Page 127 of Facing Off
…lower the psychological demand…
It’s causing all sorts of feelings to thrash inside me.
The main one being disbelief.
How is it really going to help with ballet? I should be in the studio for as many hours as humanly possible for thenext two weeks—and that’s the plan, but what if I keep falling?
That’s where hopelessness comes in.
I’m desperate, want to hedge my bets, and do anything it takes to make my routine work. But I have no idea how to dig through and apply all these different therapy techniques Team Nutcracker is implying will help.
My brow furrows and my heart tumbles in my chest.
Idon’t know, but some part of me thought that if I went to him and we talked about it…it might start making sense.
“We’ll try EFT,” Adrian says. “The emotional freedom technique. My sports psychologist wrote here that it’s not meant to replace other therapies but can be an effective tool to encourage someone who struggles with voicing their fears to name them out loud.”
I glower as I raise my hand. “I guess that’s me.”
Adrian smiles and puts his phone away. “By the way, you know you can still work with my team, right? If you need them, I’ll contract them out for you again.”
My eyes widen. The offer is generous. So damn generous.
I know if I said yes, he’d do it. No questions asked, no matter how much it costs. But recalling all those people—his sports psychologist, physician, performance coach, physiotherapist, and massage therapist—working on me at the same time, it didn’t always feel like I could breathe. It was overwhelming to the point of making me dizzy. Not that I cared then. I was desperate to solve my yips, so I shut up and pushed through any of that lung tightness as they interviewed and analyzed me, but?—
“Let’s give this a go first,” I find myself saying. “Just us.”
“If you change your mind, let me know.” Adrian scootscloser and because my sofa is oh-so generously designed for a person and a half, my knee grazes his hip.
“For this therapy, there are acupressure points on the face and upper body that you tap,” Adrian tells me. “The top of your head. Middle of your eyebrows. Side of the eye. Under eye. Under your nose. Under your mouth. Side of the hand. Collarbone. Under the arm.”
“How do I tap?” I poke his hand. The one closest to me. “Show me.”
I had meant for him to show me on himself, but when the pad of his thumb presses the spot between my eyebrows, my ability to speak vanishes.
The last time we touched each other—properly—was at the party when we kissed. Desire flares inside me. My body still remembers every second of that night.
“So tense,” he whispers, massaging the spot briefly before moving on. His hand pinpoints the middle of my scalp and taps. It’s not a jarring movement. The heaviness of his hand is warm. Solid. Big.
So quickly, he goes to the next point. His palm engulfs my cheek and thumb stretches out. It taps the side of my eye and then underneath it.
His hands have held onto hockey sticks his whole life. Wooden-scraped blisters healed over to build rough calluses. But him touching me isn’t rough. I stutter out an exhale. No, there’s thisotherkind of tension building up as worked-over hands gently map my face.
When he taps the spot beneath my mouth, I go from cross-legged to sitting on my knees and then squeezing them together. The juncture between them pulses. I get wet so quickly with him around, I vaguely think with distant alarm. He doesn’t even need to touch me much, and I’m suffering.
“Sonya.”
He’s pulling back.
“There’s the body ones but you can?—”
“Show me,” I insist. My voice is a whisper, even if the rest of me doesn’t feel so quiet. My skin simmers and—should I measure the warmth of my forehead? Or…his? Not that he appears to be struggling. He’s focused, sensibly composed?—
Adrian looks briefly at the ceiling. Then back at me. “Show me your hand,” he says finally.
I give it to him.
He traces a line down, from my finger down to my wrist, tapping softly.
