I’ll never forget the day my life went from “awkward nerd with a side of wall-crawling” to “awkward nerd with a side of wall-crawling and a smoking-hot girlfriend.” It was sophomore year of high school when I, Peter Parker, finally got up the nerve to ask out Mary Jane Watson, the fiery-haired girl next door who’d been my friend since we were kids trading dinosaur-shaped chicken nuggets. She said yes, and the collective groan from Flash Thompson and Harry Osborn in the Midtown High cafeteria was sweeter than Aunt May’s wheatcakes.

We were a good fit. I had my "Stark Internship" cover for the Spider-Manning, and she had her drama club rehearsals and modeling gigs. I’d even done a few school plays with her—turns out, memorizing lines is a lot easier when you have a photographic memory and the proportional agility of a spider to nail the stage combat. MJ loved it. “Face it, Tiger,” she’d say, quoting our first real kiss after the homecoming dance, “you just hit the jackpot. A boyfriend who can act and catch you if you fall off the stage? It’s a win-win.”

Fast forward to freshman year at Empire State University. We’d managed to swing a shared dorm room—a minor miracle involving a lot of paperwork and a little web-fluid on the housing director’s office lock. Life was good. We were eighteen, in love, and navigating the bizarre world of college while I still juggled stopping bank robbers and occasionally photographing them for the Daily Bugle.

Which is why I came home one Tuesday evening smelling faintly of sewer and burnt rubber, having just webbed up the Shocker after he tried to rob a currency exchange. All I wanted was a microwave burrito and to collapse next to my girl.

I slid the window open and dropped silently onto the floor of our dorm. “MJ, I'm home. You will not believe the day I’ve had. Shocker tried to rob a bank with… get this… self-warming utensils. Turns out he’s branching out from nuclear reactors to… gourmet picnics? I webbed his arms to a food truck called ‘Frankly My Dear I Don’t Give a Ham.’ It was a whole thing.”

The room was quiet. Too quiet. Usually, she’d be at her desk, running lines for some indie play or sketching designs, laughing at my stupid stories.

“MJ? Are you there? Hello...” I said, my Spidey-sense …