Stay professional. Stay professional. Those two words were running on repeat in my mind—a constant hum behind everything else I was thinking. Leila was slowly eroding the notion, one action at a time. I was losing my focus, and if I continued to let her play me, probably my sense of self. She was twisting me up in ways I didn’t know possible, or rather, I’d only ever seen other people in such knots. I was the one who was supposed to be above it all. I’m the professional…so…stay professional. Stay professional… “Leila, I want you to tell me more about Theo. Whatever you would like. I just want to know more about your relationship.” I’d begun to form a hypothesis about a few things that were going on with her—things that I almost was afraid to think because of the nature of them. I had to get more information before I could act accordingly. There were procedures—ways to fix what had possibly been broken. It wasn’t my specialty though, and yet I was willing to make a go at it with Leila because I didn’t want anyone else treating her.
