Page 72 of Goalie Lessons

I say as much to Astrid, and she laughs, her eyes going a bit far away. I wait for her to come back to me, and when she does, I ask, “What?”

She pulls her head back a bit. “What, what?”

“What were you thinking about just now?”

For a second, it looks like she might tell me, but she just shakes her head, turning and making her way along the aisles.

“Come on,” she says, waving me forward. “We have a lot more to get to.”

As we go, she holds her tablet, asking me questions—the ones I’ve gotten used to answering. They’re the anchor questions, to help her figure out how I’m doing.

When she asks, “Last serious anxiety attack?” I pause, averting my eyes.

A moment later, she prods, “Grayson?”

“This morning,” I admit, clearing my throat. She lowers the tablet, her eyes widening.

“I thought the other interventions had been helping,” she says, referencing the fact that I’ve been going for a lot more walks, using myhappy placewith her during games to push the anxiety away.

“Yeah,” I feel—strangely—like she might be disappointed with herself right now. Like she should have been able to fix me with just two pieces of advice you can find on the internet. “Well, I tried visualization, but it just…wasn’t enough.”

The tablet hangs at her side. “Was there something that triggered it? Or just random?”

“Well.” I think about that faraway look she got earlier, and I wonder, not for the first time, if I’m always sharing more with Astrid than she’s sharing with me. “Yeah. But nothing major.”

She watches me, and I feel the tension between us, ready to snap. This strange tugging, like we’re both asking for more, but not willing to give it.

“Okay,” she says, moving to the side and holding up a reusable produce bag. “Touch this. Kind of like your jersey?”

That draws a laugh from me. “Sure, yeah, I guess. More like my practice jersey than my game day one, though.”

“Close your eyes and picture it,” she says, and I do, realizing I’m so primed to follow her instructions that I don’t even question it. I’m closing my eyes, the fabric pinched between my fingers, when she says, “When you’re out on the ice, and you start to feel anxious, you don’t have to have spinach on you.”

That draws another laugh, and she goes on. “Pinch your jersey like this. Reallyfeelthe fabric, how the pattern moves against itself. Focus on the feeling of your feet in your skates, how your hands flex around your stick. It’s a form of grounding.”

“Grounding,” I say, opening my eyes and looking at her. The rest of the farmer's market—the bustle, the people—has fallen away. Now, all I see is her, staring right back at me.

Astrid

IpullawayfromGrayson, heart beating hard and slow in my chest. Turning, I clear my throat and try to remember what I was talking about. We walk ahead, and I focus on the work—the case study. Introducing coping mechanisms to the professional athlete, studying his anxiety and how it presents in a competitive environment.

As we walk, I fill my head with the technical facts of the situation to keep from thinking about the way he’d looked down at me, his eyes warm on mine.

Grayson looks at me like I’m his saving grace, and it makes everything inside me far too confused for my own good.

It doesn’t help that everything in this market reminds me of my mom—shelovedChristmas. Earlier, when Grayson casually talked about his mother making that pomegranate salad, I’d wanted to tell him about my mom.

About how she hated the seed, but loved the juice, and would buy those weirdly shaped bottles from the grocery store, urging my dad to have some. For a while, she smelled like pomegranate juice and sandalwood.

Normally, I avoid department stores and decorated streets, going out of my way to steer clear of holiday cheer. When I planned this outing for us, I hadn’t even thought about the fact that everything here was going to be pine and cinnamon, a thick, hazy wave of yule and flushed cheeks.

When we stop at one of the stands, a little thrift store presenting their best finds, I pick up a Precious Moments figurine—a woman and a little girl in front of a fire—and a knot collects in my throat. It’s almost like Mom is here with me—how could there be so many coincidences? So many things that remind me of her in just one place.

I can picture her and my father walking through this market—her carefully assessing each stand, being shrewd about what to buy, him laughing and making friends with every seller, leaving with arms full of local honey and artisan cheese.

“Astrid?”

Grayson’s voice breaks me out of my thoughts, and I startle, nearly dropping the delicate figurine in my hands. I realize they’re shaking, and I set the thing down, clasping my hands together and hiding them behind my back.

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