DENIAL

01

LOVE
is the most powerful emotion humans are capable of feeling. Love is love it knows no bounds and it can never be perfectly explained. Only felt.

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For ALEA JOHN however, love never came easily to her. Her and her mother's relationship was strained at best, she never was able to fix what was broken as her mother died when she was only 13 years old due to a heart condition. The only other parental figure Alea had in her life was her uncle, Elijah Wood.

But unfortunately, he committed suicide shortly after Alea's mother passed. He loved Amara John so much he couldn't imagine life without her. They never explicitly stated that they were together but it was obvious.

Alea never questioned it, as long as both of them were happy, it didn't matter to her.

She never knew anything about her father, they barely mentioned him and she never bothered to ask about him either, she didn't care about having a relationship with him and was perfectly fine not knowing anything about him.

After her uncle's passing, she lived with her aunt until she was 18 and moved out to live on her college campus.

Her relationship with her aunt was okay, they rarely talked and if they did it would be about trivial things,

"Are you okay?" "have you taken your anti depressions?" "let me know if you need anything." "are you hungry?" and etc.

It never troubled Alea that she didn't have a closer relationship with her, she was fine with keeping her at arms length.

She cared and appreciated her but it wasn't enough for Alea to fully open up to someone who wasn't Janae Marshall, her therapist and probably the only person she's ever been close to in her life, but considering that's her therapist she didn't count that as much of an achievement.

She never really sought out human intimacy before, but college has different plans for her it seems as she's being recommended to do a tutoring job.

Normally, she would've declined. It was already hard enough being a college freshman and she definitely didn't need it to get any harder by evolving herself with Leighton Valak, let alone waste her time tutoring him when he should've spent less time partying and sleeping with half the girls on campus and more time paying attention in his courses.

She didn't even know New York University allowed tutoring all year-round.

Luckily for him, they had only two of the same classes that he mainly needed helped in: Psychology and Economics.

Normally, Alea would've declined the proposal.

Yet they offered her a great sum of money for her sessions with him and she desperately needed it. 

Better safe than sorry and of course, it wouldn't hurt him or his family to pay for the lessons considering how rich they are.

Being one of the top #5 companies in the state, must be nice to get whatever you want with just a snap of a finger.

So, due to the fact that she was in desperate need of some money for college funds to add on to her academic scholarship, her schedule got tight real quick.