❝Watching you tear yourself apart is literally killing me.❞
SIGHS OF PLEASURE fall from Ria's lips as she hangs on to every touch and kiss Ashton leaves on her hot skin. She presses desperate fingers on the side of his sweat-stained face, ensnared in the allure of his ocean blue eyes.
"I love you, baby," he groans and presses his forehead against hers.
Ria smiles and slides her fingers across his familiar features, slowly losing them in his silky blond hair. She misses this. She misses being with him in the most intimate ways. Even if the connection is foreign and unfamiliar, she's back with the man she loves once again.
"Ria," Ashton groans, breath burning her ear, "tell me you love me."
Squeezing her eyes shut, she wraps her arms around Ashton's frame, striving to relish in the sensation of his body conquering hers. His searing skin creates sticky friction as sweat blankets their limbs.
Ashton.
Dragging her nails down his back only brings them that much closer to the end.
Ashton.
"Ria, I love you so much," he pants.
Ashton.
"I love you, baby."
"Ashton."
"What?" The fantasy shatters as Chris' shocked voice pants in her ear. "What did you just say?" he demands beneath desperate huffs.
Rigidness loops through Ria's tendons. Her gaze expands as Chris materializes over her. Thick brows scrunch as he slides a slick hand along the side of her face, trying to read the guilt residing in her gaze.
"I-I said I love you in Italian," she stutters. Panic rises with the heaving of her chest and knots coiling in her stomach.
Flecks of doubt flash in his murky eyes. He continues to stare, his body one with hers, holding her prisoner as her fantasy continues to crumble. The beauty of Ashton morphs into Chris and her arousal falls away, leaving discomfort to rise.
The musk of his sweat clings to his frame and mingling with hers. They lay tangled in her bed with his thin waist deep between her thighs. Ria swallows the vomit threatening to emerge from her throat and tells herself to enjoy this.
"Okay." Chris nods as if convincing himself and leans in to kiss her again. His tongue is bitter, pungent with remnants of cigarette smoke.
Ria cringes and breaks her lips from his. She turns her head to the side and buries his face in the crook of her neck.
The silhouette of New York dancing across her ceiling is far more alluring than this.
His searing breath burns her skin and he begins thrusting again, grunting in her ear. Her skin crawls from how stale and desperate he sounds; like he's struggling to maintain his stamina. Starving fingers dig into her lower back as he thrusts his body against hers over and over again; dull and one note.
Passionless.
Loveless.
Painful.
Warm tears slip from Ria's eyes as her soul continues to dwindle and disintegrate.
"Ria, this has gone too far." Jared's dead eyes fling daggers at her from across the apartment. "It's bad enough that you guys are even back together" — he yanks bright blue specs from his nose as fog from the burning stovetops stain their lenses and begins cleaning them furiously — "but you're sleeping with him when I am right down the hall."
"I'm sorry," comes Ria's lifeless mumble. She pulls her knees to her chest, sinking further into the sofa. The decrepit beige carpet leading into their kitchenette steals her attention as the sizzle of eggs and bacon fill the silence. "He wanted to see me."
"Funny." His voice lowers into a grumble as if talking to himself. "You always say it's what he wants. Never that you want it too."
"I do want it," she lies, swallowing the emotions threatening to bleed into her deceased heart.
"It's annoying that after nearly six years you still think you can lie to me." Dishes clang against the countertops, pulling her attention to Jared fixing their plates in a rage.
"When I think about Ashton, I want it," she whispers. Imagining Chris as Ashton makes her feel better; like she's not doing it against her will.
Jared freezes and holds his hands in the air, mentally grabbing onto his sanity. "Another unhealthy thing," he chides. "If you need to think about your ex-boyfriend in order to like having sex with your current should still be your ex-boyfriend, then maybe consider not sleeping with him anymore."
He presses his palms onto the counter and angles his head towards Ria. She expects a venomous glare but receives disdain instead.
"Ria, babe, you're my best friend in the whole entire world. I love you to death and watching you tear yourself apart is literally killing me. Not only do I feel responsible since this all came from me trusting that asshole to make you feel better, but now you're not even the same person."
Ria rolls her eyes and deadpans, "I'm not a different person."
"When was the last time you took your stabilizers?"
Her jaw sets. "I don't need them anymore."
"Ria." Distraught catches in his throat, but he stops himself and tries again. "That's not what Dr. Klementine told you. She prescribed your medication because you need it. You've gone through a lot of trauma in the past months."
She shrugs and rests a cheek on her knees. "I feel fine without them."
With a deflation of his chest, Jared swipes up their plates and makes a show of storming across the apartment. He drops her plate on the coffee table in front of her. She turns towards her breakfast and her stomach twists. Her tongue feels like cardboard and muck rests in the pit of her stomach.
"Eat, Ria." Jared flops next to her and shovels a forkful of eggs between his lips. "Eat or I'll tie you down and force feed you. You say you feel better, but we both know what a severe lack of appetite means."
"I'm simply not hungry. There's nothing severe about it."
"You're never hungry and you're starting to lose weight. Eat."
Ria makes sure to give him a sigh of agitation before swiping up her plate. She snatches a slice of bacon and chomps into it hard enough to crack teeth. It tastes like cotton. Still, for the sake of quieting Jared, she chokes it down.
"While you're at it, break up with Chris," he adds nonchalantly.
"I can't."
"Sure you can. You said he was going to make you forget about Ashton. One month later, you're literally turning Chris into Ashton and saying his name out loud during sex. Plan failed. Dump Chris."
"You know, this new confident outspoken you is getting really annoying," Ria mutters before shoveling eggs into her mouth and nearly gags as she forces them down her throat.
Jared shakes his head, letting a haughty smirk spread across his reddish lips. "Old Ria would love a new confident Jared. New Ria misses old Jared 'cause he was a bit of a pushover. New Ria wants current Jared to accept her unhealthy lifestyle and watch her ruin herself."
"Stop talking like that," she grumbles.
"Break up with Chris," he challenges in that same annoying nonchalant voice.
Something about the pestering simply tosses her over the edge and she can't contain the flames churning within her any longer.
"I can't!" Ria's throws her plate down on the coffee table. Eggs and bacon fling from the plate and fall to the floor. "I can't leave him because every time I think about being alone, it hurts. Even when I am in pain, it's better than feeling nothing. Even if I still think about Ashton, being with Chris makes me think about the good times with Ashton. Because every time" — her voice cracks and she rubs at her eyes furiously — "every time I try to break Chris' heart, he says something stupidly hopeful or-or reminds me of our past when we were happy and I just can't."
"Ria," he whispers.
"I just can't, Jared," she sobs, letting her emotions turn into a furious tornado along the walls of her constricting chest. "So I hope that one day my love for Ashton will turn into love for Chris because if we break up, that means I have nothing left. That I've wasted more of my life on this stupid curse people call love."
"You see what he's doing to you?" Jared rubs her back as it trembles with unbearable sobs. "He's manipulated you so much, you no longer consider him the bad guy. You're blaming yourself."
"It is my fault, Jared," she stresses through tears. "I never wanted to sleep with him, b-but he convinced me that it would get better and now we're here. I should have been stronger."
The soft plains of Jared's expression darken with a rage induced rigidness. He angles himself towards her and places a heavy hand on her shoulder, demanding her to look into the storms of his gaze.
"He knew you didn't love him when he tricked you into sleeping with him. He's not stupid enough to think your feelings have changed. He's a selfish, manipulative, disgusting excuse for a person. He's using you to make himself happy and masking your grief as some sort of sick love."
To that, Ria has no answer. She clamps her mouth shut and stares at how everything in her vision warps beneath unshed tears.
"Ria, leave him."
"Why do I-"
Before she has a chance to vocalize her grief, the apartment door swings open and bangs against the wall behind it.
Sophia.
Ria wipes her tears and looks up in time to catch Sophia and Dea stride in clad in thick winter coats, scarves and gloves.
"You're in trouble," Sophia declares upon entering like a parent ready to scold her child.
"Not really," Dea calls over her shoulder. She offers the room a brief wave before joining her girlfriend in peeling from their winter garb.
"I didn't know you guys were joining us." Jared looks at his plate in shame. "I would have fixed more."
"Don't worry about us," Dea chirps. "We already ate. We're just here to-"
"Ria," Sophia announces her name with a sense of foreboding. She rounds the sofa and stands directly before Ria — the only way she'd ever be able to tower over someone with her short stature — with her hands planted on her narrow hips. "Dr. Klementine called me concerned as to why you haven't shown up to a session in a month."
"Ria," Jared hisses with an expression of absolute betrayal. "You said you were still going."
She cringes and cowers into the cushions. "I don't need therapy anymore. Especially not from her."
"What's wrong with her?" Sophia demands and bends over until their noses practically touch. "She has a degree in psychology, so I'm sure she's qualified to help you."
"She thinks writing down my problems in a diary will help. I'm not twelve." She tears her gaze away from her friend's ocean eyes; a gaze far too reflective of her brother's. "The only thing that really helps is when I'm at the studio."
"Is that where you go instead of your sessions?" Dea wonders while finding a spot next to Sophia. She touches her shoulder, imploring her to rise to her normal height.
"She goes there almost every day," Jared mumbles and pushes his glasses up his nose.
"I get my emotions out when I paint." Just like he showed me.
"Well, tell your therapist that." Sophia folds her arms and her tongue-lashing softens to a light scolding. "The point is for her to help guide you towards improvement."
"Also" — Dea grimaces as she extends her hand to reveal a burnt yellow prescription bottle — "we found this hidden in the cushions of our sofa."
Jared gapes. "Ria." It seems to be the only way he can express his dismay.
"I must have left them by accident?" she squeaks.
"Or stashed them because you wanted to avoid taking them but knew you couldn't throw them away." Sophia shakes her head. "And you didn't want Jared to find them."
Bitterness shapes Ria's voice as she mutters, "Well, I recently discovered that Chris used to slip my old medication into my food, so I want to avoid any outside access to them. I'll take them when I feel like I need to."
Jared narrows his eyes and scrunches his arrow-straight nose. "Do you honestly believe I would do that to you? And you can't choose when you need medication, Ria. Why are you being so difficult?"
"Because none of it is working," she insists, the walls of her sanity crumbling to the ground and sinking into the Earth's soil. "I still love him. Why do I love him?" she demands in desperation. "Ashton is the one thing I simply can't erase from my memory. I can pretend I was never pregnant. I can pretend I never lost a baby. I can pretend that I never got stabbed by a maniac trying to protect a woman I was starting to care about. I can pretend Sophia and Ashton aren't related. I can't pretend that Ashton doesn't exist no matter how hard I try. The worst part about him leaving me is if I saw him right now, I would love him too much to get upset. Doesn't that make me pathetic?"
"I don't think it's pathetic." Dea drags the toe of her boot across the carpet and shrugs with her eyes locked on something non-existent. "I miss Ash a lot. I miss him and Dan together. If I saw him today, I think I'd be too overwhelmed with happiness to be angry with him."
Alleviation washes over Ria at her understanding. There's just something about their love for Ashton that makes it impossible to ever truly hate him. He is impossible to ever truly despise.
"Maybe if I had closure...if I heard him say goodbye from his own lips," her voice calms into a hopeful whisper. "All I got was a stupid letter. Sometimes I wonder if it was even real."
"Chris is the one who gave it to you," Sophia adds, careful to step around the topic of a brother she's not entirely sure she wants in their lives.
"It was Ashton's handwriting from my sketchbook."
Jared purses his lips and narrows his doubtful grey eyes at her. "The same sketchbook that is missing from Ashton's loft along with some of your favorite films, tv series and your brand new camera. Almost like he packed some of your things for you."
"Daniel said he was in a rush and was grabbing anything he laid eyes on." Ria debunks this theory once again.
"Funny how Daniel is the main source of Ashton information," Jared adds pointedly. "Ever think about asking Dea what she thinks of this situation?"
Dea's eyes widen and her shoulders crowd around her ears. "What I think? I think Daniel is the closest person to Ashton. If someone knew anything, it'd be him.
"Well, it looks like we have some things to discuss." Jared grunts and stands up with his empty plate. He spares Sophia and Dea expectant looks. "Ladies, what do you say we figure out a way to get Ria away from this messy situation."
Sophia nods as if reading his mind and flops back in his abandoned spot on the couch. "Anything to save our girl from self-destruction."
"I agree," Dea jumps in with a earnest. "Looks like we have a project ahead of us."
"Wait, what do you mean project?" Ria presses her knees into the cushions and twists around, watching as Jared tosses his things into the sink and begins handwashing them in the sudsy water. "What are you guys planning?"
"Just trust me, Ria," he says, pulling at her hope. "I'm not going to sit by and watch you date a guy like Chris. Not anymore."
How are you guys feeling about this chapter? I know things are still a little depressing...
But Ria said Ashton's name during sex 😂 how much of a burn is that??
Poor Chris, am I right???
-bri💖