Misadventures in Paradise ↠ Peter Parker [2]

17 | MJ Gets Shot

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MISADVENTURES IN PARADISE
xvii. MJ GETS SHOT

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   LATELY, RILEY HAD FALLEN prisoner to guilty pleasures. Bad TV. Gossiping with her coworkers. Getting wine drunk with her mom. Teaching Morgan curse words in foreign languages. Seeking out tall buildings with the perfect rooftops to lounge on (though that last one, she wasn't sure why). However, her worst guilty pleasure, without question, had become staking out very minuscule crime scenes.

   She couldn't put her finger on where the pastime came from—only that she was the kind of person who couldn't let go of a fixation or obsession to save her life. Usually, she left those to the NYPD or Spider-Man or whatever new D-list superhero was running the streets these days. After all, Riley Stark was a busy woman. There was no reason to give minor crimes the time of day, and besides, let's be serious, it was never a fair fight.

   But lately, Riley sort of loved how it felt cleaning and buffing the streets of New York. Maybe it was because life had reached a plateau again, and Riley preferred to keep her gears warm. Maybe it was because Morgan was growing up too fast, soon to be roaming the streets on her own. Or maybe it was because it got her out of spending the day doing paperwork.

   Whatever it was, Riley didn't mind floating from borough to borough and giving petty criminals a run for their money. Or... well, it wasn't usually their money, but anyway—

   This had been Riley's thing for a few months now. Ever since the Statue of Liberty fiasco, really—which, again, she still couldn't remember much about, but she was trying to move on from that concern. As long as she could still her lefts from her rights, her memory loss didn't seem to be doing any harm.

   Now, this, moderating neighborhood crime, had been a peaceful pastime of Riley's since these past few months, since all that. With Spider-Man primarily taking nighttime crime, they didn't cross paths much anymore. It had been ages before she saw him again recently: the other day when he somehow found her on her designated rooftop of the day, mentioned he was having an existential crisis, and swung into the sunset like nothing ever happened.

   What a bizarre person he was, truly.

   For whatever reason, Riley couldn't stop thinking about him. He'd hardly said anything of substance, just that he was going through some things, but that might've been the first time he ever shared anything about himself. Willingly. On purpose. Without the shroud of a quip. It was so strange. He said it like it was nothing. Like they were sort of friends—albeit only for half a second before he went back to annoying her.