I'm extremely shocked to hear her kind tone on the other end, "ok..."
"What are you doing right now?" She questions, "I'm just on my way to meet up with this boy I tutor." I answer her simply finding this whole interaction strange. "Good, if you wanna go out with some friends after you're done that's fine too, I'll be home so don't feel the need to hurry back." This was really weird, like I'd fallen into some alternate universe or something. It was nice though, Gayle was acting the way she used to act with me.
***
"Hey flash, I'm sorry again for all the changes." I say as I meet him at the door, "oh it's fine, don't worry about it. I hope everything's ok?" I nod at him with a smile, "it's fine, come on." I say grabbing his arm and leading him up to my room.
"I'm bored." I glance up at flash after he groans at me, "flash, come on please try and focus." I plead putting my own book down, I'd literally only just stopped explaining to him and he hadn't even spent a moment trying to attempt the questions before complaining.
"But it's so boring, I don't get it." I nod and move closer to him so I could actually see the work in front of him. I try explaining in a new way but once I look up I see him staring at me. "Did you pay attention to a single thing I just said?" I ask trying to remain calm. "No." He admits with a bashful smile.
"Flash it's no wonder you don't understand if you don't pay attention." I say making him nod, "I'm sorry, I just get easily distracted."
"There's nothing remotely distracting in here." I say making him shrug, "you are." I laugh slightly, "very smooth, but we've already had this discussion flash, I don't want to date you."
"Why?" He's not angry which is surprising because flash was horrible at handling rejection. Instead he's genuinely curious as to why I'm rejecting him. "Because you're a bully? You have to tear others down to make yourself feel better and I don't like being around that." I shrug, "you don't get it." He huffs standing.
He goes to put his stuff away but I quickly reach out to stop him. Flash was a bully but I could tell that he wasn't a bad person, and my mom told me to always try and help people if I could, she always said something as small as just listening could help people in ways you'd never understand. "If you tell me then I could." He looks down at my hand over his and shakes his head.
"You wouldn't understand."
"Try me."
"I- I don't want to." I nod in understanding, "alright, you don't have to, but please sit back down and we can get through this together. I'll explain it to you a million times, a million different ways if I have to." He cracks a smile and nods, "fine, but you have to let me take breaks every so often and you have to actually speak to me during those breaks."
"Deal."
***
Time flies with flash and we actually have a good time, he could be really nice when he wanted to be, it was such a shame that he wasn't like this around more people. If he was I wouldn't be so opposed to giving him a chance.
"Alright you keep working like this and we could have a b plus student on our hands." I praise as I walk him out of the house. "I don't think so Mj," he says with a slight laugh. "You're being too generous."
"Come on Flash I believe in you." He grins at me genuinely and then he wraps his arms around me which takes me by surprise. "Thanks." He shrugs once he lets me go making me nod at him "yeah no worries." Just as he's leaving I see Peter approaching with his eyes narrowed at us.
His glare doesn't break once we make eye contact and so I roll my eyes and hold my middle finger up at him before turning around and walking back into my aunt Anna's house as he walks into his own.
"So that flash is handsome." I jump to see Anna stood right in front of me, "Jesus aunt Anna." I say clutching at my chest although she's not paying me any sort of mind as she's already got her thoughts formed in her mind. "He seems to be quite lovely too, you could do a lot worse."
"Aunt Anna, I'm just tutoring him." She doesn't reply, "aunt Anna?" She snaps out of her thoughts and nods with a smile, "ah right, he's not Peter." My brows furrow at that. "What are you talking about?"
"Your feelings for Peter are-"
"Woah woah woah, the only feelings I have for Peter are ones of distaste, annoyance-"
"You can sing that song all you want but we all know the truth Mj, you undoubtedly have some sort of romantic feelings for the boy."
"Look aunt Anna I know it's fun for you and may to try and play Cupid with Peter and I, but I think you've tricked yourself into believing whatever it is you and may think you see between us." I most definitely knew that I one hundred percent did not have any romantic feelings for Peter Parker and I never ever would.
