I Can't Make You Love Me || Peter Parker x OC

Chapter 32: Steam

⚠️Content Warning⚠️

Mentions of body image issues/ anorexia/ eating disorders. Detailed descriptions of female anatomy and pregnancy. If you're sensitive to this sort of thing, please proceed with caution

It's been a week since the staged attack, but I still haven't been allowed to go back to my apartment for good. The only thing that my father has said to me throughout this whole thing, other than cursory things that my mom forced him into, was that I shouldn't ever go back there for my own safety.

What is it with everyone and thinking I need protection? First Peter and now my dad.

I just find it so funny that both of them can be so hypocritical with their thinking. My dad has no qualms with leaving for weeks at a time, leaving me to fend for myself at such a young age. He can't stand to let me go to a place of safety, where I know that he still keeps tabs on me, yet he'll go off on whatever merry adventures call to him at the time.

Then there's Peter, and he's the most confusing of all. He finds me deserted, and in real danger. What does he do? He takes me back home and stays by my side the whole time, helping me to reach a better place mentally. Then he deserts me and all but ignores me for the better part of a month. I finally figure out a way to rekindle our little fire, but it only brings me more hurt than before. Peter claims that the best option for both of us is separation, and that it will bring us both true happiness in the end. Maybe my 30-day trial of isolation isn't quite up, but the way he's been shirking me off is leaving me much more than upset.

He's been so back and forth with his alignments and what he wants from us so rapidly that it's starting to give me whiplash.

My whole time in the shower was filled with these sorts of thought loops, circling around the same points for seemingly all of eternity. Usually showers and baths make me feel better, but all that it was doing now was dampening my mental blanket of protection. The steam that rose to the ceiling and clung to every glass surface in the room was doing exactly what my web of half-truths had done for me; masking the full blow of the dirty truth and warping reality.

The face that greeted me in the mirror has changed so much over the past year that I almost don't recognize it anymore. My eyes have bags as dark as my hair, and the cheery little freckles that used to over my nose were now a muted, sickly grey color. My hair was still long and dark, like it has been since I was a little girl, but I no longer bothered to take care of it the way I used to. Split ends forked off like a feather duster, and I hadn't gotten it trimmed in longer than I can remember.

It's the small things like that; the way I hold my posture or take care of myself, they're what made the biggest differences when they're all piled up together. In the studio-grade lighting that was fixed into my bathroom ceiling and vanity mirror, every single imperfection showed itself with renewed vimn. I hadn't taken a look at myself like this in a long time, and the towel that was wrapped around me for modesty following my shower, now did nothing more than to expose even more of me.

After Peter left me, I was devastated. I didn't realize how out of hand it was getting, but I started eating and doing less, simply because I just didn't have the will to do so anymore. I'd always been on the thinner side, a higher metabolism and genetics playing into that, but the bones that protruded near my joints were relatively new, and I hated the way I looked with them. My naturally pale skin looked unnatural now, almost vampiric. What little muscle I had on my arms was pretty much all gone, leaving them rail-thin and pathetic. I don't look like myself, and I certainly don't feel like myself either. I hate it.

One of the very few good things to come of this whole experience that has landed me back with my parents is the fact that I no longer have to worry about taking care of myself or my health. When I don't feel like eating, I don't have to worry about making a whole meal for myself, I don't even have to go down the the kitchen to get it. It's given me this sort of structure that I've lacked for so long, and it's relieving in a way to not have to carry the full burden of myself.