Laurent was a wonderful cook and made us a nice dinner. I’d never enjoyed mushrooms all that much, but somehow he made them amazing enough to warrant eating them by themselves as a side dish. He used such a perfect array of spices in his cooking, that it must have been the secret. It was a welcome change from Digitalis’ culinary failures and chain store pizzas.

He helped me wind down by watching a movie with him. I was still so fascinated by him since that moment he’d looked into my eyes during movement therapy. That feeling they brought out in me wasn’t supposed to be for him. It wasn’t supposed to be for anyone but Gael, yet a spark of came alive and I wanted to fight it off. I met this man today, so I had no business feeling anything. It wasn’t even love or affection, or even sexual attraction, just that strange magnetic pull that often led me to thoughts of those.

The movie we were watching was normal fare, a cookie-cutter plot with characters that followed common caricatures so that it would be easily digestible to any audience member. Frankly, it bored me. I had more fun exploring my apartment with my eyes to discover fresh changes, stealing glances at Laurent, who seemed engrossed in the film despite its predictable plot. He seemed most interested in the wide shots of the landscapes that dotted the film. I wondered if he was just looking at the trees and wildlife in the movie rather than the actual content. To be fair, the cinematography was pretty beautiful in this one, so perhaps that’s why he chose it.

I fidgeted with my phone in my good hand, stealing peeks at the message Gael sent regarding my song.

It was too beautiful to be left unsung.

I wanted to ask him if he’d found all the songs I had hidden in this apartment before they took everything apart and rebuilt it. I wanted to see if he had recorded another, or if he thought about what he was singing as he read my words. I wondered if he released the track, or if he merely let Laurent download it from the studio’s cloud. I fixated on the strife between him and Digitalis earlier, my mind bringing up the images of their tense body language and harsh-sounding whispers. Unable to wait until I saw him again, I opened our chat

“Was everything okay earlier with you and Digitalis?” I messaged.

I stared at the screen for a moment, but after a while it seemed like he wasn’t even going to read it. Perhaps he was asleep or buried in paperwork. I sent the same message to Digitalis, but got nothing but a quick dismissal from her, and an excuse that she was tired in order to end the discussion. I suppose that whatever happened must have been touchy enough to make her hide it rather than share it around, as she often did.

We retired to bed shortly after the movie and I stared up at the painting above my bed. From this angle, I could only see the thick ridges of paint layered over each other, like choppy waves in an oceanic storm. I thought about what Laurent told me during motion therapy, the life he had lived before he became enlightened and changed his life from the inside out. Could I ever do that? Did I have the strength to become a completely different person the way he had? Who would I even be without my depression controlling my thoughts? Would I even have a chance after being this way for so long? He said he’d done it when he was a teenager, but I am long past those years and my mind isn’t so malleable anymore.

Will I ever be able to put joyful lilies over the depressing pond of my life?

Breakfast with Laurent was oddly comfortable. He hummed as he cooked, and it was fascinating to watch him effortlessly prepare an omelet that was far more complex than any I had ever made. The food tasted as amazing as it smelled, and he told me colorful stories of his years traveling the world chasing enlightenment.

“I think it will help you a lot if we practice some meditation each day. Spend some time reflecting on our thoughts and the world around us.”

I flicked my eyes to him.

“A major thing that brought me out of my depression was to realize which thoughts I would have that were intrusive, acknowledge them, and let them just fade away. With meditation as a daily practice, I became better and better at it until I had rebuilt some of my self-confidence. Although I went on a soul searching journey around the world, it ultimately wasn’t necessary.” He rambled, his hands illustrating his words as much as they could with a fork held in them.

I stared at my eggs for a moment before returning my eyes to him, contemplating this. What kind of life and adventures did he live? I was becoming tempted to just hear him talk all day instead of spending time on my recovery. He continued.

“I grew to learn that I had the tools for healing inside of me all along. But, it didn’t hurt to see how other cultures approached the issues I was working through and the practices I was interested in using to handle my own health.” The way he spoke was so unfettered, any fear of judgement absent.

I saw that look in his eyes again, that confident passion that burned behind his irises and transformed him into something irresistible. I wasn’t too interested in meditation. Yet, the way he spoke about it, the energy of his voice and the certainty in his eyes, inspired me to try.

I picked at the omelet he gave me, probably one of the best I’d eaten in years. It was rare in my life for anyone to put the effort into fluffing the eggs and cutting up such a variety of meat and vegetables to fold in.

“Today, I think I’d like to focus mostly on that arm of yours. I think it’ll do you a lot of good to write and maybe even play your bass again. The closer we can get to full use, the better. I came up with a plan last night on a good way to do it, too.”

I perked up in my chair, then. It seemed an incredibly bold and optimistic offer to me. I was barely bending my fingers yet, and he was hoping to help me play again? I finished my omelet, hoping to rush past breakfast to see what this alternative method would be. He laughed, and I flushed when I realized that he’d noticed my excitement.

“I think today’s going to go pretty well with that attitude. Good on you, Asya.” He kept chuckling as he finished his meal.

I tried to shake away the giddiness that his laughter put into me. It was of no use.

Everything in the house was clean again, and I had been practicing my writing with my left hand until Laurent finished the dishes. I couldn’t help but glance up at him. He hummed cheerily as if he were home alone, moving in a small dance all the while. My writing was no less shaky today as it was any other day, so I was finding it hard to force myself to keep interest in it.

When he finally came over to me, I had gotten only half of the words down I was trying to, but he made no comment about it.

“You’re doing pretty well! Are you ready to work on hand mobility?” He tilted his head, as expressive as he always was.

I nodded. He was nothing like Gael in that way, with a warm aura to him and embellishing every moment with body language and an ever-changing face. Gael had always been still, enigmatic, and statuesque. Yet, they shared that passionate expression and I wondered if that was the reason Gael had been trapped in my heart for so long. What a terribly simple little thing.

“Alright, let’s try something a little different today.” He picked up the pencil I was writing with and placed it beneath the fingers of my right hand. “I want you to try to grasp that with as many fingers as you can. I’m hoping for two, but we’ll see where we go with this today.”

I focused on the pencil, my first finger curling shakily around it with some effort. My second twitched, but would not bend. He watched with the promise of a grin, staring at the first finger which was moving more easily than yesterday, albeit not by much.

“Do you mind if I tell you a story?” He asked, his eyes not once leaving my hand.

I nodded, my fingers loosening as I broke concentration for it. I took in a breath and laboriously worked to regain their position. The second was just now bending where I willed it. I watched the third, now, still not even trembling.

“I lived in India for a month, in Tibet for another. Both places had incredibly different cultures, but in both places I was studying Buddhism in a monastery. I’m not a Buddhist myself, but I became interested in the study of meditation and their ideas about energy within the human body. Each monastery had its own daily routines and some differences in practice and belief, but at the core they shared something important.”

My third finger twitched, and he paused for a moment to see if I could bend it. It became still again after a moment, and we both sighed.

“They believed a person had to undergo a personal and spiritual journey to achieve enlightenment. That much is pretty obvious. What I found interesting is that this enlightenment means more to human life than just religious practice. It is about being at peace with your place in the universe, finding and accepting your place; Becoming independent of insecurity, doubt, and anxiety about the goings on of other people and the world. In that, I could shed the shackles of expectation and yearning to fight against what I believed to be a cruel world. I learned the beauty of nature and the balance of the highs and lows in life.”

“Relax your hand.” He paused his story, and I obeyed. He took my hand and curled my fingers one by one, massaging my palm. He rested it back in place. “Alright, let’s do it again.”

My first finger feebly curled around the pencil, my second yet again struggling to follow. He nodded in approval.

“Anyway, that is something that I would like to practice with you if you become comfortable with it. I don’t see it as a religious practice, but a way to cope with the thoughts and anxieties that come with depression. If I can help you reach that mental state of understanding, I think we can help you shake free of the things that hold you back. I think that we can inspire strong confidence and inner peace,” He continued.

My second finger, again, curled around the pencil.

“You’re doing so well, Asya. Are you tired, yet?” His eyes raised from my hand to meet mine. I was breathless, but not only from the exertion.

I shook my head, insisting on trying a little longer. Something about the way he spoke as I made my efforts made it easier to do it. Perhaps it was because it seemed like there was less pressure than when I tried with Francine. She would watch my hand in near-silence with a few urging words from time to time.

I strained to bend another finger. Even to make my third finger wiggle would have been a victory beyond my expectations. My second lay steady where it was curled around the pencil, its shaking halted as I focused on the next. This time, Laurent was silent, his muddy green eyes affixed as we watched my hand. I grunted from the effort when my third finger finally twitched, and Laurent placed his hand over mine when my hand was limp yet again.

“That was excellent progress! We shouldn’t overexert you, though.” His smile reached across his face as he took the pencil from beneath my hand. “Let’s take a breather, have some cocoa, and then I have another new exercise I’d like to try.”

His hand lifted from mine as he rose from his seat to go to the kitchen. It was cold without that warmth. I watched him prepare it, a much more intricate process than watching Digitalis make me a cup. He made cocoa almost completely from scratch on the stovetop and used a sort of cream besides the water, making it thick and rich. It was far more of a reward, even just the scent of it, than the old instant cocoa was.

When the cobalt mug was placed before me, I gave it a moment to appreciate the way he liked to garnish it. It had a bit of whipped cream with crosshatches of chocolate and a dusting of cocoa powder. It was gorgeous, like something you’d post online for your friends. I lifted it to take a long, decadent sip, a little guilty for destroying the beauty of the drink as I did.

He sat beside me with his own cup, spending some time reading a book that lacked a title and boasted a large mandala on it. It was nice to take breaks like this, instead of shoving all of my exercises into a few hours with little pause between the way I’d done with Francine. After some time, Laurent cleaned up our empty mugs and placed his book aside. He sat in front of me, folding his hands.

“Are you ready for speech therapy?” He asked.

My lips pursed as I despised this exercise. Still, I nodded.

“Today I want to try something new. If we work on the vowels and sounds within the words we want to use, it’ll be more useful than articulating phrases as we’ve been trying. You mentioned you wanted to sing again, so I thought we could have you sing the sounds and speak them to help you relearn control over your voice.”

My eyebrow raised, but I was willing to try about anything to get my voice back. It seemed a million times more helpless being unable to speak than it was to be half paralyzed. If I only had my voice, I might at least tell people what I wanted help with instead of relying on their intuition.

He hummed and told me which sound to try in tune with his humming. The hour we spent on speech therapy passed faster than usual and seemed more productive. Rather than babbling forever without seeming to make any progress, I learned how to control my voice a bit. I couldn’t speak, but if I wanted to say something, I at least had a few better ways to make the attempt. Laurent smiled more and more as it went on, pleased by the progression. A spark of hope lit within me. I made no tangible progress before today, and it seemed as if I glowed now that I had.

When it was over, that feeling remained within me. How refreshing it would be to finally sing in the shower again and make it sound good, with words that made sense. We wound down again with a movie as he took care of his paperwork, recording my progress. Again, the movie was nothing special. I would rather have heard him tell me stories of his life abroad or his lessons about his mystical experiences after he had his epiphany. I knew nothing like that for myself, and it fascinated me. I became filled with a new longing, to understand and experience such a magical thing for myself. The way he talked about how he overcame his depression made me believe in my own efforts.

Bored by the film, I pulled out my notebook to practice my handwriting some more. I wrote and rewrote the lyrics to old songs the band had performed. Only when my phone lit up did I stop my task. It was from Gael.

“I’d like a meeting with you later this week. It’s about the songs you wrote.” The message stated, simply.

How could he type something that would draw my curiosity this way as if it were nothing? He must know how anxious it made me to think about him seeing those secret songs I had kept away. Now, too, he even asked for this meeting like it was normal business?

“Sure, but will you give me more information?” I responded, perhaps a little too vague.

I stared at the screen for what seemed like an eternity before I gave up. It became cold and black as I waited and there seemed to be no hope that it would light again. I returned to my notebook, but it was hard to concentrate on the lyrics of the song I’d been copying down this time.

I turned the page and experimented with new lyrics. Perhaps if I brought a new song to the table, Gael wouldn’t pay so much attention to those old relics of my lifelong yearning and despair.