My name is Peter Parker. You might know me as your friendly neighborhood Spider-Man. Yeah, that Spider-Man. The guy who got bit by a radioactive spider in high school, started sticking to walls, and decided the best use of that power was to wear skin-tight red and blue spandex and crack jokes at guys named Rhino and Vulture. My life's been... well, complicated doesn't even begin to cover it.

But the one constant, the one perfect, beautiful, grounding wire in the chaotic mess of my existence, has always been her. Mary Jane Watson.

I remember the first time I saw her. I was fifteen, all elbows and nerves, and she was... wow. A cascade of fiery red hair, eyes that held galaxies of confidence, and a laugh that could short-circuit my brain better than any of Electro’s tantrums. Aunt May set it up, a "nice girl from next door" kind of thing. I’d been dodging it for weeks, inventing excuses about... well, spider-related stuff. But the moment she stepped into my life, all my spider-senses went off—and not in the "danger" way. In the "your life is about to get infinitely better" way.

Our first date was a disaster. I was late. Shocker had decided to try robbing a bank with, I swear, oversized vibro-foam fingers. By the time I webbed him to the side of the building and swung home, I was a sweaty, bruised mess. I opened my bedroom window to change, and there she was, sitting on my bed, holding my spare Spider-Man mask.

“Took you long enough, Tiger,” she’d said with that impossibly knowing smirk. “The show’s over. You missed the part where the green guy with the wings flew into the billboard.”

She knew. She’d known since she saw me scramble out my window the week prior. Instead of running for the hills, she’d spent the last few days researching super-heroics and decided I was “kinda cute, for a doofus in pajamas.” That was our first kiss. Me, half out of my suit, her, pulling me in by the mask. It tasted like cherry lip-gloss and secrets, and it was the best thing that had ever happened to me.

We built a life. I fought bad guys, took pictures of myself fighting bad guys to pay the rent, and came home to her. She pursued her acting career with a ferocity that made my battles …