chapter 9

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9

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9

The following week went by uneventfully in comparison to the beginning of Clementine's return to Rio.

She wondered what she should do, but decided that in this specific case, nothing would be best.

She only texted back a see you then, but even that didn't feel concrete enough.

What if she was to show up there like a fool, and he forgot about it all in the first place?

These were the kind of thoughts tormenting her with no break.

She also knew exactly what it was to have a toxic love, a love gone bad. And she knew that the best way to prevent that from happening was to start inside. To not think about it. To be zen. Period.

But it still didn't prevent her from having a dream or two about Zico in one form or another. She would find herself doing mundane tasks, like washing a dish or fixing the garden and her mind all of a sudden would unseemly wander to him.

She kept replaying that night in her head, and the improbability of it all in her head. Her brain was clinging on to those moments like a drug, and her heart was starting to thread these strings into a tapestry it didn't know how to handle.

It was especially hard, as now she did not have much to occupy her mind. With no school, and not even a put on effort to keep up with the work, Clementine took long, mindless walks in the gardens and trails behind her house.

Her parents didn't mind since these trails were only accessible to the people living on the land, and they weren't criminals. Or at least they were fiscal criminals that kept to themselves.

She would drink coffee, noting how the Brazilian selection was much better than in America.

She would sit in the garden, basking in the sun and surrounded by house cats. Reading or writing or just daydreaming, looking at the clouds. Thinking about how the clouds and the sky looks the same no matter where in the world you were. Somehow feeling better about that.

The family mostly kept to themselves, like newly brought animals into one cage t the zoo. Still figuring out how to live together.

Her father mostly worked, sometimes in the house office, sometimes at work dinners. Her mother would either go along with him, or go off on her own to her spas. She even offered Clementine to go with her, which she did the first time. But after realizing how glum it made her to go out and be massaged by a poor Brazilian woman, to then go and have cocktails with her mom's old friends which she hadn't seen in ages...well, it wasn't exactly her idea of a good time.

The more time she spent at home, the more locked down she started to feel. It seemed like even if she wanted to, it would be really hard to go out by herself. A start contrast to her previous life.

It was her understanding that she was under s slight home arrest. Her parents angry at what happened in New York, thought that keeping her here for a semester would somehow change her.

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