LOUD MOUTH → PETER PARKER ✓

Chapter Twenty-One: Wedding Cake Complicated

𝐂𝐇𝐀𝐏𝐓𝐄𝐑 𝐓𝐖𝐄𝐍𝐓𝐘-𝐎𝐍𝐄: WEDDING CAKE COMPLICATED

He was late. He was late and she was going to kill him. Callie's mind was filled with all the different ways she could murder him and get away with it as she sat in a rickety white chair in the field of Midtown Science High. Never mind the fact that she was graduating. Her leg bounced underneath her royal blue gown, her forehead sparkling with a thin layer of sweat underneath the cap. She tried her best to pay attention to the ceremony going on on the stage—the goddamn principal of the school was talking, but she couldn't focus on anything other than the empty chair in the row in front of her. The chair where Peter Parker was supposed to be.

Gwen Stacy noticed Callie's anxious stare right away. It was safe to say that neither of them were pleased that their best friend—or in Callie's case, boyfriend—was late for their graduation. It was a mix of nerves and anger, one that usually didn't lead to pleasant conversations.

With a frustrated sigh, Callie subtly reached up and flipped a dial on the black earpiece around her right ear, turning it on. Gwen had made them at Oscorp as an "experimental device", capable of communication in even the most dire of situations. Which, in Peter's case, was swinging around New York at almost a hundred miles per hour. Callie spoke quietly into the piece. "Where the hell are you, Parker?"

Peter's voice came back, slightly rushed. She heard wind whistling over it too, almost loud enough to make him impossible to hear. "Somewhere around Broadway. Third...Fourth...Fifth. I'm almost there, just give me five minutes, ten tops. Don't worry, I got this. Piece of cake. Easy as pie...other baking metaphors used to describe ease."

Callie frowned. "Do I hear sirens in the background?"

"No, no I don't think so."

"Those—Those are definitely sirens. Peter!"

"I don't know what you're talking about! No sirens here. Maybe you have a concussion. Make Gwen do the counting fingers thing—"

"I'm going to murder you. I'm going to murder you and it'll be so clever and so horrifying that they'll create an episode of Criminal Minds about me and then make a documentary about it called The Very Just and Very Called for Murder of Peter Parker."

"That's...graphic."

"Just, please, Peter—"

She was cut off by their principal on the podium. "Now, it is my pleasure to introduce our class president, Callie Adams."

Callie quickly took her hand away from her ear as every head turned to her. She smiled and began her walk to the stage, everyone starting to clap and cheer. While she walked, the principal began to sing her praises, making her cringe in embarrassment. "Not only has Callie been class president for her full high school career, but she's recently taken up an internship in Mayor Lewis's office as her assistant."

Callie blocked out the rest, feeling her face flush red. Yes, the internship had been hard to get, and she was proud of it, but she didn't need it announced to the world. She got up to the stage, where she shook hand with the principal. She made it to the podium, her entire body shaking in nervousness, but she soon calmed down. Loud mouths were made for talking.

"Good afternoon, students, faculty, and parents of Midtown Science High." she hated that beginning. It sounded to formal and rigid. "And hi mom, I know you're there somewhere."

That got some laughs. She squinted towards the risers behind her grade, where she finally made out the vague figures of her mom and Lily sitting towards the front. They waved, Lily giving her enthusiastic thumbs-up. She smiled.