BOOK II.
Four months have passed since Ashton and Ria's relationship fell into ruins. He's convinced that she hates him and she believes he never loved her. Giving up on each other, they attempt to mend their loneliness in the arms of their past; Ch...
❝He did give up on me and wasted so much of my life.❞
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RIA WEAVES THEOCEAN beneath her fingertips as she drags them across her canvas, melted oil pastels staining her skin. Lively eyes are ensnared in an image without a purpose.
"Why do you find yourself painting the ocean?" Klementine wonders as she watches her bring the strokes together into delicate tides. "Does it calm you?"
A hush falls over the room as Ria withholds her answer. The ocean belongs to him. If she were to utter those words, no doubt her therapist would scold her for her way of thinking.
"I guess you could say something like that." She tilts her head to the side to get a better angle of the force of nature dancing along the land. "It used to scare me...until him."
"Ashton?"
She nods. "He showed me the beauty in it." And his eyes have the most ethereal waves painted within them. "So when I think of the ocean, it gives me a piece of him that isn't so sad. It's beautiful. Just like the stars and the cosmos..."
"It's okay to remember him...Ashton," her therapist muses in an almost motherly nature. "Humanity tries so hard to forget the things that bring us pain, but that pain is what makes us human. It tells us we're alive and that we feel things. We care. It's okay to care. Use what he left behind to build yourself up instead of ignoring it."
Ria huffs and drops her hand. She wipes it clean on a nearby towel while turning to face Klementine's humbled smile as she resides on her sofa. Curls slip from her pinned up bun and shorter spirals dangling over her warm cocoa eyes.
"You know, you kind of make it hard for me to resent this whole therapy thing. I'm used to handling things on my own...until my friends scold me."
Klementine folds her hands over her knees clad in business slacks and leans forward. "Well, there's nothing wrong with accepting help. Sometimes trying to handle everything alone only makes your situation worse. Speaking of being alone, did you end your relationship with Chris?"
A cringe and duck of her head is the only answer Ria can provide. When her therapist sighs in disappointment, she rushes out, "H-he said we can work on us. I-I tried to tell him that we need space, but he...things changed." She bites her bottom lip and rakes her mind for more excuses. "Um...he wants to work on making me happy, so I decided we can stay together for now."
"And do you really think he can make you happy?"
"He did once before." She drags her foot across the carpet and eyes the clock above the oakwood bookshelf in the far corner of the room.
Half past noon. I should get going.
Klementine senses her distraction and her gaze flicks to the time. With a sigh, she shuts the notebook resting next to her thigh and sets her pen on top of it. "Before you leave, let me just give you something to think about. Abuse comes in many different forms. It doesn't have to be physical. He can control you without pushing his weight around. There are mental, emotional and sexual forms of manipulation."
