Wedding of the Century update

Peter stared out the window. There was almost nothing to see but the Atlantic; only a container ship chugged along. From this altitude, it looked like something out of Thomas The Tank Engine. He'd never get tired of this view… not that he'd gotten many chances to.

He heard a giggle like water trickling down smooth stones. “Enjoying the view?” MJ asked.

Peter blushed. He must seem like such a rube. “I don't fly much.”

“Don't be embarrassed. I like the view too.” And she ran her eyes up and down his body.

Peter ducked his head. It wasn't embarrassment. It was shame. She liked him, she was good to him, and he was using her. He shouldn't care about that. What did it matter as long as he finished the mission? But he didn't want Mary Jane to look at him when he was doing this to her.

Mary Jane leaned against the little aisle he was sitting in. With only three to a row, and the sumptuous seats like an afterthought in the open, flowing space of the plane’s interior, they seemed more like tanning chairs on a beach than anything to do with tray tables and crash positions. There wasn’t even a row in front of Peter’s aisle, not for yard. There was a footrest that came out of his seat like he was some sitcom dad watching the game. It was insane.

“I have to admit, I had you pegged for the type that catches up on his reading on a long flight. But here you are, looking at the ocean. It's the simple pleasures, isn't it?”

“There's a boat,” Peter said weakly.

Mary Jane looked out the window. “Wow, there is. It's so tiny.”

“It actually is. They shipped a bunch of cake ingredients in the big shop, but they forgot the sprinkles, so they sent a little ship after it.”

She giggled again. Water carrying rose petals along. “Nothing but sprinkles.”

The boat disappeared into the horizon. Mary Jane made an exaggerated look of sadness. “I guess all we can do now is hope for an island.”

“It's not the same,” Peter moaned with overwrought dismalness. “With islands, I worry someone's shipwrecked there and I'm going to miss them and three months later, all the newspapers will break a story about how I didn't help Robinson Crusoe.”

Mary Jane flounced down into the seat next to his. “I worry someone will shoot down the plane with a stinger missile.”

“There are so many people flying and it just takes one to decide to play bumper cars.”

“That's why I don't like to drive.”

“At least if you crash a car, you're on the ground. People get thrown out of cars and live through it all the time. If you get thrown out of a plane…” Peter spread his hands out in a gesture of finality.

“I feel like if you get thrown from a car, you die instantly, but if you get thrown from a plane, you have a little time. That's something.”

“If you're almost done with a book and you're a really fast reader…”

“Exactly, right? Or you can take a vow of celibacy.”

“You think that kind of thing gets you a higher cloud where you're going?”

“Maybe. Or if you don't have a will, you can call someone quick and tell them they get everything.”

“I think you have to get those notarized.”

“If a notary's flying with you…”

“Good point. I need to ask if anyone's a notary, next flight I'm on.”

“Or you could get your will done while you're on the ground, not about to die.”

Peter slumped his shoulders. “I would get so much done if I were going to die. I don't know why life can't motivate me as much.”

“It's sweeter to think we have time to do nothing than to think it's running out.” MJ bobbed up onto her feet as if she'd hurt her own feelings with the jibe. “Well, until another boat comes along, I know how we can put our time to good use.”

Peter raised an eyebrow, but didn't give her any innuendo. He knew she'd probably want to do it herself.

Mary Jane threw open an overhead compartment and dug into it. “Live like you're dying. YOLO.”

“Carpe diem,” Peter added. “Seize the day.”

“I don't actually like that saying, but I try not to speak ill of the dead languages.”

Mary Jane stretched to her full height, her tawny belly emerging from between her top and skirt, and Peter found himself staring at her belly button until she came down with a sheaf of papers.

“What's that?” Peter asked, a bit embarrassed to have ogled her and a lot embarrassed by the way she seemed to welcome his eyes.

She offered it to him. “Script for the movie I'm about to star in. You're a smart guy. I want your opinion of it.”

Peter felt too awkward to leave her holding the script out to him. He took it. “Jurassic Park: Destruction Sequence. How many is that?”

“I don't know. This one has Lex and Tim in it.”

“Still dinosaurs around?”

“Read it and find out.”

Peter turned to the first page. “You'd think after seven movies, they'd have it figured out.”

“Ha. You know how many movies they made. Nerd.”

“You know I'm right about how many movies they made.”

“I'm only stupid about my love life, not my professional life. Well, I used to be. I’m going to go slip into something more comfortable,” she concluded, with such a forced airiness to the end of the statement that it felt like the punchline to a joke he hadn’t gotten.

Peter read. It started out with some kids encountering a dinosaur that Peter wasn't a big enough nerd to know off-hand. They got away clean.

It was mom horror. Lots of screaming and running, but he doubted anyone but bad guys would get et.

“Are you, ah, Nida?” he asked MJ, coming out of… whatever other rooms this plane had.

She’d switched from the pap-friendly ensemble to a stocking cap, tanktop, pajama bottoms, and toenail polish. Peter didn’t consider himself very conversant with the female mind, but he thought she was going for a kind of shopworn intimacy—trying to impress him by not impressing him. Thing was, there was no possible world where Mary Jane’s body wasn’t awe-inspiring. She could gobsmack him at fifty paces while wearing sackcloth.

“We're changing the name. You have any suggestions?”

“Uh, Michelle?” Peter suggested.

“No, I hate that,” Mary Jane said, sounding certain as only a woman who’d thought out baby names could be.

Peter tried to pay attention to the script, while Mary Jane knelt to unlace and take off his shoes. It felt like it’d be more awkward to ask what she was doing, when it was perfectly obvious, than to just let her make him comfortable. But he couldn’t resist a little jibe.

“I usually never take off my shoes on an airplane.”

“It’s my airplane,” Mary Jane said. “And it’s a fourteen-hour flight. If we’d been on a few more dates, I would’ve taken my pants off.”

Peter nodded. “Seems a little callous to the flight attendant.”

“Herve? He’s gay, he doesn’t mind.”

That made Peter cross his legs, just in case Mary Jane was getting ideas about his belt. “My pants are comfortable enough.”

“Mine too.” Mary Jane plucked at the waistband. “I saw all the Twilights in these. Still fit.”

Peter went back to reading. The lead character formerly known as Nida was a prickly paleontologist, not giving an inch to the male lead who tried to rope her into hunting dinosaurs for reasons Peter couldn't discern after rereading the page in question three times.

Very quickly, the expedition went wrong and Nida ended up in a tanktop. Raptors showed up, which the screenwriter seemed very excited by. Peter was happy to see him enjoying himself, even if he couldn't think of anything for the raptors to do but stalk the protagonists around before getting trapped in a closet.

“Would you like a drink?” Mary Jane asked, holding out to him one of those sophisticated water bottles that looked like a warp core.

“Yeah, thanks.” Peter did not have trouble setting the script aside to work out how to Rubik's cube the bottle cap.

“Why don't you stretch out?” Mary Jane added, folding up the armrests of the little aisle he was sitting in.

“I actually like a little arm support… okay…” Peter said as Mary Jane pushed him until he was leaning against one side of the Autobot couch, his feet up on the other side.

“Here's the thing,” MJ told him. “I totally respect that you want to take things slow. If you don't feel ready for some level of intimacy, that's fine. I don't feel put out at all, being one of the most desirable women in America and dating someone who doesn't desire me.”

“I… desire,” Peter insisted, trying to fit the bottle's cap back on so he could set it aside.

“Thanks, but I just said I'm not put out.” Mary Jane took a deep breath. “The thing is, I'm a cuddler. I'm not having a boyfriend I can't cuddle with.”

“I'm fine with cuddling.”

“Good, because you're going to need to be.”

Mary Jane stretched out on top of him, Peter holding the water bottle and script aloft to keep them out of the way as she settled on him like a cat that had decided it was going to be petted. He set the water bottle down—it turned out you could pop the cap on instead of screwing it in, which made him feel like an idiot—and folded the script in half so he could hold it with one hand.

His other arm went around MJ. She happily burrowed her face into his chest. He could feel her warmth through the thin cotton of her clothing: an everlasting blush settling onto his skin. Her own skin would’ve shamed the finest silks.

Peter tried to concentrate on the script. It was tempting to feel as much of Mary Jane as he was. It was even more tempting to shut his eyes and rest in perfect comfort like she was doing, lulled to sleep by the siren song of giving her so much peacefulness.

“So what do you think?” Mary Jane asked, perhaps assuming from his stillness that he'd finished the script. Which he hadn't, but he was far enough along to get the gist of it.

“It's fine. There's dinosaurs, there's girls. The bad guy is kinda racist, which is good, because that way I can tell he's bad…”

“You hate it.”

“No, no… it just seems like this year's model, you know? You're playing the same sort of character you always play. You're tough, you're sarcastic, you clean up nice, you have a sob story. There's nothing wrong with it… but it feels like a placeholder. Like anyone from Meryl Streep to… Miss First Day At The CW could play it.”

“So you hate it,” Mary Jane said, her lilting voice making it only slightly teasing.

“I just don't see the point. No, I see the point. It's a job, it keeps you flying a private jet instead of coach, but you're famous, you're talented, you're already rich. Can't you get something cool made instead of…? It's like you have this kitchen and a personal chef and you just shopped at the farmer's market and you tell the guy to go get you McDonald's.”

“McDonald's,” she repeated.

“Wait, what's your opinion of McDonald's? Because if you really hate McDonald's, that's not fair. Subway. It's more Subway.”

“Subway doesn't hurt as much. Still feels like a bit more hard truth than I want when I'm being cuddled. Play with my hair so I know you still like me.”

Peter ran his fingers through her red, red hair. His awareness of her was like a living thing in him. It wasn’t just the obvious: her lush breasts, her flaring hips, the sleekly tapering waist, all the alluring curves that called to a red-blooded man like a racetrack begging to be driven.

It was that she was so harmonious. As wonderful as her figure was, there was something as magnificently compelling as that in the shape of her eyes, the arch of her brows, the fullness of her lips. It was all so… perfect.

Like Gwen had been perfect.

Mary Jane sighed like gas escaping a pipe, but musically. How did she do that? “Look, it's not like I don't have enough of an ego to want to do the independent Oscarbait critic catnip where I'm suffering from germaphobia for two hours. They're dime a dozen and they'd all love to have a big name sign on so they could actually get financing. But I do Jurassic Park, everyone shows up to see me do my thing, they love it, I get another private jet… I star in some passion project, it's a good movie. I'm not good enough. Everyone thinks I ruin what could've been a masterpiece. I’m Sofia Coppola without being able to pivot to directing, because believe me, that is hard. So should I do a good job at Subway's or should I fall on my face at Dorsia?”

“What’s Dorsia?”

“It's a very nice restaurant in New York.”

“Oh, okay.”

“I thought that'd be obvious from context.”

“Yeah, it's obvious now, not five seconds ago. Don't know what's changed… look, it's your career. I know you and your agent and everyone must know more than me. But I gotta think you pay your dues so you can stop doing the jobs that feel like work. Once you're done with them, you get to be brave. I've known some brave people. I don't think you'd remind me of them so much if you weren't…”

Abruptly he couldn't say more. It wasn't that she reminded him of Gwen. She was so different, louder, taking up more space. But the situation… he could've been here, with Gwen, once upon a time. He was so aware that there'd been a moment like this when he'd been going to lose Gwen, destined to lose her, and he'd had no idea.

Gwen hadn’t been perfect right away. She’d always been attractive, sure, struck him as beautiful—but one day, and he was never sure just when, he’d realized that there wasn’t anything he’d change in her. Not one mole, not one hair, not one single line of her face and her body and the way she smiled…

It wasn’t the same, of course. Mary Jane was a supermodel. It was her job to be perfect. But it bothered Peter to think that he could look at someone who’d won a beauty contest and think she was as perfect as Gwen had been. Bothered him like a math problem where he’d made a mistake somewhere between the expression and the term.

It wasn’t that Mary Jane was beautiful. It couldn’t be that he loved her, not like he’d loved Gwen.

He hadn’t earned letting go of Gwen yet.

“You're thinking of how you lost her, aren't you?”

“Yes,” Peter had no choice but to admit.

“Did I go too fast?”

“No, it's just… I was happy with her. Very happy. So when I'm happy with you, I'm going to think of being happy with her.”

“That’s sweet.” Mary Jane faced front like a soldier at attention. She toyed with the shirt buttons in front of her nose. “It’s been a while since you’ve had someone to comfort you, isn’t it?”

“You think I need a therapist?”

“I have four therapists. I’m not sure how much good it’s doing me.”

“Maybe it’s doing good for the economy,” Peter suggested.

Mary Jane hummed consideringly. “I think you just have to get used to having someone take care of you.” She kissed the small swath of skin between one button and the next. “And I have to get used to being held by handsome men who aren’t just doing it to be polite; I think I’m doing better at getting used to this than you are.”

Peter shook his head about as much as he could without dislodging MJ. “No, I’m… I’m used to this.”

“Really? You’re used to this?” And she kissed his chest again, as lightly as pepper being ground onto a salad.

“Yeah. Happens to me every time I buy coffee. My neighborhood Starbucks has real friendly baristas…”

“Mmm.” Mary Jane rubbed her nose kittenishly into his chest hair. “It’s a long flight. I may fall asleep on you.”

“I may fall asleep under you.”

“Oh, good, that’ll be like sleep-learning. You can learn to be under me while you sleep.”

“Do you have any more scripts in case I catch insomnia?” Peter goaded.

Mary Jane leaned up to kiss his chin. “Put both arms around me, tiger. You don’t want me to get away.”