Spider-man Unleashed

Chapter 6

Mary Jane was doing her best to suppress her annoyance as she walked through the short but well-cared path through the garden which led to the Parker household, but it was hard. She was there for a blind date, one that she had no input in arranging. To make it even worse, it wasn't even one of her friends, however few they were in number, that arranged it but her aunt, and only because she knew the aunt of the guy she was supposed to meet. Apparently, she guaranteed that her nephew was a nice boy. For all the faults of her aunt, such as her tendency to commit to the things Mary Jane had no desire to get involved, Mary Jane liked her aunt, enough not to disappoint her by rejecting to attend something that was already confirmed, even if it had been done without her input. A couple of boring hours where she counted sheep in her mind was a small price to make her aunt happy.

Still, she would have liked to be able to feel a bit of hope about the date itself, but the experience taught her otherwise. Even the people she picked up herself for a date had a disturbingly similar pattern of action. They had a tendency to go slack-jawed at the first sight, and most didn't really come back from that, barely able to string a few words together, except a few who just assumed that they didn't have any chance with her unless they brought her self-confidence low, petering her with a range of backhanded compliments they learned from third-rate pickup artists.

It shouldn't have been a surprise for her after that many repeats, but she still occasionally caught surprised with otherwise smart and accomplished men collapsing into whiny children or vindictive assholes. A couple of times she tried dating older men, but there never been a second date with them, because all invariably assumed that a young redhead aspiring to be a model should have less brains than a walnut, some going as far as implying that they could bankroll her modeling career. A rather unsubtle attempt to treat her like a prostitute, her opinions and preferences fading as they expected to buy her time with expensive gifts or cash-filled envelopes.

Of course, she could have dressed down to obscure her beauty or tried to limit her assertiveness to be less intimidating, but she didn't. The reason was simple. She was proud of her looks and her personality, and she had no intention of hiding her true self just to massage fragile egos of the assholes she dated.

Still, what her aunt did, arranging a date with a high school student, was another extreme. Yes, he would likely be too intimidated to try taking any liberties, not to mention there would be no alcohol the muddy the event and fill his mind with an unfounded confidence. Her aunt guaranteed that she would get along with him, because he was reported to be really smart, but Mary Jane chose to convert that to a different statement, that he had above-average grades with little to no social life. Still, she decided to have a nice conversation with him before calling it off and claiming incompatibility, mostly because her aunt would never shut up otherwise.

She couldn't help but feel tempted to mess with him a bit, which was why when she rang the bell, she took a sexy pose that brought out the best qualities of her shortish purple skirt and white tight blouse. And as an added benefit, if he couldn't handle it, a fake emergency call would save her from further torture.

Less than a minute later, the door stood open, revealing a dark-haired boy that she was supposed to go to the date with. Nice, she thought a second later, while he wasn't what one call strikingly handsome, he was still decent looking, with a straight posture. Quite decent, actually, as it was just as likely that she could have gotten a pimple-faced boy with excessively sweaty palms and a sickly grin. She smirked at him, but otherwise let him ride his shock for a couple seconds. That much of allowance she granted him, as she was more than aware she wasn't the usual outcome of a family-arranged date. "Mary Jane," he whispered in a tone of clear surprise.