Page 189 of John + Siena: The Complete Duet

Her.

Siena.

John chuckled. “Not her. Never her.”

Leonard returned John’s smile. “You haven’t seen the woman in … well, almost four months, now. You sound very sure of that statement, though.”

He was.

It wasn’t like he had a reason to be.

He also didn’t have a reason not to be.

John shrugged. “It’s not her.”

“The rest, then?”

“It’s a mixture of the rest, I think.”

Leonard closed the door behind him, and stepped further into the room. He waved a hand at John, and then gestured toward the seating area next to the windows. So was the therapist’s way when it came to a session. He liked to make John sit, while he remained standing, or pacing. Sometimes Leonard would also sit, but it wasn’t particularly often.

John’s private room was more like a very expensive, yet also clinical-feeling, bachelor pad. He had his own small kitchen with a two-person table. A double bed, and private bathroom. A sitting area with bookshelves and a flat screen television. The walls showcased photographs of mountains and colorful flowers set in clear frames. The floor was a marble stone that somehow never felt too cold in the mornings.

If anything, it was comfortable. Clean, which he appreciated. Simplistic in design, and catered to his private needs. He had a private phone line to make calls out if he needed to or wanted to, but other than a few calls to his mother, he had not used the phone a lot. After all, he was here to get better, and to focus on himself. Besides, the person he wanted to talk to the most—Siena—he had not been able to. For whatever reason, her old number was dead. No one had given him a reason why.

John had been able to make his room at Clearview Oaks feel somewhat like home in different ways.

John opted to sit in one of the white leather recliners next to the window. Leonard leaned against the wall beside the flat screen, and gazed out the window. Next to the backdrop of crisp white walls, the therapist blended in with his stark white hair and jacket.

“Let’s talk, John,” Leonard said.

“You are aware I know why you like to stand and pace while I stay sitting, right?”

Leonard’s gray eyes cut to John with amusement dancing in his thick, lifted brows. “Oh, do tell.”

“When you sit, then I can zone out. I know exactly where you are, and I feel safer to focus my attention elsewhere. The wall, or the clock. Maybe a picture. My hands. Whatever it is, then I don’t have to keep an eye on you because you’re no longer moving around and keeping my attention on you.”

“Keep going.”

“When you move, the kind of man I am, means I have to keep an eye on you constantly. I can’t let you move behind me, or too close to my side. I need to see your hands, and what they’re doing. It takes up a great deal of the focus in my brain, and that makes my mouth vulnerable to letting things slip. If I can zone out, I am far less likely to talk. Or if I do, it’s … as you say, surface things.”

“What people see, not what really is.”

John nodded. “Although, if you would sit, I would talk, too. For you.”

The man’s smile softened a bit. “Would you?”

“I would, Leonard.”

“I thought so,” Leonard replied as he moved to take a seat across from John. “And well done on figuring that strategy of mine out. It only took you … a few months.”

“A couple,” John shot back. “I knew about a month in.”

Leonard chuckled, and wagged a finger at John. “Talk, now.”

“It’s different.”

“What is?”