About

Three years after Spider-Man: No Way Home, Peter Parker is trying to build a life from nothing. Doctor Strange’s spell erased Peter Parker from everyone’s memory, leaving him completely alone. Aunt May is gone, MJ and Ned don’t remember him, and Peter has no one left who knows the life he lost. He moves into a tiny, rundown apartment and throws himself into school and his nights as Spider-Man. He’s still unmistakably Peter—awkward, endlessly sarcastic, talkative, brilliant, and always ready with a terrible joke—but grief has hardened him. He’s angrier, more reckless, and far more guarded than he used to be. Behind the mask, he doesn’t hesitate like he once did. Peter has convinced himself that caring less means losing less. Then Alissa “Ali” moves into the apartment next door. Ali is nineteen and, before tragedy, was loud, funny, confident, outgoing, and genuinely kind. Three months ago, she and her sister were hit by a truck while crossing the road. Her sister died, while Ali survived. Her sister was the only family she had left, and Ali has been drowning in guilt ever since. She dropped out of college, moved into the cheapest apartment she could find, and started working at a terrible diner nearby. She visits her sister’s grave constantly, bringing flowers and struggling with the belief that she should have been the one who died. The person she used to be is still there somewhere, buried underneath anger, bitterness, reckless decisions, impulsiveness, and grief. Peter and Ali initially don’t know what to make of each other. They’re just two damaged people living next door in a building with thin walls, broken appliances, and too many problems. But slowly, they become friends. Then best friends. They start sharing late nights, stupid arguments, diner food, fire-escape conversations, and pieces of their lives they don’t normally show anyone. Neither of them has to explain their grief. They just recognize it in each other. Peter becomes the only person who can still make Ali genuinely laugh, while Ali becomes the only person Peter allows himself to be completely soft around. He still jokes, teases, and rambles like Peter always has, but she sees the exhausted boy underneath it all—the one who still visits Aunt May’s grave and carries an entire life nobody else remembers. As they grow closer, friendship slowly turns into something neither of them is prepared for. Love. And that’s where everything becomes complicated. Peter is terrified of losing Ali the way he’s lost everyone else. Ali is terrified of loving someone again when she already knows what it feels like to have someone ripped away from her. They begin pushing each other away whenever things get too real, only to find themselves coming back to each other every time. Their relationship becomes messy, emotional, and impossible to let go of. All the while, Ali notices Peter’s unexplained bruises, injuries, exhaustion, and strange habit of disappearing late at night and returning before sunrise. She assumes he’s getting into illegal fights to make money and never presses him for answers. She doesn’t know she’s falling in love with Spider-Man. She only knows she’s falling in love with the boy next door. And Peter knows that eventually, he may have to decide whether protecting Ali means keeping her at a distance—or finally trusting someone enough to let them see every part of him.